When Lost Highway refused to release Adams’ melancholy, introspective Love is Hell album in 2003, the chameleonic singer spent two weeks bashing out the full length LP Rock N Roll, which Lost Highway lapped up and released straight away. While a competent album in places, Rock N Roll was Adams’ most derivative release so far. Earlier efforts, Heartbreaker and Gold had always felt like the singer was absorbing his influences (Gram Parsons, The Stones, Elton John); breaking them down in a (partially successful) attempt to find his own niche. Rock N Roll however, now sounded like karaoke-style emulation, of other Adams favourites: The Strokes, Oasis, U2.
It wasn’t until Lost Highway released Love is Hell some months later (albeit broken up into two EPs), that Adams received some recognition again – for the right reasons. The songs were by no means flawless, with the singer again forsaking his alt-country roots for hushed vocals and sombre chord changes reminiscent of Radiohead; but the song structures were unpredictable, and the darker lyrical/instrumental tones didn’t seem forced for the first time since Heartbreaker.
The double-LP, Cold Roses, represents the first release in Adams’ 2005 trilogy, and the debut of his new backing band, The Cardinals. Despite the sprawling mass of songs here, Cold Roses finds the singer at his most focused. The first disc’s Magnolia Mountain is well-crafted alt-country with enigmatic lyrics suggesting a dying soldier on the battlefield (“I want to go to Magnolia Mountain, and lay my weary head down”), and the Cardinals sound confident and creative without seeming too disciplined – the album sometimes sounds like a loose jam, but one which is consistently anchored by Adams’ tight song writing. Sweet Illusions evokes Love is Hell’s despair (“It’s turning morning all the birds are singing, but I’m not contemplating anything/I’ll have another then I’ll go to bed, but I’ll dream of you”). However, these songs are more concerned with fantasy and nostalgia than self destruction, and while the lyrics sometimes come off as sentimental, they never sound contrived - see Meadowlake Street and Cherry Lane, the former of which is a stark, beautiful lullaby, and the latter, a brash country ballad which dissolves into a minimalist, Fleetwood Mac style refrain.
The second disc is more direct, with the soaring choruses of If I am a Stranger and Let it Ride, where Adams forsakes his melancholy falsetto entirely for the snarl of a weary country singer at the end of his tether, (“Twenty-seven years of nothing but failures and promises that I couldn't keep, oh lord”); whereas the hushed ballad, Friends, is possibly Adams’ finest album closer.
This is the first alt-country album that Adams has released since Heartbreaker, yet these tracks demonstrate his advancements in creating well-crafted songs. There are departures from the alt-country stylings – Beautiful Sorta is toned down punk rock, and Rosebud stands out as an unabashed homage to The Grateful Dead - but overall, the album has a considered, unified sound that flows without repetition.
Nonetheless, this is a long, meandering album, and a testament to the singer's prolific output; but so little of it seems like filler that it’s hard to suggest where cuts could have been made. How Do You Keep Love Alive seems to finish before it finds its feet, and Blossom’s chorus occasionally jars, but these are minor criticisms of an album for which everyone seems to have very different favourite tracks.
Overall, this is a well-crafted album that unfolds with each listen, with Adams saving much of his arsenal for the second disc. If Heartbreaker sounded like Ryan Adams writing his most focused and confident songs, Cold Roses sounds like him performing them.
-Ryan Daff
