The Ryan Adams Studio Experience has been quite a trip over the years: Alt-Country pioneer in Whiskeytown; Gram Parsons disciple on Heartbreaker; A.M. dial stylist on Gold; Replacements-B-sides aficionado on Rock N''' Roll; Artsy Sad Person on Love Is Hell¬; Neo-Dead Head on Cold Roses''stop me if you'''ve heard this before?''okay, the question'''s rhetorical: You have, and I think we can all agree that it'''s one of the most dumb, overcooked biographies in music.
The consensus among critics, and I'''ve never really understood it, has seemed to be that anyone doing this much genre-hopping couldn'''t possibly mean any of it sincerely. It'''s an argument that, frankly, reeks of the canon obsession to which we all fancy ourselves so immune. In a world that revolves to such a severe degree around labels and lists and legacies, a collective anxiety has seemed to fester over the Ryan Adams agenda: How could someone with such obvious Major Artist potential be content to reduce themselves to an existence as, say, seven or eight minor ones? (One might even say it'''s akin to A-Rod'''s current plight: Aren'''t we all just a little bit frustrated that one of the greatest players of our time is going to end up wearing the caps of four different teams, at least, before he'''s done playing? Doesn'''t this play some sort of part in our universal compulsion to knock him off the pedestal?)
Anyway, the point of all of this is that after years of rejecting these Catch-22 criticisms, Ryan Adams seems''for better or worse''to have finally caved. Now with a permanent band (the steady Cardinals), he has ostensibly ditched the eclectic flourishes of his past work in favor of a more consistent, serious (re: monotonous) identity. The upshot, of course, is that the critics have turned the corner: Let the Neil Young (re: career artist) comparisons rain. But the downside is that, well, boy, oh boy, oh boy has his live show suffered.
The notion that Adams was erratic in concert was always more myth than anything, boosted by a few infamous Rock Brat moments; nine times out of ten the guy was electric. Now? Adams appears to have developed the same contempt for his earlier work that his critics once displayed. His set lists rarely stray from the newer, Cardinals-assisted material; when they do dip into the archives, it'''s usually for a neutered, ''"Cardinalized''" version. Maybe it'''s band pride. But it'''s also a remarkable shame.
By all means, the songs performed here (the first off 2005'''s Cold Roses, the second off this year'''s Easy Tiger) are fine. But excuse me if this isn'''t also the most boring Ryan Adams has ever been. The joke about him early in his career was that, ''"You know, if only he had an editor!''" The irony is that he'''s finally found one, and they seem to have skimmed everything but the fat.