Ryan Adams Band • Page 12

He really puts out a lot of material huh?

Say a person was unfairly bashing this guy and wants to check out more of his stuff but has only heard the S/T and this new one, where should I go? (Btw sorry about the unfair bashing and the points of contention I've raised in this thread I'm a dork)

 

Easy tiger, Gold, and Heartbreaker are good entry points into his disco.

 

Love is Hell is probably the logical next step if you want more along the lines of Prisoner and S/T.


Easy Tiger is usually my go to rec based purely on the fact that it ISN'T a double album and therefore is more easily digestible. Gold, Love is Hell, Cold Roses contain most of my favorite songs but there's like 20 songs on each of those. You'd be overwhelmed. (I know I was.)

 

Can anyone help a guy out and Point Me in the direction of his unreleased albums? my HDD crashed.

 

I'll second that request. I went looking for some unreleased and older B-Side material and every link I find is long dead!

 

I'd second Love Is Hell. Prior to its release, Ryan Adams said Prisoner was going to be more in the style of Love Is Hell. Whether that is true or not is purely subjective. But there is a lot of great material on there. The guitar solo on The Shadowlands is one of my favorite musical passages ever written. Political Scientist, Wonderwall, English Girls Approximately, and Hotel Chelsea Nights are other standouts for me. But, the whole album is truly great!

 

i started listening in about 2-3 years ago and i'm still overwhelmed

 

PM Me

 

Love Is Hell, Gold, and Heartbreaker are all pretty essential, imo. Cold Roses is also really great, but I'd recommend that one a bit later, since it's a double.

 

You gotta let Heartbreaker seep deep into your bones first imo. His catalog is full of gems but Heartbreaker is foundational. Gold or Cold Roses are my favorite records of his as often as Heartbreaker is, but I'd start at the beginning for sure.

And try to forget about the two most recent albums that you've already heard. Not that they aren't great (they are) but fresh ears would do you good with RA's early stuff.

 

If I am being honest, I would say that Ryan Adams is one of the absolute greatest songwriters alive, but the guy really does have terrible quality control. Every single time he releases an album I am dumbfounded by some of the songs he chooses to put on the album proper while relegating absolute masterpieces to b-sides or bonus tracks.

Take his newest album Prisoner, for example - the first half of the album (minus DYSLM?) is fantastic, but it really loses steam on the back half, yet he releases a 19 song b-sides album where 75% of the tracks are absolutely killer and better than what made the album.

The majority of those 19 songs are great and really deserved to be on an actual release, but having Broken Things in particular as a b-side is really a crime. I don't think most artists will ever write a song as good as Broken Things in their entire career.

 

thank you both! ill get right on it. what about b-sides and such? going off of posts in here i take it he has quite a lot of them

 

When you are ready for that stuff, I have all of his unreleased albums that are out there and b-sides. I can hook you up.

 

Yeah, it just is what it is with him. Whenever you have someone who writes as many songs as he does, you're going to end up wishing a bunch of his b-sides made the record. Choosing which songs get put on a tracklist and which get left off is hard enough when you have like 25 songs to choose from. I can't imagine how difficult it is for someone like him. He probably picked the ones that felt most resonant to him at the time.

48 Hours and The Suicide Handbook are both incredible albums in their own right, but they aren't as essential just by virtue of not being official releases. I feel like you'd also really dig Demolition, which is sort of a compilation of those two and another unreleased record's worth of material.

 

Listening to the Prisoner b-side collection right now. It's cool, but most of these are clear outtakes to me. "Broken Things" is the only one so far that I would have considered putting on the record.

 

I think he's done a much better job lately of editing himself down to making great, concise records. I absolutely love RA, and have grown into liking most of his catalog by now. But, getting started was a daunting task!

Considering that 29 / Jacksonville City Nights / Cold Roses (a double album) all came out in 2005 and then Easy Tiger / Follow The Lights / III/IV (another double album cut during the time of Easy Tiger that was rejected by his label) all came together in 2007, the guy is no stranger to having more material than he knows what to do with. As much as I love RA, I do believe all that material could have been cut down to 2-3 really great albums with a lot of fat trimmed off the edges. I think past those albums, Cardinology, Ashes & Fire, RA, Prisoner were where he got really good at making true albums. These are the ones where the track order seems pretty well thought out and a good balance is maintained throughout.

I hate making Bruce Springsteen-like comparisons, but in regards to purely songwriting output, he has to be on pace! Just like some of Bruce's stuff, the best songs ended up as B-Sides or surfaced years later on a compilation of sorts. (Stray Bullet should have been on The River!!)

 

I think the b-sides vs. Prisoner stuff is overblown, but I would swap out "Breakdown" with, like, any one of half of the b-sides haha. "What If We're Wrong" into "Broken Things" is a highlight on this batch for me, but I like a lot of them

 

I agree that he's really figured out how to make full records in the pasts few years. Self-titled is my favorite Ryan Adams album at this point, because all the songs are good and it's so well-paced. I don't feel that way about Gold, Heartbreaker, or Love Is Hell, good as they are. Prisoner isn't quite as consistent, but it has at least five of the best songs he's ever written, and everything else is still good/has its place on the record thematically.

Bruce is definitely a fair comparison, but I feel like he knew how to make solid full-length albums from the beginning, and was always good at editing his stuff. From those River and Darkness box sets, there are maybe two songs each that I would put on those albums. "Stray Bullet" and "Meet Me in the City" were really the only ones from The River box that I wish were on the final album.

 

"Breakdown" is pretty disposable. I'd be fine with that replacement. Most of the b-side just sounded pretty half-formed to me. Like, he had some good ideas in those songs, but needed to workshop them a bit more.

 

Very true... Bruce's records were always consistent, where Ryan's seemed to be a "throw it all against the wall" method until recently. I agree about Meet Me In The City and Stray Bullet. I also go back and fourth about The Promise and if / where that song belonged.

From what I understand, RA has often teased some massive B-sides / unreleased album set. From what I've read, there is definitely still a lot in his vaults he could choose from. I'd love to see 48 Hours and The Suicide Handbook get proper releases, though.

 

I think I would be more inclined to agree with you guys about Prisoner / Prisoner B-sides if my enjoyment of the album proper didn't completely evaporate on the back half. Ignoring DYSLM?, the run of songs from Prisoner to Anything I Say To You Now is absolutely incredible, but the second half of the album really doesn't do anything for me. I usually turn it off after the first half. Many of these b-sides on the other hand are absolutely incredible and they fit great stylistically.

 

Initially, I would have agreed. It took me a lot of listens before any of the second half clicked with me. Seemingly out of nowhere Outbound Train and the Clarence Clemons-esque sax solo on Tightrope really sucked me in and got me to appreciate the 2nd half more. I'll agree that Prisoner took longer to feel out than the self titled record did.

 

Man, that's a bummer. I mean, the back half is definitely weaker, but "Outbound Train" is the second best song on the record and way better than anything I heard on the b-sides record.

 

Agree on Outbound Train, for sure. Once I really got into that track, it was like, "Why have I been skipping over this!?"

 

"No Words" is a jam.