Send "Ryan Adams and the Cardinals " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Ryan Adams has an absurd amount of unreleased material. Just a few years after the dissolution of his band Whiskeytown, the Prince of alt-country (for lack of a better description) bragged about having a full boxset worth of material on the back burner. Now that Adams’ contract with Lost Highway has run out, the always prolific singer-songwriter is free to unload these things on his own label while on a sabbatical from music. And though his sci-fi metal album Orion certainly gave his fans quite the start earlier this year, Cardinals III & IV is more of a business-as-usual kind of album, picking up where he left off before getting married.Not that this is a bad thing. When it comes to the Cardinals serving as Adams’ backing band, business can be quite good. Fans can debate the virtues of the flaws and indulgences on display in Rock N Roll, Love Is Hell, and 29, but with the Cardinals behind him, Adams has never fallen flat on his face in embarrassment. This is where Ryan Adams & the Cardinals’ best strength can easily turn against them; they are sturdy and reliable like a hefty box… and sometimes just as exciting. Recorded during the sessions that spawned Easy Tiger, Cardinals III & IV sounds like a less confident version of its counterpart, occasionally retaining the verve of Rock N Roll but missing the magnetic pull if his best work. Like his overlooked masterpiece Cold Roses, Cardinals III & IV is presented as a double album that could easily have fit onto one CD. But since people rarely think of albums in halves anymore (if they think of music as albums in the first place), Adams more than likely wants this album to be approached as a twofer. There doesn’t appear to be an overarching theme to differentiate one disc from another, though the second one isn’t as averse to getting silly as the first. “Numbers”, some sort of multi-movement mini-suite of math rock with a refrain of “We’re fucked,” sounds like Adams lost a bar bet but was having fun in the process. “Icebreaker” and “Sewers at the Bottom of the Wishing Well” are throwbacks of the hair riff variety. The quirky art changes heard on “Numbers” make a slight return on “Star Wars”, a song about wanting a girlfriend. I think. Wrapping up the album is “Kill the Lights”, which is a total gas since Big Trouble in Little China is name-dropped amongst the heavy punk riffage as the “Kill! The Lights!” chorus changes to “Street! Fight! Tonight!” These are all reminders that, sometimes, totally silly Ryan Adams can be preferable to sort-of boring Ryan Adams....full text |
| Music |
| One of the most prolific artists of last decade returns with his first album in two years; a normal break for most artists, but an eternity for Ryan Adams. Though recorded during the same sessions as Easy Tiger at the famed Electric Ladyland Studio, this double-album definitely has its own unique sound, and is unlike anything Adams has released before. The speckled synth melody behind the grubby riffs of "Happy Birthday" and the pulsating riffs and humming synth of "Users" are unexpected bits of eighties-inspired fun that somehow fit wonderfully with heartbreaking flicker of "Gracie" and guitar-driven darkness of "Breakdown Into The Resolve". While the shimmering acoustic "Ultraviolet Light" feels like a Love Is Hell castoff and glossy lap steel sheen of twangy, melodic "Death And Rats" would sound at home on the aforementioned Easy Tiger, most of the effort attempts to marry the garage punk sensibilities of The Replacements with the pop rock of his own Rock N Roll. The result is decidedly less country than anything previously recorded with The Cardinals, but still benefits from the excellent backing band on the gorgeous layered guitars of "No", hints of Tom Petty's sturdy Midwestern rock on "Stop Playing With My Heart", and noodling guitar on closing classic rocker "Kill The Lights". It is the layered beauty of the rough-edged "Sewers At The Bottom Of The Wishing Well" where you really notice what a fantastic band The Cardinals really are, as Adams snarls, "My heart isn't black / It's just dirty from the floor". Spitfire "P.S.", full of shaggy riffs and passionate vocals, finds a frustrated Adams serving a bitter salvo to an ex, "Don't ask someone to change again / Until you know what you want them to change into". The driven, freewheeling pace of "Numbers" serves as an adrenaline fuelled post-apocalyptic winner thanks to the shout-a-long, "We're f*cked / We're f*cked", hook. Riffs spray out of the speakers like a haywire sprinkler on "Lovely And Blue" on the energetic pop tune as proof that he could take over rock radio at any point, should he decide to. ...full text |
| Avclub |
| After a career filled with reckless stylistic shifts and random left turns, Ryan Adams made his strangest move yet in 2009 when he abruptly announced that he was going on hiatus and settling down with former teen-pop star Mandy Moore. Fortunately, Adams couldn’t stay domesticated for long: Earlier this year, he released the science-fiction prog-metal concept record Orion, and now he’s unearthed III/IV, a double album recorded in 2007 with stalwart backing band The Cardinals, and revolving around “the ’80s, ninjas, cigarettes, sex, and pizza.” The first item on that list is the most discernable on III/IV, with Adams indulging his jones for the driving arena-rock ear-candy that distinguished his underrated 2003 solo record, Rock N Roll,and 2008’s Cardinology. It’s a little disappointing coming from parties most celebrated for the moonlit country-rock of 2005’s Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights, and 2007’s Easy Tiger, which came out of the same sessions as III/IV. But while Adams comes off like a prodigiously talented melodicist coasting on his ability to sneeze out hooks whenever he steps into the studio, there are enough pleasures on III/IV to satisfy fans desperate for new product. “Stop Playing With My Heart” is no less pleasing for sounding tossed-off, and the jaggedly jangling “Ultraviolet Light” finds Adams solidly in the “Morrissey fronting U2” mode of Love Is Hell. It’s the weird curveballs like the bouncy pop-punk of “Star Wars” and the wannabe metal gem “Icebreaker” that really make III/IV an entertaining, albeit trifling, stopgap; hopefully, Adams will soon be back on a schedule where records like this are mere rest-stops on the way to creating more substantial sounds....full text |
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals lyrics
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