Ryan Adams uses his self-titled to plumb a forgotten genre, ’80s ballad rock, and often makes you wonder why he thought it was worth remembering.
There’s a startling distinction between the Ryan Adams you hear on an album and who you get when you go to a show. Not in the music—the songs are as perfectly maudlin, haunting, and/or cheesy as they are on wax—but his stage presence. Taking his solo work as a whole, Adams’ default mode is deeply plaintive, so itap hard to imagine him being one for self-deprecating banter or funny voices, but thatap what you’ll get.
Adams’ sense of humor is often missed through the lovesick treacle coating so much of his discography. But its a pervasive aspect of his catalogue: the half-gag tracks, using to kick off his most lasting album, recording an concept album. Looking at his latest full-length, itap seems immediately apparent Adams is having a laugh. , the font and placement of his name on the cover knowingly echo a that of an artist he’s been in the past. He exhibits a similar scowl, too, though Ryan’s tangled burr of hair puts his close-up in sharp contrast.
Sounds crazy, right? But the Bryan Adams callback theory gains more traction when you listen to the album. Ryan Adams is known (and for those that first caught him during his Bob Dylan years, hated) for slipping in and out of genres as he pleases from album to album. “Ryan Adams” is a throwback to 80’s power-pop rock. Like any album from that era worth its acid-washed denim, electric guitars, airy synths and horizon-gazing lyricism abound. “Gimme Something Good” is an ideal introduction, an example of how effortlessly Adams’ writing works in near any genre he puts it to. “Feels Like Fire” is equally deserving of a spot in the verisimilitudinal golden-oldies station these songs exist inside of.
Despite a few winners, much of the album’s attempts at anthemic throwbacks border on the parodic. “Stay With Me” is a prime example: at this point in the album, right after a break for the essential folk ballad “My Wrecking Ball,” the 80’s theme party has grown stale. By the time the thoroughly mundane “Tired of Giving Up” comes around, the whole album begins to feel like a Rick Roll. Adams has never paid much mind to the musical zeitgeist outside of his own stereo, usually content to merely put his own spin on an established style rather than strive towards anything uniquely his. In this way, it’s fitting this is his self-titled album is a throwback to a forgotten genre no one asked to be reminded of. It’d almost be funny, if he wasn’t so committed to it.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
