Damn You Ryan Adams

VOCAL DUO OF THE YEAR
Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell...lots of smooth hillbilly love, love gone wrong, and just plain old wrong songs..

I'm going to pay this duo a backhanded compliment of sorts and hope they don't take it the wrong way. I once described Thad Cockrell as the Barry White of Alt Country, and what Ryan Adams would have become had he not become what he is today: as boring and self-absorbed as that asshole in Cold Play. To that end, this record feels a lot like a Whiskeytown record. I hope I didn't just give them the kiss of death there, because I really liked Whiskeytown. And I really like both Caitlin's and Thad's work over the past few years. But you can't divorce yourself from your roots or your surroundings (and, in Country Music, you shouldn't want to), and this album is what the premiere North Carolina broken-hearted, alt twang band would pump out if there were such a beast.

But wait! This is new! This is original! It's just trading on that old Whiskeytown groove, it's not sheepishly, embarassingly, and boringly repeating it! As I mentioned above, Thad Cockrell is the Barry White of Alt Country, and if you can't get laid to this record, well then bubba, you need to pay closer attention to the commercials during pro football games. When Caitlin Cary sings about love lost it's like watching an expensive vase get broken in a completely silent room, beauty and destruction and beautiful destruction, a strange harmony in the sound of shattering China, ghostly, yet piercing. The first 6 songs on this disk are everything that was, is, and will be right about alt twang; if you've never really turned onto the hillbilly groove borne as much out of The Replacements and Sonic Youth as it is out of Buck, Johnny and Hank, then on June 14th, go start your education with this little group of ditties right here.

--From The Other Side of Country, June 6th, 2005

Quoting yourself is the first sign that you've lost your mind...usually. But, I wanted to go back and see what I scribbled about Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell and Begonias, because I've been letting Jacksonville City Nights by Ryan Adams & The Cardinals sink into my melon for a while.

A number of us in the Alt Twang racket jumped off the Ryan Adams train because we weren't sure what the hell he was doing and where he was going. I think back in June, I at least began to articulate the issue and its four corners: Ryan Adams always held the promise of bridging generations and injecting the new into the tradition of Twang music, and maybe completing or fleshing out what guys like Gram Parsons, Jason Ringenberg, Gary Stewart, Michael Martin Murphey, etc., never did. He can write a song, he can sing like an angel when he's not all gassed up on booze and drugs, and he can play a few instruments; he's a hillbilly at heart, he knows Buck and Johnny and Hank just as well as he knows Westerberg, Mould, and Cobain. He could be it all...and he knows it.

I hate this CD. I hate it because I know his next CD is going to be a tribute to the music of some extinct rain forest tribe, rife with instruments no one's ever heard of, and songs about Parker Posey's rib cage. I'll play this thing over and over again, I learn to pick a few of its songs out on my $150 guitar. I'll give it to all the girls I know for Christmas. Then he'll shit all over the whole thing with a pan flute opera about lemon cake and chestnut ice cream.

Don't do it Ryan.

There are currently about 3,458 talentless people in Nashville on the cusp of a record deal because they're photogenic and can roughly sing one octave in tune with a little "help" from ProTools. These people would go "Boxing Helena" if they could ape Adams' phrasing, breaking half yodel fills, and heartbroken voice. Whaddya want? You want dead girls? Got 'em, "September." Trains? Got 'em, "Trains." Killer pedal steel? The whole damn record. Songs about towns you can't go back to, but can't get out of your head? Got 'em, "The End." Guitar waltzes about death and chicks and goin' into town? Got 'em, "PA."

It's just a little late in the Ryan Adams game for me. I don't want to get back on the train. This CD is gorgeous and almost perfect. There is absolutely no reason for you to not have this in your rack and in your player and droning softly in the background while you're slow cooking a ground chuck roast and pork shoulder into 4 star chili on a Fall Sunday. Just don't get sucked in, don't fall for the head fake. He'll buzz into town and break all our hearts and pass out two cases of Heineken from the stage at First Avenue, then his next gig at the State Theatre will end early when he throws his klezmer at the drunk in the front row calling him Bryan Adams and making fun of his floor length mauve silk cape and Victorian suit.