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When Ryan Adams made a very non-public split with Caitlin Cary and the rest of
Whiskeytown in 1999, it evoked the memory of a similar break-up in the same Alt
Country class just five years prior. Uncle Tupelo was also at the top of their
game as a band when Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar decided they could no longer keep
the top on their boiling pot. As a result, each of these guitar-toting
troubadours of Bob Dylan University has staked an impressive claim in their
relevant countryside with unparalleled solo efforts and ground-breaking
collaborations with new-fangled bands. The Cardinals just might be the best
thing to ever happen to the scatter-brained, oft deranged Adams.
For his part, Adams has been listening to a lot of Gram Parsons lately. On
Jacksonville City Nights, his second of supposedly three 2005 releases (the
third is pending a November shelf date), Adams and the well-suited Cardinals
roll out the pedal steel and piano, light the incense, and inject the twang into
their most hard line, yet solemn, country record yet. While one could argue that
these songs don’t necessitate full-band accompaniment -- certainly not stoic
solo tracks like “Games” and “September” -- whether sparsely or all at once,
Adams uses the band as a key ingredient rather than a safety net. Remember, he
had that other band once, then he didn’t, and now he does. It’s unlikely he just
brought the Cardinals along as drinking companions.
Jacksonville shoves off to a bouncy enough start with the conventional
and safe road song, “A Kiss Before I Go”. “Can’t find the truth in a house of
lies / Can’t see tomorrow with yesterday’s eyes / One shot, one beer, and a kiss
before I go,” sounds every bit as burning and thoughtful as the best Parsons
compositions. “Dear John”, an open letter stained with heartache, finds new pen
pal Norah Jones wallowing in Adams’ misery as a barroom piano and slide guitar
carry the load. “The hardest part,” he utters on Jacksonville’s brightest
three minutes (“The Hardest Part”), “is loving somebody that cares for you.” I
submit the hardest part of this venture is wading through the despondent
ballads, thick with Adams’ painstaking falsetto, to find the nuggets like
“Trains,” a rockabilly ditty that Johnny Cash would have no doubt nailed in the
60s.
Drunken, meditative cries for help dominate Jacksonville City Nights, and
whether Adams or his drinking buddies really need a hand is still to be
determined, but this record would not have gotten him noticed post-Whiskeytown
the way Heartbreaker did. While it’s a decent outing in its own right,
Jacksonville feels like a breather, a day off. The thing about the truly
great musicians is that their ‘C’ game is usually enough to make the middle of
the pack green with envy. You could say Ryan Adams is to the singer/songwriter
rank what Tiger Woods is to the PGA Tour. Many critics are frothing at the mouth
yet again, and rightfully so where Adams’ sheer talent and passion for his craft
are concerned. But Jacksonville City Nights, for all its redemptive
strategy, falls shy of the high water mark that’s been established in an
uncommon career.
~Red
Rocker
redrocker@bullz-eye.com
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