| Here I am kinda, sorta cheatin'
again. Three songs were brilliant and I was on a deadline (as if those ever meant
anything really) so I never bothered to listen to the entire thing. When I did I was as
disappointed as I always tend to be with Adams' stuff. Such is life... Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Jacksonville City Nights Ahhh, here we go again - another rock and roll dreamer with the soft-hearted country boy blues. You’d have figured by now that these strolls down dirt roads between the haystacks and beneath a cornbread moon by so many erstwhile rock and rollers would have lost its charm. But considering the tight jeans pop-with-a-little-bit-of-steel-guitar-tossed-in-for-authenticity state of contemporary country music it makes more sense now than ever that somebody recall the sounds that made country music the great American art form it once was. And, of course, Ryan Adams is there when any form of music needs him – whether anyone wants him to be or not. Thankfully, Adams is the one cat who can pull it all off. Jacksonville City Nights is a ramshackle mess of a record filled with starts, stops, breakdowns, collapses, and absolutely perfect approaches to a form of music that has always been somewhat less than artful. Unlike other high profile "country" record efforts like Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue, Adams comes across as utterly authentic. He is the beautiful loser in these songs because he is a beautiful loser in life. He is the affable loser in "A Kiss Before I Go"; the wrecked poet of "The End"; the lost soul in "PA"; and he is the "Lay Lady Lay" Dylan-adoring copycat in "Hard Way to Fall". And therein lays the most earnest musical conviction Adams has put down for posterity (and posterity matters to Adams – oh how it matters) since the earliest Whiskeytown recordings. It is also his best. This is Ryan Adams true voice. |