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Ryan Adams Album - Demolition
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Release Date:2002-08-01
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Type:Promotional
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Genre:Adult Alternative, Americana, Alternative Rock
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Label:Lost Highway
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Explicit Lyrics:No
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Review - AMG :
On more than one occasion, Ryan Adams has played solo acoustic gigs that consisted almost entirely of songs he wrote the afternoon of the show, and after his 2001 album, Gold, finally gave him an audience outside the small but rabidly enthusiastic alt-country scene, the very prolific Adams seemed to waste no time laying down as many songs as he possibly could. If one believes what they read in New Musical Express, Adams cut about four albums' worth of material during sessions with various musicians and producers within the space of a year (not even counting the much talked about but to date unheard four-track recordings of blues versions of all the songs from the Strokes' debut disc, Is This It?). Sensibly enough, Adams and his record company decided that releasing such a huge flood of material wasn't in the best interest of either artist or label, and instead Adams cherry-picked these sessions into a 13-track collection, Demolition. Appropriately enough, Demolition sounds less like "the third Ryan Adams album" than a collection of stray tunes -- some of which are very good, especially the lazy summer vibe of "Tennessee Sucks," the up-tempo acoustic twang of "Chin Up, Cheer Up," the winsome "Cry on Demand," and the heading-off-the-rails rocker "Starting to Hurt." But more than a few of the other songs on the album sound like rough drafts rather than completed works, and Demolition seems to lack a strong thematic or structural center. In short, Demolition sounds like a bunch of demos, which of course is just what it is, and while it preserves a few strong tunes and offers an insight into Adams' creative process, it also makes clear that even the rising wunderkind of Americana can benefit from a bit of judicious editing and polishing. ~ Mark Deming, All Music GuideReview - Yahoo! Music - Bill Holdship :
Ryan Adams is beginning to confound more than he intrigues. Demolition was originally rumored to be a boxed set featuring the incredible volume of unreleased material from Adams's entire career thus far. Instead, we get 13 tracks from five different sessions, all of them post-Heartbreaker. Thing is, much of the artist's very best unreleased work was recorded following Pneumonia, Whiskeytown's final LP, and before Heartbreaker--and it inexplicably now remains unreleased. When Adams sticks to the pop-rock mode, he can be dynamic as well as one of the cleverest pop thieves since Nick Lowe. "Nuclear," the opening track, sounds like Aztec Camera's folk take on Van Halen's "Jump" merged with the great hook from "Theme From A Summer Place" (which Lindsey Buckingham also nicked for a song a few years back). The next song, "Hallelujah," is a rousing Dylanesque pop gem that'll grab you instantaneously. Together, they're two of the finest tracks you'll hear this year. But then Adams drifts into those wispy, somber ballads he explored on Heartbreaker--more Shawn Phillips than, say, Cat Stevens. "Tennessee Sucks" and a few others pick up the pace, but Demolition--much like his previous two solo LPs--won't settle the debate as to whether this is simply a clever craftsman or a genuine heir to the classic rock singer-songwriter tradition.
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