If Ryan Adams were a politician, he’d be the sort that pundits enjoy describing as a “polarizing figure.” His detractors – including Robbie Fulks and Paul Westerberg, the latter of whom obviously inspired Adams – consider him arrogant and derivative. His defenders – including Elton John – regard him as raggedly brilliant.
Both camps will find talking points within Cardinology, his album for this year. (The two camps acknowledge his annual regularity of releases – which reached a peak with three full-lengths, including the double-disc Cold Roses, in 2005 – with sullenness or wonder, depending.) Like 2007’s Easy Tiger, the new disc settles into a country-rock style, defined as much by the music’s laid-back attitude as by the presence of pedal steel guitar.
Because country-tinged music currently seems like a way out of creative aridity for so many (Jessica Simpson, Jewel and Darius Rucker, among others), Adams could plausibly be accused of getting too comfortable. (The titles of two songs, “Go Easy” and “Let Us Down Easy”, thus become pleas for their narrator to be seen in a kinder light.) Yet the woozy gray reflectiveness of the style does suit the perpetually wounded tone with which Adams sings – definitely part of the Westerberg influence.
His band, the Cardinals, also suits him. Drummer Brad Pemberton, pedal steel guitarist Jon Graboff, bassist Chris Feinstein, and multi-instrumentalist Neal Casal sync up smoothly with Adams, not only supporting but also guiding him through the pleasurable melancholy of “Evergreen”, the pensive softness of “Crossed Out Name”, and the drowsy wispiness of “Natural Ghost”.
Adams is still the ringleader, so the Cardinals must follow him into stylistic diversions, although he has either discarded or set aside most of the willfully eclectic, craft-for-craft’s-sake tendencies that made albums such as 2003’s Rock N Roll not so much creative statements as prolonged games of Spot The Influence. While “Magick” does resemble a broad, classic southern-rock update a la Kings Of Leon, and “Stop” closes the album on halting notes worthy of Ben Folds or Aimee Mann, Adams pours enough of his own personality into the songs to take them beyond homage. Even “Cobwebs”, which resembles the softer side of U2, is not too imitative.
But there is, as has often been the case with Adams’ records, a sense of great potential not entirely fulfilled. This is at least a partial holdover from the way his promising alt-country band Whiskeytown disintegrated or dissipated in the 1990s, but it still comes out in lyrics that cry out for another draft. The aforementioned “Magick” relies too heavily on its repeated chorus (”What goes around comes around”), and the impressionistic images of “Sinking Ships” segue into cliched nautical metaphors that would more aptly belong on the latest Kenny Chesney album.
The production doesn’t always help. Tom Schick favors a sort of gently echoing airiness that gives the songs necessary space, and he doesn’t mess with the attractive imperfections that strain Adams when he sings. But neither does he pull in closer when the moment all but demands the intimacy: The piano and violin (a nice touch from guest Michael Panes) which form the musically emotional base of “Stop” shouldn’t have to reach across the same middle distance that the louder parts of the album do.
Still, Cardinology makes a solid addition to the ever-lengthening shelf of Ryan Adams releases. It is likely to deepen the adoration of his defenders, and just as unlikely to make fans of his detractors. Adams is holding steady, and apparently quite content to do so.
