funny how they say that some things never change;

lism. / ashes and fire, gigs: reviews, music: albums, ryan adams / 7 Comments

If anybody remembers what happened to me last time I saw Ryan Adams in Edinburgh you’d be forgiven for wondering if my recent absences have been as a result of emotional trauma. However you’ll be pleased to note that I survived Sunday evening with few tears shed and little in the way of body modifications.

Ashes and Fire, Adams’ latest album, was released a couple of weeks ago. Reviewers slightly less emotionally invested than I have variously billed it a “career high” – perhaps his best work since solo debut Heartbreaker. But the truth is since then I’ve been mulling over how best to write about what really is a perfectly pleasant, rather enjoyable album to listen to ever since.

Stringer summed it up for me the other day. “I’m not going to write about it, because once the album stops I can barely remember a thing about it,” he said. Well I paraphrase, because he sends me so many trivial text messages about burritos and post-feminist Doctor Who theories on a daily basis that I can never locate anything I actually want to use. The new album certainly isn’t padded with as much filler as those recent albums that have featured maybe three songs apiece you actually want to hold onto, but comparing it to a beloved release of a decade ago is to miss the point. I can understand what there is to love about Ashes and Fire, but it’s as if on the spectrum of americana melancholia there’s down and out and druggy in New York misery, and sunny happily-married California nostalgia, and the two are very different things. I find it telling that the most compelling song the album offers me is “Lucky Now” as per the video above, which Adams wrote in memory of deceased friend and Cardinals bandmate Chris “Spacewolf” Feinstein.

But you know how sometimes you don’t ‘get’ a piece of music until you hear it live, with all the emotion that a particular performance can create? Time pressures had something to do with it of course, but I was tempted to hold off to see how the material would fare at the Festival Theatre – a stage I was on myself on my last visit to the building, picking up my MSc in Journalism in 2004. And the verdict? Well I couldn’t really tell you, because in the end the setlist showcased more of Adams’ Heartbreaker material than it did that he was allegedly there to promote. Complaints? Nae chance.

In fact, look at that setlist again. For much of the evening what I was witnessing was the lead singer of disbanded 1990s alt.country band Whiskeytown play the motherfucking hits. Moved? I can’t stop shaking thinking about it even now.

Fuck guys, you know my interest has waned in recent years as his recorded output got guitar-solo widdlier and widdlier and I spent way too much money on one too many of those Cardinals-era concert tours where he would slink into the shadows rather than front the band or banter with his adoring audience. I wasn’t expecting much… but sitting here today I can tell you that I am once again as completely devoted to Ryan Adams as I was in my teens.

And yet, once again, I walked out early.

I guess that’s what growing up is though. Ryan Adams no longer smokes the hydroponic weed with the name that would score you 78 points in Scrabble, and Lis Ferla no longer puts her career or education in jeopardy to run for the last train home. Although it turned out I might as well have done on this occasion, since Scotfail no longer run a Glasgow train at 10:30 on a Sunday night and I missed my favourite song for nowt. Let that be a lesson for you, adulthood.

Besides, Adams himself seems to have given up on the notion that sobriety means you have to be sensible. He still dresses like your metalhead little brother, he still needs a haircut and he’s still not beyond going off on some bizarre riff about Edinburgh’s castles and a misheard reference to an audience member’s pet lion. And he’ll still write a song or a death metal riff about it after a beat and a mischievous glance at the ceiling. “This is all pre-planned – he’s my dad,” he says.

And while I won’t say that reworking all the old songs as tender, acoustic numbers is always the best course of action there’s still something magical about a slowed-down, piano-driven “New York, New York” even if it’s not a patch on the original. Oh, and did I mention the Whiskeytown..?

BUY: Ashes and Fire at Amazon [UK] | iTunes [UK] | PAX-AM