After an uncharacteristic absence from releasing albums, Easy Tiger marks Ryan Adams’ return to the ring, apparently clean, sober, and fighting fit. 2005 had seen the prolific talent release a whole trilogy’s worth of material, both with or without his backing band The Cardinals, but 2006 was notable for Adams only in terms of touring, updating silly songs to ryan-adams.com, and – as it turns out – cleaning himself up after an extended period of alcohol and drug abuse. By his own admission, the singer had been snorting speedballs (a sometimes lethal combination of heroin and cocaine) and had perhaps been in need of a good editor.
Easy Tiger has a less unified feel than many of Adams’ previous releases. The singer has reportedly joined forces with his old manager John Silva in an attempt to create something more marketable, and it is clear the type of guidance he has been given in terms of selecting the salient material. The emphasis in now on acoustic guitars, and the roles of The Cardinals have been audibly reduced - they now play relatively few riffs and solos, plus this album is credited to Adams alone.
Halloweenhead is pretty dumb, though catchy, and its placement on the album, plus its double A-side single release alongside Two, suggests that young teeny rockers are encouraged to latch onto its rockin’ lyrics: “What the fuck’s wrong with me, I’ve got a Halloween head!”/”Guitar Solo!”. The very inclusion of Two is similarly dubious, since despite being a perfectly pleasant song, its melody so strongly evokes Gold album track, Harder Now That It’s Over, that it's hard to believe that the singer had the gall. Also, Sheryl Crow’s tasteful backing vocals in the same track suggest that radio play is the target here. All this implies a curious amount of “playing it safe”, from the man who would have released dictaphone recordings of himself singing in the shower in 2005, had Lost Highway gone along with it. It’s a change of direction that could, however, have been anticipated in light of Adams turning thirty, sobering up, and becoming altogether more sensible – Easy Tiger is being carried by Starbucks, and is available as an advance order on Amazon for the first time.
However, 2005 had seen Adams release the confident and well-crafted Cold Roses album, alongside the patchy but often remarkable Jacksonville City Nights and 29, so just when this reviewer was conceding that maybe for Adams, sobriety is the enemy of invention, some of these new songs start to leave a very good impression indeed. Opener Goodnight Rose is one of the most confident country-tinged songs he has recorded, largely due to the conviction of its chorus, and Tears of Gold and Pearls on a String evoke Neil Young at the height of his ability. Also, The Sun Also Sets starts discretely on piano, but builds to a dramatic chorus that creeps in from leftfield and increases in bombast with each repetition. Two Hearts sounds like the singer lowering his defences and showing us what he can do when he stops being so damn self-conscious, as does I Taught Myself How To Grow Old, the most Heartbreaker-esque song on the album, with at least one gorgeous and unexpected chord change. Here, Adams plays harmonica over a few weary strums of his guitar, and worries that he has grown “crooked on the outside”, as backing singers join him in creating a sombre, but compelling mood. Further highlights are the inclusions of older, previously unreleased tracks: Off Broadway - a very well realised update of a ditty that has been kicking around since 2000’s lost Suicide Handbook; and another classic from the vaults, Hey There Mrs. Lovely, which appears here in the disguise of plaintive acoustic track These Girls.
It remains unclear what will become of newer live favourites, Breakdown Into the Resolve, Arkham Asylum, Blue Hotel and Everything Dies, which were toured heavily alongside Goodnight Rose last year, although Adams does plan to release a box set in the autumn, so perhaps they will appear alongside other lost treasures from the vaults (The Suicide Handbook Etc.)
Objectively speaking, Easy Tiger is a solid effort that will quite probably earn Adams new fans and a good deal of critical respect. It is rare for an artist with such a restless spirit to create something so consistent and well-rounded, and he has managed it twice now, both with Easy Tiger and 2001’s critical darling, Gold. It is, however, just a little frustrating to see the man taking the sensible route. He is holding something back, and as a result, this album fails to match the staggering achievements of Heartbreaker and Cold Roses, which so clearly demonstrated the fruits of straying from the well-trodden path and, sometimes recklessly, following your gut.
-Ryan Daff
