Send "Ryan Adams " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 Ryan Adams has an enviable creative drive, to put it mildly. Thirteen studio albums in ten years, three in 2005 alone, not to mention three records with his previous band Whiskeytown and countless EPs and side recordings, some slightly better regarded than others. Adams could probably take a *** and come up with a gem of a pop hook, but Adams seems to lack that which most of us were blessed with at birth: bowel control. Take his earlier 2010 release Orion, which Adams characterized as a “fully-realized sci-fi metal concept album” and which was, coincidentally, absolutely terrible. Aside from that, Adams’ has been strangely quiet the past couple of years until III/IV, which, being a lump sum of demos from the same sessions as 2007’s Easy Tiger, can’t even really be considered new material. And, of course, it’s a double album clocking in at over an hour. Even Adams’ storage closet demos don’t know when to shut up.Unlike Easy Tiger, which showed off Adams’ bland adult contemporary side more often than not, III/IV takes a page out of 2003’s Rock N Roll, although not as blatantly plagiarized as that record tended to be. Another difference from that straightforward genre exercise, happily enough, is that III/IV, for all its self-indulgent length, actually contains more diamonds than turds (for my own sake I’m not counting the extra seventeen bonus tracks/demos available online). For all of Adams’ bull and lack of an editor, anyone familiar with his discography can tell that, aside from being a great songwriter more often than not, Adams’ never just throws something together and calls it a day; each song here shows care and a delicate craft; even the seemingly-tossed off “Stop Playing With My Heart” shows a firm grasp of melody and a hook lesser artists would kill for. The ace musicianship of the Cardinals helps, refining the alt-rock framework here and occasionally adding a unique touch as Catherine Popper does with her vocal work on “Numbers.”...full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| After releasing three albums in 2005, a move that yielded two country-rock homeruns (Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights) and one strikeout (29), Ryan Adams slowed things down during the decade’s second half. He spent a year on the road with his band, the Cardinals, and began putting to bed some of the addictions that had been threatening to upend his solo career: alcohol, speedballs, pills and the compulsion to release an album (or three) every 12 months. Two-thousand six came and went, and when the summer of 2007 rolled around, it brought with it a focused, poignant record called Easy Tiger. The first sober album of Adams’ career, Easy Tiger was filled with quick, three-minute songs that rarely strayed off course. For those who wanted Adams to clean up his act, this seemed like a promising start. For those who wanted to keep Adams weird, though, Easy Tiger was a scary thing, its very efficiency a sign that alt-country’s wild child was perhaps starting to lose his spunk. That’s where III/IV comes in. Carved from the same sessions that spawned Easy Tiger, it’s a sprawling double LP filled with half-serious dabblings, fully-serious rock songs, and a handful of genuine gems. This isn’t the first time Adams has created an album out of stray tunes; 2002’s Demolition was the product of three unreleased studio records. But III/IV feels far more cohesive than that, with contributions from a hotshot band (perhaps the best incarnation of the Cardinals to date, featuring both bassist Catherine Popper and guitarist Neil Casal) and vocal performances that occasionally trump those on Easy Tiger’s final tracklist. Whether he’s channeling Morrissey via the Killers on “Ultraviolet Light” or paying homage to half-baked heavy-metal epics with “Kill the Lights,” Adams sounds lucid and limber, with a sense of humor that rarely threatens to steer the more earnest songs off course....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Around 2006, prolific, hard-drugging singer-songwriter Ryan Adams cleaned up and began spitting out even more music. III/IV is 21 songs from 2007's Easy Tiger sessions, supplanting that album's wired folk rock with a blend of punk head rush, New Wave twitch, metal crunch and hippie noodling. "The Crystal Skull" is Morrissey with a girlfriend; "Ultraviolet Light" posits Ian Curtis fronting the Byrds. Does it cohere? Please. Just tighten your scarf and savor the storm....full text |
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