There’s nothing wrong with a prolific artist, so long as the quality matches the quantity. Oversaturation never seemed to worry or mar Bob Dylan, Tom Waits or Elvis Costello one bit. To this day, though they have all slowed the pace of their releases, these artists have just kept on keeping on.
But in the case of Ryan Adams – the artist once pegged as the next Gram Parsons – the guy needs to learn how to cool it every once in a while.
Cardinology is Adams’ fifth full-length album released in the last three years (not to mention the 2007 EP, Follow the Lights). Besides creating a marketing nightmare, Adams has effectively suffocated the strength of his best material. Whether it is within an album – Cold Roses would have made a brilliant single album release, not the double disc it was – or between LPs, the gems end up dulled by all the throwaways and misfires.
So while Adams’ most recent album with backing band The Cardinals doesn’t quite stoop to the depths of his most atrocious effort, Rock N Roll, there isn’t a single song compelling enough to warrant all 40 minutes of Cardinology.
Taken as a whole, it’s largely forgettable, save some particularly grating moments. “Magick” has all the bad trappings of 1990s radio rock: stupid lyrics, blunt power chords and a generic, easy-to-remember chorus. It carries none of the charm found in Easy Tiger’s slow-chugging rock tune, “Halloweenhead,” but recalls all its hokey-ness.
The painfully withdrawn finale, “Stop,” revisits one of Adams’ signature moves: the melancholic piano weeper (ho-hum). Our narrator sounds disinterested as ever, spouting off cringe-worthy bits like “A crucifix can never fix enough” or “There is a darkness, and there is a light.”
Maybe it’s just the pleasant normalcy of sobriety kicking in – the post-addiction Easy Tiger partially depended on the strength of older songs – but throughout most of Cardinology, Adams seems to be going through the motions. Especially the electric tunes, such as “Fix It” and “Cobwebs,” lack the conviction and tortured soul that have driven Adams in the past.
Over the last year, we’ve seen Adams does not need drugs or personal drama to be a heartfelt performer. Quite the contrary, Adams’ last few tours have been almost entirely meltdown-free and have yielded some of the best live work of his career.
That’s not to say it is at all surprising Adams has taken an artistic turn for the worse. As evidenced on a slew of bootleg albums far superior to many of the subsequent official albums, Adams has not always been his best editor. The real disappointment of Cardinology lies in how safely played all of the songs are.
“Let Us Down Easy” and “Crossed Out Name” are precise archetypes of the bad Ryan Adams song. Both tunes never progress to any point not hinted at in the opening bars, ambling along in half-baked laments.
Buried under all the monotony, Cardinology has a few bright spots. “Evergreen” pleasantly apes American Beauty-era Grateful Dead (one of Adams’ heaviest influences), and although neither track is anything breathtaking, “Sink Ships” and “Natural Ghost” notch up the passion enough to make a brief impression.
At this point in his career, Adams should have the maturity and intuition to know when to cut a record and when to hold off until inspiration strikes harder. He can rest his head on any plateau he likes, easy or otherwise, but you can only ride it out so long before hitting a downward slope.
Cardinology is hardly the worst material Adams has put out in his career; he’s bounced back from far worse. But it’s beginning to look less likely he will ever give us something we haven’t already seen from him – several times over.
Without contributing anything too compelling to the Adams catalogue, Cardinology works to further cement Adams as a musician well-tailored to fit the iPod generation. There is no single great album in his oeuvre (we’re all still waiting on that masterpiece), but cut and paste from his entire solo discography, and we can see why there are still people who refer to him as an artist.
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RATING: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars.
