Review: “Cardinal Powers Activate”: Ryan Adams Lands His Mothership in Nashville*

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Anu

Editor
Staff member
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
1,700
Location
There ain't no place I'd rather be, baby won't you
[SIMG]http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/anuransol/ryan-sml-1.jpg[/SIMG]


By Andy Smith, Editor
2007.10



The wickedly talented and wildly unpredictable Ryan Adams landed his mothership in Nashville on a rainy night in late October. The anxious faithful waited in the misty grey, nervously sucking down nicotine. Why were we worried? Because this was a Ryan Adams show, and we’d spent money and traveled great distances to check out a concert that based on the record could turn out to be an ecstatic delight or an excruciating disaster.

But Ryan Adams apparently loves Nashville as much as Nashville loves Ryan Adams, and we were treated to more than two hours of fan-pleasing, earth-shakingly ridiculous musical genius.

If I’d attended one of the Ryan Adams-is-an-emotional-drama-queen-with-a-wrecking-ball tragedies, this would be a very different review. On the way to the show, my friend and I joked that we’d beat up anyone who provoked Ryan to ruin the night, and then we would kick Ryan’s ass. Luckily, no one had to go there.

This critic has a low tolerance for rock stars who don’t, for a lack of a better phrase, “put out” for the people who pay their bills and devote an inordinate amount of spare time and spending money to supporting artists’ careers. But the collective mood among the fans on this Tuesday was to support Ryan by not inviting a fit. In fact, with all the folks fully sensitized to his internet legends and real-life mistakes, it was almost impossible to holler a drunken affirmation or reckless revelation without another fan admonishing you to keep it cool, lest we prompt another trademarked meltdown.

In fact, the buzz about his mental health and professional stealth have become so much a part of the Ryan Adams culture that even the artist got in on the backlash at one point, feigning an intentionally whiny voice and offering up the exclamation, “OMG, I am having a meltdown.” Making fun of himself and his critics in such a vulnerable manner offered a needed tonic to deal with the vigorous criticisms that have crowded the internet message boards with dismissive vitriol. But let’s face history: from Van Gogh to Janis Joplin, the great artists have always been high maintenance. And after witnessing him on a good night, I have to say that Ryan Adams is worth it; it’s worth putting up with the bad nights to occasionally taste these ineffable tinges and twinges of brilliance.

ryanmore3.jpg


ryanmore2.jpg


ryanmore.jpg


Photos by Liz Kelly

Without an opening band on the bill, fans had plenty of time to patronize the merch table and beer lines, swap past Ryan stories, and share setlist predictions. We welcomed Ryan and the Cardinals when they took the stage around 8:30pm for two spacey sets of intoxicating indie-twang. Unlike some artists that tour to feature songs from a new record while interspersing hits into a packaged plan, a Ryan and the Cardinals gig offers a much more eclectic and unruly affair.

From the bottomless vault of his insatiable vision, Ryan rocked us with two one-hour sets and a twenty minute encore that surveyed his prolific career. The first set kicked off with an almost always perfect “Peaceful Valley” and concluded with Ryan on keyboards for a rocking “Rescue Blues.”

Well into the wonderful second set, when the night approached its coda with impeccable versions of “Let It Ride,” “A Kiss Before I Go,” and “Two,” I too quickly realized that even more than two hours of this bliss would not be enough. During the cruelly seductive space jam of “Easy Plateau” that would be our finale, I experienced some sweetly creepy déjà vu for a memory that didn’t exist. The epic timelessness of the show had swallowed me.

ryan2.jpg


ryan8.jpg


Photos by Andy Smith

After this experience, I fully understood the academic comparisons between Ryan and Jerry Garcia. More than that, I suddenly felt possessed with a desire to demand that all latter-day Deadheads start listening to Ryan instead of all the half-assed and fully-baked jambands that are such poor successors to Jerry’s hippy throne. While I know how bad it will be for the inner circle if the hippy throng starts showing up at Ryan shows, I also understood that this is simply some really good shit and more people need to buy his records and download his bootlegs. In the men’s room on the way out, another fan reminded me that there’s a dash of Sonic Youth in all this post-Dead alt-country crunchiness. Too punk to be a hippy and too hippy to be a punk, Ryan Adams is an artist like Jim James of My Morning Jacket who collapses and transcends those dying categories.

Since driving home from Nash Vegas through the Tennessee hills in the welcome October dreariness, the show has stuck with me like a dream. All day for the day after, as I walked across the wet grass and dead leaves of the college campus where I work, songs from last night like “Dear John,” “Magnolia Mountain,” “Games,” and “Cold Roses” have been high rotation on the headphones. Letting Ryan manage my minor key with emotional drips, lyrical density, and musical depth has manifested a magical and memorable anti-meltdown, and I can imagine that at least a few more fans who attended this last Nashville show will have to agree.
 
Back
Top Bottom