Where do you start with a record this solid? The best I can do is tell my story and how Heartbreaker fits in. I don't care what you think of Ryan Adams or what you have heard of his drunken asshole antics. It's a record like Heartbreaker that really makes that stuff orbiting the music not matter a bit to me. His arrogance even sort of comes across in the intro to the first track where Adams argues with David Rawlings about whether a track is on Bona Drag or Viva Hate or both. All ends well with a joke about having a mouth full of cookies and then counting in, with a "one, two, one, wee-hoo," to the opening track, "To be young (is to be sad, is to be high)," thus thrusting you into a roadtrip across the south, into the bar fights, bouts with cocaine, and friends who stole your records, that this whole album takes you down.
I was a big fan of Whiskeytown already but will save those stories for when I get to Stranger's Almanac. I had this impression that Adams had too much talent and an ever-inflating ego to be "held down" by the compromise it takes when you creatively conspire with others in a band. It was obvious on Heartbreaker how much Adams had in his bag-o-tricks and how wide his catalog could be. Every song was a slightly different version of his voice than the one before. He always had a way with mixing, skipping or inserting words and singing them in a rhythm that make sense only to him and only fit with his song ("I'm as calm as a fruit stand in NY and maybe as strange"). Accompanied by, the icon, Emmy Lou Harris on Oh My Sweet Carolina is beyond what I thought beautiful music could be. The middle of the record is paired well with rain crashing down outside, with tracks like Bartering Lines, Call Me On Your Way Back Home, Damn Sam... and Come Pick Me Up (usually my favorite track, depending on my mood) will get you throwing bottles against the wall, singing along and dancing around the room... it always makes me at least.
"Well, the pills I got they ask me let's go out for a while, and the knives up in the kitchen, are all too dull to smile, and the sun tries to warn me, boy those wings are made of wax, while the things I do to kill me, they just tell me to relax." To Be The One
"Bought a borrowed suit and learned to dance, and I was spending money like the way it likes to rain." Oh My Sweet Carolina
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