Ryan Adams new album, entitled Prisoner, is another accomplished st of songs from an artist who has many albums just like it. Now I love Ryan Adams, but the buzz around Prisoner has been for want of a better word confusing. It's a great album, but no better or worse than his previous, and certainly not up there with Heartbreaker or Love is Hell. Yet critics are hailing the release as a great return to form, which is strange because his last three albums, since he broke up The Cardinals, and including 1989, were all well received. So when did he lose his form?
It seems to be a question of context: Prisoner is an album full of material that came out of Adams' divorce from singer/actress Mandy Moore. Many reviews have stated that a heart-broken Ryan Adams is the best Ryan Adams, and that, frankly is ghoulish. It also raises the question of whether his previous albums would have been considered classics due to the same external circumstances. Now Adams’ entire discography has been about laying bare his thoughts, emotions, and turmoil on record, it’s what he’s best at, but the critical consensus seems to suggest conversely that a heartbroken Adams gives his music more emotional weight, and that, to me, is calling his song that are made without that particular drive insincere in comparison. What it also does is blatantly forget his skill as a storyteller. In songs like Political Scientist, Carolina Rain, and Strawberry Wine, he creates characters and a narrative, imbuing these people with thought and feelings, and conflicts of their own.
Prisoner isn’t a return to form, it is the latest hit from an artist who, this decade, is enjoying a purple patch of creativity after floundering at the end of the noughties. All you need to see it is the right context.
