This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
CD Reviews Ryan Adams and the Cardinals Release Cardinology Today!
Posted by Ryan J. Prado on Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:48 PM
Ryan Adams has made a point of producing consistent, vibrant and refreshing (if not arguably redundant) material since his late '90s split with alt-country darlings Whiskeytown. But where his earliest solo albums illuminated a minimalist Lennon-esque honky-pop, once the Love Is Hell albums came to be released, followed by the experimental foray into straight rock 'n' roll on Rock N Roll, it seemed a necessary artistic detour to hook in with a powerful session band. Enter The Cardinals. And ever since this marriage of reckless troubadour and steady-as-she-goes backing band, Adams has seen his most ambitious and varied musical ruminations yet.
Cardinology espouses this perhaps even more than last year's Easy Tiger LP or the Follow the Lights EP (also released in '07). The album opens with the Apache shuffle jam "Born Into A Light," with a pedal steel current rippling through waves of staccato melodicism.
"Magick" bulges with an eerie Stevie Nicks cadence, backed by the most aggressive tune forged by Adams since the horrid "Halloween Head," from Easy Tiger, a song that has never once not been skipped over in my late night bedroom whiskey-sipping sessions. Luckily, the strut hits stride early and carries you through to a bouncy chorus.
A majority of Adams' perceived formula for success seems oddly absent from this collection, despite the lack of any new sort of arrangements or instrumentation. The fact becomes apparent by the time you hit "Fix It," that Adams is just evolving so much quicker as a songwriter than history tells us is natural. Take away the prolific nature of his songcraft - the fact that he's put out 11 albums since 2000 - and it becomes obvious (almost painfully), that he's, simply, a better songwriter than his peers, and their peers. And sure, there are catalogued classic rock band points to reference song-by-song. There's the melody on "Magick" that sounds like it could be Fleetwood Mac, or the intro to "Cobwebs," which invokes visions of The Who, or even any number of foci derived from early '00 NYC retro rock. He's a sponge for only the most seminal of influences, yet he delivers them in a decidedly robust and varied manner. Cardinology, while far from being his most distinct or best work yet (that title would have to go to 2005's double-album Cold Roses), is another indication of the peaking Ryan Adams looming somewhere in the foreseeable future.
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