CD reviews: Ryan Adams – Cardinology – Review

Treading essentially the same conservative path established by last year’s Easy Tiger, Cardinology contains no radical genre shifts (al la the flawed Rock N Roll album), just 12 great songs performed with commitment and taste.

If there’s a criticism it lies with Adams’s backing musicians, the Cardinals. They have a reputation as a fearsome live outfit, and Adams clearly thinks enough of his band to name an album after them. However, they tend to add a similarly hued sheen to everything they touch that can make the songs sound repetitive. A good example is ‘Like Yesterday’. It’s yet another beautiful, mid-tempo Adams song, but a solo acoustic version doing the rounds on YouTube reveals shades and subtleties that the band polishes away on Cardinology.

But even if Cardinology lacks the peaks of albums such as Heartbreaker and Cold Roses, it also lacks their troughs, making it another strong collection from the former golden boy of alt.country

FROM: Lost Highway/Universal/US
GENRE: Alt.country
MUSIC: 3.5
SOUND: 3

RICHARD BETTS