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Album Details
- Artist: Ryan Adams And The Cardinals
- Album: Cold Roses
- Label: Lost Highway
- Year of Release: 2005
- ME Rating:
- Reviewed by: dscanland on 2005-07-19
RecommendI think Ryan Adams has tarnished his name. It's not due to his music, which has been fairly consistent compared to others in the same category. It's mostly his piss poor attitude towards the music industry and life in general. When he declared that he was going to release 3 albums in 2005 many people just wrote it off. Well, Cold Roses is the first of the three and it is two albums worth of material. Is it any good? Yeah, it's some really great roots rock that brings Adams back to where he belongs. The problem is, does anyone actually care anymore? I would say forget about Ryan Adams, the one that you see in the public eye and focus on Ryan Adams, the one that writes all this music. Yeah, this is the Whiskeytown Adams back at it again. The album kicks off with the unassuming "Magnolia Mountain", a sign that Adams is back. It's not the best track on the album but worthy of a listen. Now there are those that will say that they don't need any more of Ryan. That's fine but there are others that haven't even heard the guy. He has far from saturated the market. If albums like Cold Roses keep coming from him people will have to pay attention. I'm thinking along the lines of Bruce Springsteen after Born In The USA. No one really cared after that until they realized he was actually writing some good material. The title track is one of the many highlights on this impressive double disc. Are all these songs worth a release? Yes. Most definitely. If you hate Ryan, you won't buy this. Everyone else would do good on checking out Cold Roses. Gold and Heartbreaker are essential though.
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on 2009-08-25 ToddLevinsonFrank Said:
At different times (and to various degrees) Ryan Adams is one of many artists to be cursed with the "new Dylan" label, but one of the things he really has in common with Bob Dylan is a refusal to be pinned down and labeled again. Perhaps by subconsciously taking a page from Dylan's book, he's managed to explore his own duality as a means of throwing us curves and proving that sometimes following a muse means making lots of left turns.
Asking which Ryan Adams would show up had been one of the few constants in his career. Would it be the heartbroken country singer with the golden voice or the bratty self-absorbed rocker, so drunk that he breaks his wrist falling off the stage? Like other new Dylans (Beck, Bruce Springsteen, Bright Eyes), Adams has an acute duality that's evident in his work: the acoustic Heartbreaker, followed by the more upbeat folk-rock of Gold, followed by Demolition, a diverse collection of unreleased tracks and demos. Then the lush and mellow mopey songs of Love is Hell, released concurrently with the disposable guitar-rock of Rock'n'Roll. Despite a few shortcomings, everyone agrees that Adams is an amazingly talented songwriter, perhaps too prolific for his own good. So, after a while, people wondered if Ryan could stop messing around and put it all together.
Finally, in the Spring of 2005, Ryan Adams released the first of a reported three new albums slated for that year: Cold Roses, with his band The Cardinals. Wow. This is the one that his fans have been waiting for: a finely crafted double album combining the subtly stellar songwriting of Heartbreaker with the full-band sound and accessibility of Gold. Adams and his band cruise through the 18 tracks as the acoustic, electric, and lap-steel guitars spiral up, intertwine, and cascade down as if they were conjured up by Jerry Garcia himself. The lyrics and titles, complete with references to roses, magnolias, friends, "stranger's angels," Cumberland, sweet illusions, and dancing all night, are more reminders of the Grateful Dead. But this is no boring set of trippy instrumental noodlings. There are some great, great songs here.
Packaged like a miniature gatefold LP, this folk-rock throwback features two Ryan trademarks: clever word play ("Let me go, I'm only letting you down" and "Telling me to take it easy but I took a photograph") and occasional wrist-slitting depression ("I aint afraid of hurt, I've had so much it feels just like normal to me now"). But while 2003 found Adams a bit brooding on Love is Hell and full of self-aware mockery on Rock'n'Roll, 2005's Cold Roses smells of the sweet fulfillment of a great talent who's finally letting his terrific songs speak for themselves.
Rating: 10/10
