Thursday night’s gig was 5 parts brilliant, 1 part hilarious, and an unfortunate 4 parts frustrating. Ryan Adams is a brilliant musician: the music was *superb*, his voice was strong and beautiful, the band were tight and played so well. I think the Cardinals are good for him, because they give his shiny riffs this warm, full sound that really draws out the songs. And I barely knew any of the songs tonight (more on that later) but even then, the music was wonderful. Ryan Adams can really write excellent songs and play and sing them beautifully.
BUT.
Ryan Adams was being a deliberately difficult artist last night.
Well, the first frustrating thing was (probably) not of his doing; the Enmore had been very misleading about the seating arrangements before the pre-sale, so there were lots of unhappy fans who had bought dancefloor tickets early, only to find out on arrival that floor was *behind* a whole section of seating. Not that there was much to see – that’s right, Ryan had a certain lighting plan (dim, very dim), and he was sticking to it. It was a very pretty set, with the curtained backdrop and the Chinese paper lanterns in different shapes and colours, and I understand the idea of a cosy ambience to focus attention on the music, but it was a bit disappointing not to be able to see the band you had paid to see! For the first four songs, it was kind of hard to work out *where* Ryan Adams was – as someone near me said in the first few minutes, “I can, uh, I think that’s his guitar reflecting the light a bit…?” – and it wasn’t until he spoke to the audience to respond to the few audience members yelling for him to turn the lights up (they weren’t particularly rude – I remember one being, “Ryan, we love you, but we’d love you more if we could see you!”) that we had confirmation of where he was. At one point he was still pretty good natured about it – after one such shout he got out his lighter and held up the flame near his face so we saw him flickering for a few seconds, and everyone laughed. But after 'Off Broadway', someone yelled for the lights again (even though now these requests were being met with an equally vocal response from the audience of groans and ‘shut up!’) and this time Ryan said, rather huffily, “We’re playing two sets tonight. When I come out for the second you had better have learnt how to act.” Then he stalked off the stage and the lights went on, and we all hoped like hell it was just an intermission. *sigh*
I guess it’s not a proper Ryan Adams experience without a tantrum of some sort?
After a fifteen minute break, they came back on and started playing again. The first half off the set had been easy on the hits but still fairly accessible, heavy on songs from the recent albums particularly the ones he recorded with the Cardinals, but the second half became wilfully obscure, and there has been discussion online as to whether this was a deliberate decision made in the break. Anyway, of the seven songs in the second half, one was originally written for Willie Nelson, two have yet to be released, and one was a bonus track that is not readily available. Yikes Anyway, highlights for me were 'Cold Roses', where the harmonies with the band were awesome, as well as 'What Sin Replaces Love', which I hadn’t heard before, but have utterly fallen in love with. There was a blistering extended jam in the middle of the song that was just fantastic, and by the end there was a line that Ryan just sang on his own, and it just about floored me because it was so beautiful. 'Wild Flowers' got a good response from the crowd, 'Peacefull Valley' sounded great, and 'Arkham Asylum', a new song, was well received with its last few bars being the Batman theme. However, after a good last two songs, Ryan felt the need to close the set with a ten minute drawn out feedback and drum outro of utter cacophony, while the remaining members of his band looked lost and liked they wanted to leave. Oh, not to mention the utter condescension in his voice as he ‘congratulated’ us for coming and staying for his idea of a concert, then he followed it up, in the most patronising voice, “You learnt how to listen to music. GOOD JOB."
Goodnight Rose
Please Do Not Let Me Go
Mockingbird
Wild Flowers
Cold Roses
Dear John
Peacefull Valley
Off Broadway
--
Blue Hotel
Magnolia Mountain
What Sin Replaces Love
Trouble On Wheels
Arkham Asylum
A Kiss Before I Go
Easy Plateau
I knew of his reputation, but now I’ve seen first hand how wilful he can be. It is part of who he is and what makes him interesting, but it was also *frustrating* as a fan to be treated that way all night, as if we were all bad children from the start who deserved to be punished. I still love his music, his talent outweighs the crazy, but I don’t think he did himself any favours on Thursday night. The same snippets of conversation were overheard, over and over again, as we walked out (no encore, not that we were expecting it from his mood): “What a prick!” “I’m never listening to him again!”and so on.
Ryan Adams is such a talented musician but he is also a dick, and a lot of that gig felt like a giant “Screw you!” to his fans.
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