WERS 88.9 fm Album of the Month

November 2011

       Ryan Adams' Ashes and Fire is the WERS November Album of the Month. Producer Glyn Johns has created a warm and close-knit space for Adams to pare down his heavier tendencies on this, his first solo project since breaking from the Cardinals in 2009.

Adams' hard panned guitar, soft voice, and neo-blues progression opens the album on "Dirty Rain". "Last time I was here it was raining, it ain't raining anymore," Ryan sings. 

 It's simplistic in the best way and provides the metaphorical ashes from which the title track lights up.

Norah Jones' blues riffs populate the majority of tunes on the album and Johns production highlights her just enough so that her backing vocals and piano provide a sense of character without highlighting one name over another.

Ryan Adams has repeatedly criticized journalists and critics who are more focused on his personal life and public persona than purely the matter of his songs. But in this case, there is a sincerity in these songs, a calm self-awareness in Johns' underproduction and the acoustic drive of the album that provokes one to listen as if listening to a weathered veteran who keeps your attention because you can tell he speaks from experience and not ideology. "Guess I'll show my hand, either way I'm losing," Adams sings on "Invisible Riverside", "I didn't travel far, but my feet were moving." And in the understated rhythm guitar—buzzing and all—we are right there with him.

The first hit, "Lucky Now" is where the ashes and fire truly come together. The more-pop melody than anywhere else on the album are complimented by a quicker tempo and a bit more production with doubling guitars, piano riffs stretched across the sonic field. Still, Adams cannot break himself lyrically from the rubble he's trying to piece together: "are we really who I used to be? Am I really who I want to be?"

I have to agree with Adams in his reviling of many critics when it comes to listening to this album in the context of his career. It is a work unto itself, complete and fully realized from song to song and as an album in total.

Words by Jake Sorgen