An article in the new issue of Rolling Stone talks about Ryan's new sound:
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Six months ago, Ryan Adams was in a slump. "I'd sort of lost my interest in playing music," Adams says. "I'd been obsessed with writing all these confessional songs. I didn't know how to not be so self-serious, because I was so bummed out. It was like I was caught in some really shitty Kafka novel - it was, like, country goth." After taking some time off, he started doing what he does best: writing songs. The notoriously prolific Adams holed up in a converted rehearsal space in the basement of Hi-Fi, a bar in Manhattan's East Village, and began recording four-track tapes with a friend. The difference this time around: Adams was playing almost exclusively electric guitars, which gave the tunes a looser, less-depressive feel. "I always just figured that I was crap as a guitarist," he says. "But I really like to turn up the guitar and get all Black Flag about it. It was a lot more interesting than confessional folk rock."
Adams recorded some of the songs at a New York studio, and the result was his electrified new record lloR N kcoR (hint: Hold the title up to a mirror). Though he says he can't compete with his boyhood guitar heroes - Johnny Marr, Bob Mould, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia - there are traces of those players all over the place, from the grating dissonances that kick off the album to the classic-rock clamor of "1974" to the delicate interplay of "Song For A Girl In Los Angeles". In fact, lloR N kcoR serves as a primer of basic guitar strategies from Lynyrd Skynyrd to U2. It's a successful, if not shocking, artistic makeover for the increasingly upbeat-sounding Adams. "I really want my playing to be good," says Adams, who hasn't exactly been known for his humility in the past. "But it always comes out shitty. I guess I just want it to sound f-u-n." It does.
Check it out!
I'm not won over yet, though.
I'll leave it at that 
