Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Follow the Lights E.P.

 Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Follow the Lights  

Follow the Lights is the most recent E.P. offering from alt-country wonder kid Ryan Adams and his talented backing band The Cardinals. Adams has embodied the word “prolific” throughout his young musical career, releasing nine albums and a slew of E.P.’s in a span of seven years. Prolific or not, Adams has earned quite the reputation for being a critical hit or miss. Admittedly more of a songwriter than a performer, Adams has been accused of having a lazy editing eye, releasing too few great songs to justify so many releases.

Perhaps it is all for the best. 

Maybe Ryan Adams has simply been creating distractions so that his best work can inevitably shine through years down the road. Given his overwhelming catalog of releases, it’s easy to roll your eyes at yet another E.P., but Follow the Lights shows great promise, and more importantly it shows that Adams has finally got his act together and is ready to start earning his illustrious title.

The E.P. consists of many older Ryan Adams songs that have been re-worked with The Cardinals’ magic touch. There are also a couple of new tracks, along with a very respectable cover of the Alice in Chains song “Down in a Hole”. The disc begins with the title track, which has an ethereally soft feel. Keeping in tradition with previous efforts, Adams’s songs usually carry a message of longing for a certain person or a specific place. His use of imagery is almost poetic at times: “If everything we are is real/Our memories are attics in those houses on the hill/Our love is there above us holding everything so still”.

“My Love For You Is Real” is a bona fide country love song.

If you have been debating about picking this E.P. up, take a listen to “Blue Hotel”. Adams wrote the song for Willie Nelson, who released it on his album Songbird, which Adams also produced. This version makes appropriate use of The Cardinals, creating a nice background for Adams’s country-tinged moan. You can practically feel his agony pouring through the speakers during the chorus. The lofty verses spring into a full choir, only to retreat, leaving you with nothing but Adams’s beautiful desperation as he shouts “’Cuz I give up, I give up”. If this is truly his new direction, then let’s hope that he does not give up quite yet.

The Alice in Chains cover is very impressive and makes interesting use of The Cardinals’ varying talents, as well as Adams’s prodigal vocal range. “This Is It” has changed drastically since its debut on 2003’s Rock N Roll. Like the rest of the E.P., “This Is It” has benefited immensely from the cohesiveness that Adams has found playing with The Cardinals. Everything sounds smooth and appropriate and Adams’ himself seems to finally be comfortable with his musical surroundings, but we’ll see how long that lasts. The remaining two tracks “If I Am A Stranger” and “Dear John” are live studio cuts of songs that Adams released on previous Cardinals’ records (Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights respectively).

With the release of Follow the Lights, it would seem that Ryan Adams has finally reached his plateau. This feels like it’s where he’s always belonged, and where he should inevitably stay. It’s just plain good ‘ole country-tinged rock, and Adams can only run from his country roots for so long. Instead of continuing to test to see just how far he can push his creative envelope, Adams should learn to be content and dive headfirst into more albums such as this one and Jacksonville City Nights. Adams admits on “Blue Hotel”, “I couldn’t see the future/I liked the past too much.”

Well Mr. Adams, if this is your future I will be eagerly awaiting your next offering.

 8.5/10