The Damned

Son, Never Mind Them Brakes.
- Jerry Reed

2007 saw Ryan Adams drift into the mainstream with his Easy Tiger album, an accomplishment linked more to its author's sudden sobriety than any actual achievement; that said, it did prove to be Adams' quickest selling album. The album appeared to lack loose drifting contours of his previous efforts (well, some of them) and appeared to have been both overproduced and calibrated by record execs.

Any portents this may have generated were dispelled this summer when Ryan released his Follow The Lights ep which is a remarkable achievement and then, now, we have Cardinology.

I fly like paper, get high like planes, if you stop me at the border, I got visas in my name. --MIA

This latest album strikes the immediate listener as loud, an echo Jeff Tweedy's reincarnation as guitar hero: all we need is the Mamba and Scientology. I can't say I loathe the album, but i fear it will settle into the lower ranks of the oeuvre, alongside Rock and Roll and 29 as evidence of just how prolific this young man has proved: sober or not.