The general consensus among the critics (I must thank my other favourite thing in the Migglands for doing the research there) is that “Easy Tiger is Ryan Adams’ best album since Gold.
Except, that is, when you ask those critics who are as unashamedly Ryan Adams obsessive as myself.
I’ve never wanted to be one of Those Fans, you know, the ones that begrudge their favourite artists the creative development that the rest of us get. It’s something that it seems to be impossible to leave out of a Ryan Adams discussion though. I think it’s because first solo album Heartbreaker and the sum of Whiskeytown’s musical back catalogue are as close to musical perfection as it gets in my world. It’s so perfect, in fact, that it “shows what Ryan Adams is capable of”. So perfect that everything he’s released since has to be considered a disappointment in comparison.
Of course those comparisons are unfair. Perhaps Ryan could toss out another Heartbreaker as easily as he did those seven albums of comedy rapping and death metal that appeared on the “dot com, motherfucker” earlier this year, but there’s a whiskey-soaked maudlin there that it wouldn’t be fair for sober, sensible Ryan to try to emulate. He’s not the same scruffy boy carrying that titular heartbreak, and we can’t expect his music to sound the same. And so we don’t – and my other half has written a fair and eloquent album reaction in which he explains why he hasn’t taken to Easy Tiger. But it seems that Ryan is actively trying to court such comparisons this time around – why else the first “official” releases for two songs that have been doing the rounds since 1999?
Easy Tiger has taken me a while to get my head around. Its production is clean and slick, Ryan’s voice is sweet and soaring – far removed from the cracked whisper I fell in love with. And the songs… well, they’re nice. But honestly? After the first couple of listens, the only songs I could pick out of the lineup were the ones I had heard before.
“Give it time,” Katie said to me. “If you’re not sure, give it a couple of days before you make up your mind.”
And then a funny thing happened. Slowly, almost without my noticing, bits and pieces of the album began to emerge. Songs that came across as if Ryan had tossed them out lazily in fifteen minutes started to grow on me. Even the dreaded comedy rock number, which – as if Ryan and the universe were jointly laughing at me – was playing as I picked up the album in HMV.
Honestly? There’s quite a lot to like about this album. Opener “Goodnight Rose”, thankfully stripped of too much of the guitar wankery that has bogged down the live versions that I’ve heard gets things off to a rocking start, while later “Oh My God, Whatever, Etc” showcases the delicate, understated, other side of Ryan that was the first thing I fell in love with. “Tears of Gold” is a bit Neil Young covers round the campfire – my dad would probably love it – and the devastating refrain of “The Sun Also Sets” (we are only one argument from death) nearly blew me away on the bus this morning. “These Girls”, an update of live favourite “Hey There Mrs Lovely” suffers a little lyrically in translation, but it’s still nice to hear a fully realised recording.
And then there are “Everybody Knows” and “Two”, the tracks which Lost Highway so graciously treated us to a couple of weeks ago, and which seem something quite separate in an album which seems comfortable genre-hopping from folk to rock to rollicking country. They were my first hook into the album, and they wouldn’t seem too out of place on the first half of Jacksonville City Nights. They’re good songs: but in a way, it’s these two which illustrate the problems I have with Easy Tiger most explicitly. This isn’t my Ryan. This is cleaned-up, mass marketable, Ryan for the people who might want to know that dude that sang that Tim McGraw song’s got a new album out. They’re songs I could play for those of my friends who don’t really “do” music, and they’d be able to understand why I call myself a fan. But they’re not songs that will at once slay you and raise you from the dead. It’s not the stuff that’s going to save your life.
But sometimes, that’s fine too. Music is allowed to just be music.
“Two” in particular is a really pretty song. Sure, the lyrics sound as if they were penned on the back of a cocktail napkin, but even a turn on backing vocals by none other than Sheryll Crow – surely a disaster waiting to happen – works in a way that is not only complementary to the melody but is downright lovely (although this performance from David Letterman last night is much lovelier):
Among all of this though, there are gripes that I can’t quite shake. “Rip Off”, for example, does pretty much what it says on the tin – it’s a bland, MOR track that seems to do not very much of anything. I find album closer “I Taught Myself How To Grow Old”, which seems to be a firm favourite from many of the opinions I’ve read online, cloying and mawkish. But my biggest disappointment is the new version of “Off Broadway”, one of the most beautiful songs from unofficial release The Suicide Handbook and the album track I was most looking forward to. Ryan’s voice is wrenched up an octave, robbing the song of its delicacy and that one heartstopping line – hasn’t killed me yet but give it time – of its power as he struggles for the notes.
Overall though, it’s a pretty solid if not exactly beguiling effort. Not my favourite, not by a long way, but there are moments of greatness among the rest of what Jay termed meh-levator music.
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