For new album, Adams deserves 'Gold'

The similarities end there, though, mostly because Adams has failed to change his genre of choice, alt-country, in the same way that Westerberg changed punk and indie rock forever. Wester-berg, both with and without the Replacements, took angry and irrational punk and turned it into something expressive, intelligent, emotional, and, above all, musical. Ryan Adams, on his second solo album, Gold, has instead decided to work within the admittedly narrow constraints that the purist-dominated alt-country genre has set up for itself over the past decade simply by calling itself alt-country.

What this means is that Adams has basically given us 16 love songs. They're not all love songs about women: "New York, New York" is a tribute to the city that never sleeps, while "Gonna Make You Love Me" shows, in spite of itself, that Ryan Adams is very much in love with Ryan Adams. But for the most part, these are love songs for a girl, or many girls, and that's certainly not much of a change from Adams' first disc, Heartbreaker.

A lack of innovation doesn't mean a lack of quality, though. Adams doesn't quite have Paul Westerberg's ear for catchy pop hooks, or even his talent for being poetic and scathing in the same breath. But he does have the ability to connect directly on an emotional level, both in his music and his lyrics.

"New York, New York" opens the album and is one of the more uplifting songs Adams has ever written. Musically, it's more John Mellencamp than Wilco, and Adams seems to put all of his romantic troubles behind him with the lines, "Love don't play no games with me/Anymore." But by the time the third track, "Answering Bell," rolls around, things don't seem nearly so optimistic: "Oh girl I wish I knew you well/But I'm just saying `hi' to your answering bell."

Gold sinks more and more into despair as it continues, with the country drawls of "The Rescue Blues," "Somehow, Someday," ("There ain't no way I'm gonna stop from lovin' you now") and "When the Stars Go Blue," making one think that Adams might have been a little bit ahead of himself when he said he was past getting jerked around by love. Suddenly, though, with "Gonna Make You Love Me," which sounds like it could have been an outtake from an early Dylan album, Adams gains some self-confidence, and from there on out, the album's deep despair simply evaporates.

With his self-confidence, Adams also gains a whole lot of adventurous musical confidence. "Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues" is a brilliant Rolling Stones rip-off, the Big Easy brass and gospel vocals of "Touch, Feel and Lose" are the closest Adams has ever gotten to actually being Southern, and the lushly orchestrated piano and strings of "Goodnight, Hollywood Boulevard" make for the most poignant album closer since "Here Comes a Regular."

If you don't buy into alt-country, Adams at least gives you a good value for your money (Gold, with 16 songs, is far less of a rip-off than most 12- or 10-song discs). But if you do, he also provides an emotional rollercoaster, a song for every mood, and an album so close to being perfect that one can only hope, unlike Paul Westerberg, that he hasn't said everything he wants to say. (Lost Highway)

—Dan Feder

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