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Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Everybody Knows EP
Monday, February 04, 2008
God bless Ryan Adams for his prolificacy. These days fans are rarely left waiting more than a few months for something new to devour and, in increasingly, the quality has matched the quality. By Martin Jones
RYAN ADAMS & THE CARDINALS
EVERYBODY KNOWS EP
LOST HIGHWAY/UNIVERSAL
God bless Ryan Adams for his prolificacy. These days fans are rarely left waiting more than a few months for something new to devour and, in increasingly, the quality has matched the quality. The man seems to be able to sneeze decent records.
This EP presents a kind of ‘single’ package of the Easy Tiger track ‘Everybody Knows’, but comes with not one B-side, but seven! That’s more tracks than some people can muster for a bi-annual LP!
Judging by the record/musician credits, these songs were mostly leftovers from the Easy Tiger sessions. Following from the title track, ‘Follow The Lights’ is a graceful, lilting ballad, almost classical in form, swelling with strings and tainted at the edges with Adams’ omnipresent shadow of darkness.
The gentle mood continues, though the shadow recedes, in the next track ‘My Love For You Is Real’ – a straight-in-the-eyes love song that is particularly affecting for its sincerity, and ‘Blue Hotel’ is another exquisite Adams ballad, this one piano-based, augmented with heart-tugging pedal steel and a stinging vocal crescendo in the chorus – worth the price of the EP alone. A countrified version of ‘Down In A Hole,’ a song originally by heavy grunge band Alice In Chains, works surprisingly well.
Here the EP takes a bit of a left turn, the ‘Cardinals Version’ of ‘This Is It’ coming across as the kind of recording that we all wish U2 would make again, gritty and glamorous at once. The two remaining tracks are live studio recordings – the first a bare bones rendition of Cold Roses’ ‘I Am A Stranger’, the second a version of the Jacksonville City Nights duet with Norah Jones, ‘Dear John’, this one actually more affecting without Norah, sounding like it was recorded in a late night piano bar.
Keep ‘em coming Ryan.
Martin Jones