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Ryan Adams - 29 Audio CD

A fair review of the Ryan Adams "29" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Ryan Adams reviews here, or go back to the Ryan Adams tabs.

Ryan Adams Band: Ryan Adams
Title: 29
Rating:
Release Date: 2005-12-20
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Twenty Nine 2: Strawberry Wine 3: Night Birds 4: Blue Sky Blues 5: Carolina Rain 6: Starlite Diner 7: Sadness 8: Elizabeth, You Were Born to Play That Part 9: Voices

One of the most-underrated albums released in my lifetime
Its a peaceful yet dark album build by (mostly) slow songs that reach into the listener's psyche. This album is my favorite Ryan Adams album by far. Truly beautiful and powerful, every single track is outstanding.

29 Received mostly lukewarm reviews, not glowing whatsoever, which is understandable based off of the standards of most critic's taste. Still, 29 is an incredibly sensitive album that both picks at heartstrings and brings back extremely wonderful memories from my past. Excellent album.


"Don't spend too much time on the other side, let the daylight in"
Strategically it makes sense - 29, unique in Adams' catalog anyway, definitely didn't fit with his more direct, pop-oriented songs of Gold and Love Is Hell, and had at least a comrade of sorts in the countrified drunkenness of Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights, Adams' other 2005 releases. The backstory behind 29 is that Ryan Adams had to shelve it for a while - it did, after all, come out when he was 31, his final of three albums released in 2005. It was deemed too weird and obscure, but as the bass drum beats and guitar blazes a sound right out of the Grateful Dead's "Truckin" on the title track, it's something else - a declaration of survival. In the track, Adams muses "I should've died 100,000 times" and "Most of my friends are married and making them babies/ To most of them I've already died. " He recounts bar fights, arrests, close calls, drug use, and even his dead dog's pile of bones and then roars on his way - it's obscure enough, I suppose, but it's also a thrill. Coupled with its following song, "Strawberry Wine," which has a softer Adams musing "Don't spend too much time on the other side/ let the daylight in," Adams imagines the side of his 29 years if he hadn't survived, and that makes this, really, a concept from start to finish about the luck of the surviving - even a manual of sorts.

Adams has long been criticized as being a machine that cranks out songs rather than an album artist, but 29 is the antithesis - a full record not that concerned with the song to song individuality. That's the strongest thing about 29, but it also isn't fulfilled. Though its middle, sad songs "Night Birds" and "Blue Sky Blues" are terrific, they're left unfulfilled by what should be the conceptual meat of the record - a bla love song "Starlite Diner," and "The Sadness," a fight with depression re-imagined as a bullfight. The truth is neither of the songs work, and they disrupt Adams' conceptual daring. Though the record picks back up with "Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part," as emotional a song as Adams has ever written with its collision of two absolutely gorgeous melodies. However, the heartbreak seems isolated. "Voices" concludes the record, and it's like a postmodern folk song - all deadly pleas and emotional coos so trenchant you barely notice there's only an acoustic guitar playing. This song should connect 29's ends of survival - with its "Don't you listen to the voices" center, it's the hope that makes his good luck story of "29" possible - but it doesn't, it merely ends the album respectably. I love 29 for its host of great songs and its ambition, even for its weirdness and obscurity, but it's clearly not fully realized by its end.


His Masterpiece
In fact, the more I listen to this, I feel it is far better than Heartbreaker or Easy Tiger (that ones in the middle of the pack for me, despite all of the glowing reviews). This is easily the strongest record Ryan released in 2005 (followed by Cold Roses). I think this record was lost on older reviewers and maybe younger reviewers too. The artists intent - a reflection of his 20's as he approaches the 30's is brilliant. The music is melancholy (although in a more real fashion than Love is Hell), piano based for the most part, with introspective lyrics. Isn't everyone melancholy and looking to the future as we hit our 30's? This is the record I come back to. This is the record I play in my house, on my IPOD, in my car. Brilliantly done. I hope he returns to this style of playing at some point. .


Awesome


Holla!. If you put less than 5 stars then you are stupid and your opinion is wrong.


Lost in the Shuffle
After "Cold Roses" and "Jacksonville. . ", I'd personally had my fill for one year of Adams's light country homages. But when I picked up "Easy Tiger," I also grabbed this little gem and was pleasantly surprised. Much of the album is mellow and sullen, driven by piano or lightweight guitar licks (the exception being the opening track). Not a bad little record.


You can see a complete list of all Ryan Adams discography, or go back to the Ryan Adams tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.

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