Review of Ryan Adams' "Easy Tiger" CD

IndyCDandVinyl

November 19, 2007 by IndyCDandVinyl

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RYAN ADAMS--EASY TIGER

Ryan Adams is one prolific artist. He released three albums in 2005, and supposedly has a 4-disc box set coming out this fall. To "tide us over" until then, Adams has released Easy Tiger. Largely forgoing the genre-hopping of his last few LPs, Easy Tiger is, by and large, firmly rooted in the alt-country mode, with lots of pickin', mournful slide guitar, and Adams' own country-flecked voice. This is not to say that he has abandoned his Grateful Dead fixation, as opener "Goodnight Rose" attests. But even this song is reminiscent of the Dead's country masterpiece, Workingman's Dead," rather than their jam workouts. For most of the rest of the album, however, Heartbreaker style mid-tempo laments are the order of the day ("Halloweenhead" being an uptempo exception). The sameness of tempo and instrumentation, however, serves to make most of the songs indistinguishable from one another, which is uncommon for a Ryan Adams album. One breathes a sigh of relief when a harmonica appears on album closer "I Taught Myself How To Grow Old" simply because it gives some variation to the sound. Furthermore, Adams' previous albums, both solo and with Whiskeytown, have always demonstrated a true lyrical mastery. His words generally seemed carefully chosen, especially when he spun out tunes based around extended metaphors ( e.g., Demolition's brilliant "She Wants To Play Hearts" based around the concept of childhood games reflecting lost love). On Easy Tiger, however, Adams' lyrics take on a much more conversational tone, often leading to less memorable couplets. On "Everybody Knows," for example, he sings, "He says her name, he says it and I know what's up/You come to me sometimes when I'm thinking like a cannonball shooting out a cannon/And I forget whatever it was I was thinking about/With everything changing how am I to know". These words don't exactly trip off one's tongue, and similar problems plague most of the songs here. In sum, while Easy Tiger is not a bad album, it is a disappointing outing for Adams. But, hey, we have a 4-disc box set to look forward to.

Forum: Music

Tags: 

Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, rock, indie rock, indy cd and vinyl

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