Album Review: Romeo & Juliet by Ryan Adams
Another surprise “double album” released to fans?
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EDIT:
I am already choosing to revise my opinion on this album. As of now, I've spun it probably five times. It's gone from one of my least favorite albums of DRA, to one that stands up on its own. It's not my favorite by a long shot, but it doesn't deserve my revulsion or harsh vindictive criticism.
Let this stand as a lesson to fans of musicians. There is a certain recency bias AGAINST new material, because no matter what, unless you have some kind of cult loyalty blindness, it will not live up to your expectations. It has to break through a form of mental barrier that prevents you from accepting something new for what it is. You should avoid voicing an opinion until this kind of catharsis has been reached.
So, apologies to Ryan Adams for the knee jerk opinion. I should have known better.
Some of my critiques still stand. I think $10-$15 is a much better fee to charge hard core fans for digital music, if that's what you have to do.
And I don't think the songs “Somethings Missing,” “Anything,” “This is Your House,” “Losers,” and” They Will Know Our Love,” are good enough to be included on this album. Omit them, and do some slight track rearrangement, and this album would be an absolute killer.
If Adams thought they simply had to be released, he could have had them all added as bonus tracks for the fans.
I'm in love with the songs “At Home with the Animals” (which may be one of his best songs and maybe one of the greatest ever written period), “Poor Connection,” “Rollercoaster,” “In the Blue of the Night,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Run,” and “In the Meadow,” which is just a revelatory piece of live music recording.
If you want to have a good laugh, I'll let the below review stand as a prime example of why talking about new music is a bad idea based upon one or two listens.
I woke up this morning to another surprise email from the Ryan Adams distribution list. First, let me just say, yes I listen to more music than just Ryan Adams, but as very few media outlets seem to want to cover his output, I feel obligated as a die-hard fan to share my thoughts on his new creations. That being said, my initial thoughts on this new “double album,” if it can even rightly be called that, are not exactly positive.
As a huge fan of Ryan Adams, and one who has almost obsessively followed his every move for decades, it brings me no pleasure to criticize his work negatively. But, I must say, releasing this work as is, and choosing to charge his fans $25 for the digital download of it, is a borderline exploitation of trust. A physical album isn’t sold for $25 itself these days! Unless it is on vinyl.
I was willing to let that aspect slide for the release of Chris, as that was an album already planned to come out, but one that lost its distribution, so it felt like a special gift to those who had been waiting for it. Romeo & Juliet on the other hand, is more of a cobbled together bunch of ideas for songs, with a couple of finished ones thrown in to make it feel more complete.
If Ryan wants to go through his vault and start unloading all of his demo tracks, that’s great. I, like many fans of his work, have been craving just that for a long time. Darkbreaker or Black Hole anyone? Those are albums that have been teased to fans for at least a decade. But let’s not kid ourselves on what many of these demos are. They are not “unreleased albums.”
One big giveaway of that fact is that many of these songs were originally slated to appear on other records. If an album is a conceived cohesive collection of work, the songs should be inseparable from the whole. But on Romeo & Juliet, the track “In the Meadow” appears, which sounds like an old unreleased demo from the Easy Tiger sessions, recorded with his band The Cardinals. And it sounds barely held together, an interesting documentation of band members learning a song as they play it through for perhaps one of the first times. To throw this track into this mix of songs, and to claim it as part of the conceived package, feels dishonest to me. It feels more opportunistic than anything.
Another example is the track “Doylestown Girl,” which was originally supposed to go on Big Colors, albeit in a brighter, more heavily produced version. The version on R & J, seems self-produced, and stripped down in comparison. Still, it’s one of the highlights.
There are quite a few highlights to speak of here, which makes the cumulative effort somehow even more disappointing. One can’t help but wonder what could have been, under the advisement of a seasoned producer, and some more selective editing choices.
The album starts off incredibly strong. The first two tracks are quite memorable. Then the next two songs, “I Can’t Remember” and “Somethings Missing,” are quite obviously self-recorded demos with drum machines that are about as roughly sketched out as they come. In fact, these songs may have originally been released straight to Instagram, and just mastered to throw on here as filler material. There are quite a few of those on here, which is disappointing, because it sounds like Ryan Adams in songwriter automaton mode.
The record rebounds for the next two songs in quality, bringing back “Doylestown Girl,” and then the title track of the collection, which has multiple influences shining through it, most notably hints of “The Ballad of Love and Hate” by the Avett Brothers.
Unfortunately, the quality then degrades again. The song “Anything” almost seems like a meta introspection of the songwriting process itself, saying “this isn’t anything, and then it is.” It could have been interesting, perhaps, with just a little more refinement and digging into that thesis. As it is, it again feels like Ryan Adams songwriting masturbation, with some Prince influence worn on his sleeve, just pumping out material in again another self-produced drum machine manifesto.
“Rain in LA” sounds like a song that could have appeared on Love Is Hell, which is kind of nice, but the vocal choices are questionable at best.
The low-points continue through until “In the Meadow” lifts us back up for a brief moment. And “Run” feels like something that could have appeared on 48 Hours, but again, the vocal take on the chorus is almost unintentionally self-parody. “This is Your House” is easily one of the worst songs he has ever recorded. Who thought putting that out on an album was a good idea?
Thankfully, “At Home With the Animals” is one of the best things Ryan Adams ever put on tape. It comes out of nowhere with a sucker punch of amazing. It is so great in fact, it doesn’t feel like it belongs here, surrounded by such other lackluster and underwhelming work. It hurts me to wonder what could have been possible if someone had recommended that he take this gem of a song and build a whole album around THAT.
For me, that’s where anything worth talking about ends. I could take or leave the rest of this album, which saddens me. It certainly was not worth the price I paid to hear it. If I wanted to hear my favorite artist throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see what sticks, I’d wait to see him livestream his daily studio life on Instagram or something. I’d not pay $25 for the privilege of hearing him fart into a microphone and try to pass it off as art.
I love one song, and really enjoy maybe five out of the 19 on this compilation. That’s just not what I normally expect from Ryan Adams. But who knows, maybe it will grow on me over time. I initially was not a fan of Chris either, but after several listens, I now love the whole thing and consider it one of his best. I don’t believe that will happen here.
This goes instantly to the bottom of his discography, just below III/IV for me. Much of it should have stayed in the vault. And the fact that Ryan tried to use emotional manipulation to justify its release, tying it to the death of his cat Theo, is just incredibly sad.
If there’s anyone near Ryan advising him on his next steps, someone should convince him to hold back on the publish button, until he has something worthy of his reputation to put out. This wasn’t it.
