Ryan Adams – Gold
Ah, ‘Album Of The Decade’…the temptation to raise one’s journalistic credibility through the roof is certainly a factor in making the decision, by going and choosing some obscure Fuck Buttons remix album, which is only available by marrying a Japanese industry insider and downloading it via an Apple Mac that runs entirely on your collective chi, or to be deliberately perverse and hail Axl Rose’s (long-overdue but not half bad) opus that was ‘Chinese Democracy’ as the Noughties’ greatest musical achievement, despite it being begun way back in the Nineties. This choice, however, will not win any ‘cool’ points, nor will it really be considered by anyone other than a few love lorn thirty-somethings as the right decision; oh well, you’re not holding the pen/MacBook.
The beginning of the new millennium was an exciting time in alternative music; there were a few soon-to-be big name bands making waves in the music industry, namely artsy thrift shop botherers The Strokes and their Limey counterparts, artsy crack house botherers The Libertines. Amongst this maelstrom of skinny jeans, big mouths and bigger egos, another name burned brighter than the rest, and that was Ryan Adams’ oft-confused monicker…(shout Summer of ’69 at your peril.) Fresh off the back of the critically acclaimed breakup album, ‘Heartbreaker’, his first solo album since his split with the alt. country darlings Whiskeytown, Adams planned an ambitious double album that was going to elevate him above the humdrum of the singer-songwriter world and into the upper echelons of rock greatness.
So, what makes ‘Gold’ the album of the decade? Could it be the delicate strains of Ethan Johns’ Hammond organ ‘anthemisizing’ the gutter-beat rap of the opening track ‘New York New York’? The ramshackle harmonica that clatters over the bar room brawl that is ‘Firecracker’? Having your heart broken into a million and one pieces at the first note of ‘When The Stars Go Blue’, then pieced back together bit by bit, all in the three and a half minutes it takes Adams’ to croon a song that, by rights, should be de rigueur as the first dance of any newlyweds?
Well, obviously it’s all these things and more, but what really makes ‘Gold’ the album of the decade is the fact that it held such potential for the young songsmith, showcasing a prodigious talent for melody, arrangement and lyricism that is so sorely missed in many of today’s artists. However, record label entanglements, YouTube-documented public spats with other musicians, not to mention a drug habit that could rival any Blue Peter presenter’s, prevented Adams from achieving the critical and commercial success that was within his grasp. As in any piece of fiction, and like so many of Adams’ songs, it’s the bittersweet memory of something that almost happened, a childhood crush that never blossomed, or a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory that really touches us to the bone; the best films are always the ones where the hero dies, as the best music is made by people who live their art through and through, and nobody suffers for theirs more than Adams.
The beauty of looking back at what could have been, is that it allows us the luxury of infinite possibility, the only boundaries being housed by our imagination. Would ‘Gold’ have the same impact for us now had Adams become the star that he always threatened to become, or has his tragic, self-destructive career been of such car-crash fascination to his fans that it only enhances his music? Perhaps the closest we’ll ever get to answering this is by studying the words and music that Adams offers us, such as prophetic album closer ‘Goodnight Hollywood Blvd’, “Run away baby, back to your lonely house, you wanted the honey, but you were only just stinging yourself, it’s hard to watch…” Hard to watch, indeed, but to listen to? Pure gold.
David Harfield
