{"id":41051,"date":"2008-08-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/jacksonville-city-nights\/"},"modified":"2008-08-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-14T00:00:00","slug":"jacksonville-city-nights","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/jacksonville-city-nights\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville City Nights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who the hell is<\/i> Ryan Adams?<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He\u2019s from Jacksonville<\/st1:city>, North Carolina<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>, he\u2019s thirty-something, he was a key player in the alt-country explosion of the early \u201890s and he may or may not<\/i> be some kind of genius. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t get us very far, but it\u2019s about all we know for sure.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

After releasing four excellent records between 1996 and 2000 with his critically adored band Whiskeytown, Adams<\/st1:place> went solo. Since 2000, Ryan Adams has stuck his nose\/dabbled in seemingly dozens of genres with each new record he\u2019s released. While all of his records are a strong indication of his extraordinary talent as a songwriter, it is the lack of consistency, cohesiveness, and focus in\/on the writing\/production\/genre that has made Ryan Adams an easy target for what is often a brutal critical assessment. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Is he a country singer? Is he a rock & roller? Or is he a soft-rock crooner? <\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to tell. He\u2019s all of the above depending on what album you\u2019re listening to. But it seems like he is most comfortable when he\u2019s got his country music hat on. In 200, Adams<\/st1:place> had enough recorded, mixed, and mastered enough material to release three albums — one of which was a double<\/i> album — and a collection of B-sides. Three records in a year? Jesus. You don\u2019t see productivity like that anymore. When was the last time that that girly yacht-rock monster John Mayer did three in a year? I know, I know. Just \u2018cause Adams<\/st1:place> has enough material for three records doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s all worth releasing. Thing is, they were great<\/i> records. Cold Roses<\/i>, 29,<\/i> and the album in question here, Jacksonville City Nights<\/i>, are some of the best of his lengthy and varied catalog, and Jacksonville <\/i>is the strongest of the 2005\/2006 Ryan Adams trilogy.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

If some of Adams<\/st1:place>\u2019 previous work hints at his passion for country music, then this disc hints at country music being a basic necessity of life. While his other albums use country music as a sort of vehicle for production and arrangement, the material here finds Adams<\/st1:place> and his excellent band The Cardinals embracing the genre entirely. Jon Graboff\u2019s pedal steel drives most of the tracks, while Adams<\/st1:place>\u2019 string plucking and dive bar piano-plinking sit quietly in the mix, leaving every single lyric on top so that you can hear him breathe between words. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Pretty sure you can actually hear the sound of heartbreak, smell the smell of cigarettes, and taste the taste of whiskey on tracks like \u201cHard Way To Fall\u201d and \u201cThe End.\u201d Adams<\/st1:place> is joined by the smoky Norah Jones on \u201cDear John,\u201d where her playing and singing is as innocuous and pedestrian as ever.\u00a0 All of the tracks are likeable here; there is not a bad tune on the record, even if there are too many. Sure, there\u2019s some filler, but they\u2019re a fine way to pass the time between album highlights like \u201cThe Hardest Part\u201d and \u201cA Kiss Before I Go.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

2000\u2019s Heartbreaker<\/i> is widely considered to be the only Ryan Adams masterpiece. While the songs here aren\u2019t nearly as strong the ones found on Heartbreaker<\/i>, it definitely holds together just as well. Similar to Heartbreaker<\/i> and 2007\u2019s Easy Tiger<\/i>, Jacksonville City Nights<\/i> is an example of the kind of high-quality work Adams is capable of if he controls his creative energy and spends time focusing on the musical direction and purpose of a record. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The jury\u2019s still out on whether or not Ryan Adams is a genius. He has an enormous body of work — thirteen studio albums since 1996 if you include the Whiskeytown records — a great deal of which is top-notch material. The only thing that\u2019s totally predictable about Adams<\/st1:place> is that he\u2019ll always be releasing as many albums as time and his record label will allow.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Whether or not that\u2019s a good thing is for you to decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":29473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8254],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-41051","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ryan-adams-the-cardinals","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41051"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41051"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}