“ABOUT FUCKING TIME, RYAN!” is one man’s welcome to
our host this evening.
As the heckler’s seat is in the heavens,
he sounds more like God. Ryan, ignoring the call, waves nervously, sits
idly at his piano, flicks through a red songbook, and blows his nose
onto his sleeve…
If we can pause for a moment and skip back to 2005; we can again go 'oooh' at
the fact that Mr Adams released three great albums that year; Cold Roses (a double
album), Jacksonville City Nights with his band The Cardinals, and 29, his first
solo album proper since the sublime Love Is Hell. This makes Ryan Adams the musical
equivalent of Bill Gates; (you’ll have to go with this…) they say
that if Bill Gates dropped £20,000 out of his back pocket, he’d probably
lose more money by stopping to picking it up, than continuing to his destination.
In this respect, if you were to follow Ryan Adams around, you could probably
catch a stray, heartfelt slice of melancholic brilliance and pass it off as your
own…
Back in 2006, Ryan Adams is talking to his guitar. Whispering sweet-inaudible-nothings in the voice of Elmo. Some of the audience giggle, others gets restless. He hunches over his piano and plays a handful of breathtaking songs, including 29’s beautiful Night Birds with the chorus “We were supposed to rise above, but we sink, into the ocean…” Afterwards, Ryan says he’s not going to play many songs you’ll know, instead, he wants to play some new songs he’s written. He explains that he wants to dwindle his popularity down so he doesn’t have to play anymore. Again, people laugh, others just squirm in their seats, urging him to continue playing. Ryan introduces a member of The Cardinals on drum (singular) and they play Cold Roses’ Magnolia Mountain superbly, Ryan plugs his guitar into a tiny practice amp and then amps the amp; providing a caterwaul of feedback and fuzz; it’s intermission time.
The second half of the evening takes a turn for the surreal, as Ryan Adams becomes increasingly restless and indulgent; waffling on about Eastenders, Friends, the importance of the symbol to metal-drummers, and just how ‘miserable’ his songs are... he stares endlessly at his songbook and can’t think of anything to play. He eventually chooses a few songs, stopping mid-way through them, announcing he doesn’t like them anymore. He attempts to gain composure by playing his version of Wonderwall, although he gets bored towards the end and fills the song with gibberish. He then decides to write a song onstage (a happy one) and then moves off to another… someone sneezes, he stops playing to say ‘bless you’ and doesn’t bother to finish the song...
The bewildered giggles from the audience are taken as genuine laughs by Adams, as he decides to turn the evening into an outlandish comedy performance. There’s a strange atmosphere as people become more restless. One audience member screams: ‘JUST PLAY THE FUCKING SONGS!!’. Adam’s talks-small a little longer, and decides it is probably best to play something; he does, but changes the lyrics to perform a bleated response to the outburst. There’s also a man who keeps saying: ‘Curfew… Ryan’, but he decides to continue his verbal effluence regardless. Ryan Adams explained that he’d have to ‘talk’ to break up his two and a half hour set-list of ‘monotonous, depressing bull-shit’ when many would have simply preferred a little more ‘monotonous, depressing bull-shit’, please.
To bring back some focus; it’s important to remember that Ryan Adams is an astoundingly gifted songwriter; perhaps the most naturally gifted around. His tender voice and lyrics, his troubadour persona, and his knack for melody and composition have given Adams an underground following of almost Dylan-esque proportions (Adams even opts for the ‘wretched’ harmonica on some songs); yet he has been plagued with accusations of megalomania, lack-of-focus and a reluctance to self-edit. In the few moments tonight when he is focussed, his songs, his singing and his playing is breathtaking. Alas, Ryan Adams is Cleveland Junior from Family Guy, he’ll give you brilliance, if you can get him to stand still for five minutes.