Search - Ryan Adams :: Easy Tiger

Prime example of well-made country pop

Gregory W. Locke | Seattle, WA | 03/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The son of an English teacher, songwriter Ryan Adams had absorbed the work of writers such as Henry Miller, Hubert Selby, Jr. and Sylvia Plath long before dropping out of school following his freshman year. After quitting a punk band - admitting that the vocals were "too hard to sing" - Adams formed Whiskeytown, the vehicle that put him on the worldwide music map at the tender age of 21. Somewhere between dropping out and becoming a critical darling, Adams started drinking. A lot. Then he started getting high. Really, really high, and on a daily basis.



In an interview following his debut solo album, Heartbreaker, Adams claimed that he spent three hours per day working on his writing, singing and guitar skills, doing his best to focus on each facet of his trade equally; not exactly the work ethic of your typical lowlife. A decade and ten official studio albums later (nine solo and one posthumous Whiskeytown record), Adams decided to sober up completely, along the way recording his latest album, Easy Tiger, which is said to be the first entirely sober recording of his career.



At first blush, Easy Tiger brings to mind Adams' third solo album, Demolition, and album held back only by its doomed pseudo-compilation format. For what it was (a sampling of tracks from unreleased Adams albums), Demolition was good, but, parallel to the first impression Easy Tiger leaves, it didn't play through as seamlessly as Adams' other releases. A student of album-oriented rock, Adams has always championed the skill of pure albumcraft, and while Easy Tiger might throw listeners at first, it eventually reveals itself as an even collection of short, concise songs that amount to the Americana crooner's most accessible, repeat-worthy record to date.



Two songs, "Off Broadway" and "These Girls" (previously known as "Hey There Mrs. Lovely"), are longtime live favorites pulled from Adams' extensive catalog of unreleased material, reworked here from their primitive foundations to fit Adams' current brand of clean, affable songwriter rock. Adams' best song since Cold Roses, "Everybody Knows," as well as "Two" and "The Sun Also Sets" are surefire selections for his impending six-disc greatest hits collection while "Two Hearts," a song Adams has been playing live now for sometime, stands as the albums only slight misstep with its awkward phrasings.



Initially meant to be recorded as a sparse, Heartbreaker-esque record, Adams began calling in his band, The Cardinals, to help him flesh out the majority of Easy Tiger. While a few songs do recall the meager allure of that great debut solo record, most of Adams' latest sees his current incarnation of The Cardinals at the top of their game. Need proof? Start with the excellent, upbeat opener, "Goodnight Rose;" or maybe one of the more roots-friendly tracks, such as "Tears of Gold" or "Pearls On a String." Or cut the crap and skip to the inexplicable track everyone talking about on release day, "Halloweenhead," a song that Ryan Adams (and only Ryan Adams) could come up with. Or how about the eerily mature closer, "I Taught Myself How To Grow Old." It's all there, so good that it's almost overwhelming.



Rock history tells us that sobriety almost always changes an artist, usually for the worse. Not the case with Adams, who with Easy Tiger has released his most economical, unswerving collection of material yet. The songs, many of which sound as though they could've been recorded during Adams' 2004 haze (which resulted in three studio albums in 2005), all refrain for being indulgent, usually wrapping up where past albums Adams would've opted to ramble on with jams and unneeded verses. Lean in structure and instrumentation, the album's 13 tracks still embrace the spontaneous magic of Adams' recent albums, though they arrive much more lucid, and thus, more professional and less indulgent than any of his past work.



For Adams, with sobriety comes a new aptitude for editing his overflowing instincts and a newfound focus on his amazing vocal prowess, the result being an album made to be worn thin, bought for friends and packed in your island-bound suitcase. An album that crams Adams' overabundant natural talent down the throats of his naysaying songwriting peers once and for all. An album that, more than anything else, secures Adams' legacy, made to someday stand beside Heartbreaker, Cold Roses and Stranger's Almanac as one of the works that made him the most prolific and brilliant songwriter of his time. Hopeful, sober, lean and beautiful, Easy Tiger is not just an album as rewarding as any other in 2007, but the start of a new era for Adams. (Greg Locke)"