Starlite Diner February 21, 2009

This is another track I would say is one of my favorites off of 29.  I really enjoy how casual the lyrics sound sometimes, especially “Is it possible to love someone too much?/You bet…”  But while the song is able to have lines that seem like that’s how they would be said in conversation, there are others that are among some of the most poetic lyrics Ryan Adams has ever written.  (“Haven’t woken up at night, my love/And dreamt that you called them all/Every person that you can never love”)

This song, along with many of his other piano pieces, took a while for me to get into.  I think a big part of that is the fact that I became a fan because of his alt-country work, and these slower songs don’t really fit that category too well.  But, of course, the same can be said for the majority of the songs found on Rock n Roll and Love Is Hell.  And as I’ve said before, the latter is my favorite album he’s released.  That really says something about an artist, when they can bring you in and show you things (in the case, styles of music) you otherwise wouldn’t have been a fan of.

Nightbirds December 30, 2008

Ever since my post on “The Sadness” the other day, I’ve been listening to 29 like crazy.  It’s my least favorite Ryan Adams album, but the strong tracks on it are among my favorites.  One of these is a song that gives a startling look at what it’s like to be Ryan Adams during the extremely turbulent times during his mid-to-late 20s.  This verse, for me, says it all:

The people here inside me
They are loud, and in the night
The scream and smash the windows
When they fight

The lyrics on the album are, at times, disturbingly personal.  This song, which I was fortunate enough to hear live in 2007, features a lot of this writing.  The Night Birds in the song are supposed to be bringing something positive, but everything is empty.  While things are supposed to be improving, all the narrator does is sink lower and lower into his problems.  While he looks back and is fully aware that things aren’t right, he still isn’t able to fix it. 

There is something I have to mention about this song.  While I love the lyrics and feel like it’s one of his best, I can’t stand the delay effect they used on his vocals during the “Into the ocean…” line.  Let’s hear your thoughts…

The Sadness December 27, 2008

Ryan Adams has conquered folk music, country, garage rock, rap (as DJ Reggie), and just about every other genre you could throw at him.  Oddly enough, he never recorded any latin music.  Enter “The Sadness”

With quacking reverb-laden electric guitars, dramatic vocal delivery, and a pulsing bass-snare rhythm, the Latin influence on “The Sadness” is undeniable.  The lyrics have some of those great Southwestern themes: deserts, horses, trains, and a bullfighter’s red cape.  (“She opens her cloak and it’s the cover of the blood”)  The coolest part of the song is the slide guitar lick that comes right after “That’s why you’re not helping me.”  There are other influences in the song, too.  Some of them are incredibly unlikely, such as the R.E.M.-like guitar part in the “Please have mercy, let me go” part of the chorus. 

The lyrics are some of the most intense and romantic (in the literary sense of the word) he’s ever written.  The narrator is facing death and is trying to keep himself alive.  While he tries to fight, begs, and ultimately ceases to live; there’s a woman (his signifcant other?) who is fighting to save his life.  The lyrics are frightening.  Especially: “Something’s at the window/It motions with its fingers/Calling me beyond.”  I find it interesting that while he’s pleading with his taker, he says “…let me go/If only a day to let her know/I am nothing without her.”  This gives the impression that she has saved him before.  However, this time her efforts can’t help him…

Just a note: when I met/talked to him after the show in St. Louis, the songs on 29 came up.  Another fan asked if he would be playing this one with the Cardinals anytime soon.  Ryan explained that he wouldn’t, and that some of the songs on this album took him right back to the painful state of mind he was in when he wrote them.

29 December 17, 2008

First let me say this: “29″ is a pretty obvious rip-off of “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead.  This is apparent from the first listen.  However, I have to say that the lyrics in “29″ are much better in a really sick, dark way.  From what I understand, they’re all pretty reflective of times in Ryan Adams’ life.  29 was originally intended to be nine songs that would each be nine minutes long.  The plan was for each song to represent one year in Ryan’s 20s, which happened to be a particularly turbulent ten years for him.  Of course, this wouldn’t work since very few people have the desire (or attention span) to sit through an 81-minute album that only has nine songs. 

Anyway, those lyrics…  They’re so dirty, it’s reminiscent of the Velvet Underground.  Think about that opening line: “I was a poor little kid in the lungs of New York/Like a motherless son of a bitch/Loaded on ephedrine looking for downers and coke/Like a sun that just wouldn’t set on the horizon.”  Of course, you can look at the irony the statement “motherless son of a bitch”, but that’s not the point of this post. 

This song seems angry that he got to the low he did.  He sings about all sorts of issues.  Drugs, violence, boredom, trouble with the law, apathy towards death, more drugs, not growing up…  But while he says “Nobody loved me and nobody ever tried”, he admits that it isn’t their fault.  After all, “You can’t hang on to something that won’t stop moving.”  So he’s the one to blame for all of this reckless behavior (even though there were people who could have helped him).  I think this song is an ode to those late-1960s songs about misspent youth and reckless behavior sung from someone who understands it better than anyone else.