The story of Ryan Adams' artistic decline is currently approaching epic, a long, complicated tale of public cockiness, big mouth bravado, and exasperated recordings: his churlish, fuck-off swagger was silly from the start, but Adams' self-satisfied smirk has got nothing on his newfound capacity to eschew every last one of his songwriter's instincts. Now, with a discography that's wiggling towards infamy, Adams shoots up one last middle finger to the slowly dispersing crowd.
It's admittedly unfair that Ryan Adams has been forced to spend most of his songwriting career cowering in the shadow of his much-beloved solo debut, enduring loads of (unfavorable) critical comparisons to his younger, more inspired self. Adams' spiral into self-indulgence has triggered plenty of sputtering, red-faced indignation, and if it weren't for the lingering resonance of 2000's Heartbreaker, chances are nobody would care that each of Adams' subsequent efforts has lacked a certain quiet grace. Ultimately, the problem isn't knee-jerk alt-country purists getting pissed about Adams' penchant for electric guitars, or cred-obsessed indie kids hollering about Gap commercials, it's Adams' newfound incapacity (or refusal) to write a song with any acceptable degree of sincerity-- and knowing that he probably could really stings.
Adams' latest, Rock N Roll, feels sloppy and stupidly rushed; recorded in less than two weeks, the record is so blatantly dismissive of both itself and its audience that it insults nearly everyone who attempts to interact with it. Adams' original scheduled-for-2003 release, the largely anticipated Love Is Hell, was clumsily manhandled by Lost Highway labelheads before finally being split into two separate EPs (respectively subtitled Part I and Part II; Part I was released simultaneously with this album), leaving Adams a comparably small window of time in which to record the proper follow-up to 2001's bloated-but-redeemable Gold. Still: it didn't have to be this way.
Here, Adams stuffs the contemporary radio-rock cannon with more overblown, riff-heavy regurgitation, most of which is either painfully generic or preposterously derivative (the buoyant "Anybody Wanna Take Me Home" cops loosely from The Smiths; "So Alive" is karaoke U2; "1974" is an uncomfortable Bon-Jovi-meets-The-Stooges homage). The entire record reeks of late new-wave/80s rock cribbing, and consequently, it's difficult to write about without duly repeating a laundry list of influences: Adams' muses range from predictable (see Joy Division, Paul Westerberg) to bizarre (Adams quasi-mimics the prog diddlings of Rush on the forensically titled "Luminol", and ends up with a song that sounds a lot like rehashed Oasis). Suddenly, the record's opening couplet-- "Let me sing a song for you/ That's never been sung before"-- seems vaguely humiliating.
It's not so much that Rock N Roll is incorrigibly written as that the record is unforgivably careless, unwilling to commit to anything including itself. Each phoned-in track boasts a new kind of lame production (including plenty of weird vocal echoes), tired lyrics ("You're taking me higher than I've been before"), overstated guitar-rock noodling, and unbearably repetitive amp assaults-- combined, they successfully obscure any kernels of ingenuity that might have been buried beneath the buzz. Adams' definition of rock and roll has always been cartoonish (jean jackets, American flags, bar flitting, surly public appearances), but Rock N Roll's interpretation of its namesake officially approaches ridiculous.
In all likelihood, Adams would like for you to think his flippancy is intentional, and for everybody to grin and chalk up his cocky half-assing to more authentic rock and roll behavior. In this, Adams is insistent: just as he did with Gold, Adams includes liner note photos of tattoos and cigarettes to remind us that he's badass, confirming the characterization with a handful of lazily sprung expletives (including the unconvincing "It's all a bunch of shit.../ It's totally fucked up" of "Wish You Were Here"), some clever allusions to chemical abuse ("And if I could have my way/ We'd take some drugs"), and an embarrassingly obvious I'm-friends-with-The-Strokes aside (booming opener "This Is It"). Possibly the best thing about "Rock N Roll" is how girlfriend Parker Posey is credited in the liner notes as "Exe'cute'ive Producer," appearing "courtesy of her bad self." At least being precious is being honest.
There are some curious guest turns (Billie Joe Armstrong inexplicably pops up, and Melissa Auf Der Maur provides background vocals on a handful of tracks, as does Posey), but Adams is almost always at his best when he's on his own and thinks no one else is looking: the album's title track is a sweet piano ballad, his plaintive wail layered nicely over fuzzy snippets of found sound. Lasting less than two minutes, "Rock N Roll" is (check the glaring irony!) also the record's least self-conscious song, a flash of earnestness that disappears almost before you notice its arrival.
You have to angle Rock N Roll up to a mirror in order to read the cover text properly, and, in a way, the inherent fallacy of a mirror image is also the very best metaphor for this record: Rock N Roll is backwards Ryan Adams, one-dimensional, vain, and entirely lifeless.
