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Ryan Adams

Certain Songs #2155: Ryan Adams – “Chains of Love”

July 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ashes & Fire
Year: 2011

. . .

And so Ryan Adams continued to release music at an insane — though not Pollardesque — throughout the 2000s. Most of it was with a band, The Cardinals, and most of it was good and occasionally great. The exception was 29, his third album of 2005, which was neither with the Cardinals nor any good.

And while I enjoyed all of them just fine, none of the individual songs really ever broke through. Not until he dumped the band and made a classic singer-songwriter album with big name studio musicians and an even bigger name producer, one Glyn Johns. Which looking back on it, is weird: I usually prefer albums that singer songwriters record with their regular band, so I’m not sure what the issue was.

[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2155: Ryan Adams – “Chains of Love”

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: Ashes & Fire, Chains of Love, Ryan Adams

Certain Songs #2154: Ryan Adams – “Don’t Even Know Her Name”

July 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Morrocan Role EP
Year: 2004

. . .

Because of his ridiculous ability to write and record songs, Ryan Adams started augmenting his regular full-length albums with singles & EPs, some of which were physical and some of which were digital-only. I’m not sure of the digital-only Morrocan Role EP was the first of these, but it contains one of his greatest songs, “Don’t Even Know Her Name.”

[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2154: Ryan Adams – “Don’t Even Know Her Name”

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: Don't Even Know Her Name, Morrocan Role, Ryan Adams

Certain Songs #2153: Ryan Adams – “English Girls Approximately”

July 28, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Love is Hell
Year: 2003

. . .

Anyways, here’s the album with “Wonderwall.”

So remember yesterday when I traced how Ryan Adams’s Love is Hell album was initially rejected by his record company, and so he wrote, recorded and released Rock N Roll instead? Here’s the rest of the story.

[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2153: Ryan Adams – “English Girls Approximately”

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: English Girls Approximately, Love is Hell, Ryan Adams

Certain Songs #2152: Ryan Adams – “1974”

July 27, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rock N’ Roll
Year: 2003

. . .

Perhaps Ryan Adams could have capitalized on the relative success of 2001’s Gold if he wasn’t continually feuding with his record company.

First, there was 2002’s Demolition, which was a compromise compilation from the three albums he’d recorded after Gold, and while that kind of distillation could have resulted in something special, it didn’t quite cohere, though “Nuclear” and “Starting to Hurt” are both good songs.

[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2152: Ryan Adams – “1974”

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: 1974, Rock 'n Roll, Ryan Adams

Certain Songs #2151: Ryan Adams – “The Rescue Blues”

July 20, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gold
Year: 2001

. . .

After the relative focus of Heartbreaker, Ryan Adams’ next album was intended to be his breakthrough, which it both was and wasn’t, a big sprawling double-album that would show off all of his many moods and gifts. That album, of course, was called Gold, and it remains his best-selling record, two decades on.

Gold had the bad luck to come out in two weeks of the 9/11 terror attacks, when people were still trying to figure out if they should be paying attention to pop culture, and it had the good luck to have as its opening song and lead single a song called “New York, New York,” which featured a video shot just a few days prior to the attacks, and featured a lot of footage of Ryan performing with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background. This, of course, wasn’t through any sense of prescience, but it was kinda just what you did.

[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2151: Ryan Adams – “The Rescue Blues”

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: Gold, Ryan Adams, The Rescue Blues

Certain Songs #2150: Ryan Adams – “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)”

July 19, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Heartbreaker
Year: 2000

. . .

So while I’d originally figured that when I got to Ryan Adams I would spend a lot of time discussing how in the past two decades he never topped Strangers Almanac and Pneumonia, the final two Whiskeytown albums, while still writing and recording a bunch of songs that I well and truly loved.

Instead, I want to start by acknowledging all of the various stories that have come about Ryan controlling, emotionally abusing and creeping on various women over the years, and say that I believe each and every single one. To the point where I thought about just skipping writing about him altogether.

[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2150: Ryan Adams – “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)”

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: Heartbreaker, Is To Be High), Ryan Adams, To Be Young (Is To Be Sad

Certain Songs #166: Caitlin Cary & Ryan Adams – “The Battle”

April 18, 2015 by Jim Connelly

image

Album: While You Weren’t Looking (Bonus Disc).

Year: 2002.

Caitlin Cary was a singer, songwriter and fiddle player for Whiskeytown, and she was tough enough to go face to face with enfant terrible Ryan Adams and smart enough to get a Whiskeytown vintage recording of one of his (or most likely, their) best songs – and a candidate for Prettiest Song Ever Recorded (Americana Division) as a bonus track for her first solo album. 

I’ll get into my deep love for Whiskeytown when I get there in a couple of years or so, but for now, just a story … 

It was 1998, and Rox & I were seeing Whiskeytown in San Francisco for the second time. The year before, we’d witnessed an absolutely incendiary performance at the Bottom of the Hill – a wedding present from Matt Brown – and this time, they didn’t seem to be quite as amazing, as Ryan Adams seemed to be visibly annoyed about something. 

In any event, this turned out to be the show where he got so annoyed at the sound crew – a combination of the sound and the fact that he couldn’t smoke due to California’s recently-enacted indoor smoking ban – that he kicked the monitors offstage at the end of the show. I remember all of that, but that’s not the thing I remember the most about this show. 

What I remember is that at some point during all of the ongoing chaos, everybody else from Whiskeytown was offstange, and it was just Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary, fiddle and guitar, who started singing this: 

When I am buried don’t visit my grave
God cannot save me from the sins I’ve embraced
Pay your respects at the old liquor store
Where I won the battle, but I lost the war

Whoa. Because it was just the two of them, and the melody they were singing was both timeless and new, I was transfixed.

You mine for silver, and I pan for gold
You keep yours hidden, while all my are sold
You tell the truth, and I lie and I barter
And I drink and I cry, and I pass out at night

Now, you gotta realize that Whiskeytown’s Stranger’s Almanac was probably my favorite album of the past two or three years, and it was filled with amazing songs. And within two verses, this song I’d never heard before was already as good as any of them. Well maybe not “16 Days,” but still.

I’ve always cheated, though I’ve never stolen no
I’ve wanted things that you ain’t never thought of
Pay your respects to that gambling’ score
Where I won the battle, and I lost the war

By this time, I knew I was going have to tell everyone who cared that while the entire show was a mess – especially compared to the previous time – there was this song, the gorgeous duet between Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary, who for the first part of the last verse didn’t even play their instruments, because that’s how good their voices sounded together.

They always told me when death came my sins would be
Cast out, forgotten, laid to rest with my body
Pay your respects to that old church-house door
Where I won the battle, and I lost the war.

So you could imagine how disappointed I was in the next year or so when Napster gave forth not just the original Pneumonia album, but dozens and dozens of Whiskeytown outtakes from their entire recording career, and the only place where I found any kind of recording of this was from a bootleg of their Austin City Limits performance in 1997.

But then, in 2002, it showed up as a bonus track for Caitlin Cary’s first solo album – both a sweet and cocksure move on Ryan Adams part – and I have treasured it ever since. 

Video for “The Battle”

Filed Under: Certain Songs, Hot Topics, Music Tagged With: Caitlin Cary, Ryan Adams, The Battle, Whiskeytown

Bob Mould Sees The Light

November 22, 2011 by Jim Connelly

Bob Mould, of course, has had a lifetime pass since the second Sugar album, and to be honest, he’s probably had it since January 1987, when Hüsker Dü released Warehouse: Songs and Stories.

Warehouse was the fifth album they’d released since September 1984, so it was the culmination of 2 1/2 years where they’d gone from being just another name buried in the morass of hardcore bands listed in tattered, second-hand fanzines to being one of my favorite bands in the universe.

That said, in all of the years, I’d only ever seen Bob Mould perform once, at the Warfield in San Francisco on Sugar’s File Under: Easy Listening tour. Unlike R.E.M and The Replacements, the Hüskers never made it Fresno, and there was never quite the right social buzz around them to have the same road trips that spontaneously seem to organize themselves around The Smiths or U2.

Besides, Hüsker Dü was going to last forever. I’d have plenty of time to see them!!

[Read more…] about Bob Mould Sees The Light

Filed Under: Actual Mileage, Music Tagged With: Bob Mould, Britt Daniel, Craig Finn, Dave Grohl, Hold Steady, Margaret Cho, Matt Pinfield, Ryan Adams, Tad Kubler

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Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2549: Sugar – “Try Again”
  • Certain Songs #2548: Sugar – “Needle Hits E”
  • Certain Songs #2547: Sugar – “Man on the Moon”
  • Certain Songs #2546: Sugar – “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”
  • Certain Songs #2545: Sugar – “Helpless”

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