RYAN ADAMS : DEVOLVER

  1. Don't Give It Away
  2. Stare At The TV
  3. Alien USA
  4. Banging On My Head
  5. Marquee
  6. Eyes On The Door
  7. Too Bored To Run
  8. Free Your Self
  9. Get Away
  10. I'm In Love With You
  11. Why Do You Hate Me

Label : Pax Americana Record Company

Release Date : September 23, 2022

Length : 29:31

Review (Rock NYC) : Six weeks after Ryan Adam’s fourth album of 2022, Devolver, was given away free to fans, and now it has reached streaming services. Of the four albums, it is both pretty darn good and not as pretty darn good. With everything that has happened to Ryan over the past three years (and he is the only person in the world for whom the pandemic was lucky) and with his return to the battle with zero backing, he still feels a debt of gratitude (devolver is Portuguese for to pay back) to the hoi polloi and what we get is some minor Ryan but good enough Ryan. From the deep emotional bottoming out of Chris and Romeo And Juliet to Devolver, the weight of the previous two evolves into a mainstream Cardinals-ish set of hard rock with guitars and electric on a set of ultimately unmemorable songs. Ryan is in fine voice, the rock songs rock and the less rockier songs rock lesser, an acoustic strum like “Free Your Self” has its counterpoint on the exactly what you think it is, “Banging On My Head”. The better moments, the amusingly irrelevant “Too Bored To Run” is Adams with a good joke that rings with atmosphere, but it is all moments here and there; I have never heard an Adams album with less hooks per square inch. By the end nothing has stuck and the net result is an album that sounds like third tier rockers that didn’t make the cut the first time round. In other words: not bad but no more than not bad.

Review (Everything Must Swing) : Devolver follows on the heels of this summer’s commercially ambitious yet somewhat lukewarm FM, a record which aside from a few weeks at improbable positions within a handful countries’ Top 200 albums charts on scattered services, coupled with sporadic grandparental charting on iTunes, did regrettably not seem to live up to the PaxAm camp’s expectations. Musically though, the radio format-worshipping oeuvre still ended up rendering one of Adams’ most focused, well-jointed, and tastefully curated projects since the austere and dour Wednesdays: truth be told, this latest Fab Four-indebted exploit does not fall far from that sonic tree, albeit trading power and jangle pop for heartland/garage indie rock. With a bang-on runtime of thirty minutes, it’s the most concise and reduced collection of songs the former Cardinals frontman has put out since his accomplished and impactful hardcore punk digression 1984—itself the trailblazer for the cleverly versatile and sublime 2014 PaxAm Singles instalment series. Devolver rings also above-average sticky and immediate for Adams’s canon, with a significant number of knee-jerk hooks appearing for the first time in his recorded history that one can’t quite believe he had not written before (start with “Stare at the TV”: “I like to stare at the TV / and wait here for you / My life wasn’t easy / and then I met you / I like to stare at the TV / I miss you / Do you miss me“). The semantic irony of opening this complimentary record’s dances with the bluesy and ragged “Don’t Give It Away” is probably lost on no one, although it’s mostly the head-scratching lyrical prose laced into the tune that most betrays the built-in priceless component of the album: “Sick people / do you need to see a doctor? / Double too cool and icy / so bi-polar“. Similarly honky-tonk-sounding is the foot-stomping “Alien USA” at number three on the tracklist, a crooning exercise set to a fuzzy, reverberated, and groovy soundbed accompanying soaring chorus vocals and tired guitar solos alike. Meanwhile, two separate records on this thing, “Banging On My Head” and “I’m In Love With You”, clock in at less than two minutes each. While the former can be afforded a pass by virtue of its upbeat semi-punk rock flair and off-key vocal delivery, the latter nets a criminally underdeveloped re-recording and rendition of the dusty and nocturnal demo-like unplugged offering dating back to almost a decade ago, initially unveiled as part of the Do You Laugh When You Lie?, Vol. 4 issue of the aforementioned PaxAm Singles Series in 2014. Without a doubt, it’s the album’s halfway point that houses the strongest and sharpest moments. The fierce and dreamy “Marquee” is a flawless exercise in textbook heartland rock and roll, unblemished and immaculate in its multicolored innocence as it pledges to surrender to the all-encompassing might of love. The song is followed by the hinged introspection of “Eyes on the Door”, a cacophonic six-string affair decorated by impressive vocal flexes and enveloping a suspiciously earnest amount of vice-laden frivolousness meets near-epiphany clarity: “I get to thinking I wake up so cold in the night / Hyperventilate and sigh / I get to thinking I get high“. The record’s central backbone reaches a highpoint with “Too Bored to Run”, a fantastic, anthemic, and timeless enchantment pulling out all the classic rock stops at number seven—from the songwriting at its core to Adams’ passionate, lulling, and life-depending performance—carrying what some might argue are the most essential elements of the alt/country rocker’s post-self titled third act songwriting arc. Devolver’s back-end wraps everything up in a plateauing, spotty, and perhaps subaltern way, corralling what sounds like a Chris throwaway amongst throwaways (“Free Your Self”), a sample of bum guitar notes that almost have to be intentional (cue in “Get Away” at 0:04), as well as a Cardinals-evoking experimental coda that too suffers from painful and shameful underwriting (“Why Do You Hate Me”). Mind you, there are no flat out fillers on here—if anything, some compositions could have used some more fleshing out and another minute or two of breathing time. As a front-to-back listening experience, this thing might be better than FM, which sparks reasonable doubt around whether the roll out succession (and accompanying industry plugs) should have been inverted. Yet now more than ever before in Adams’ career, spontaneity of abundance seems to be sole tenet around which to predict what is next. Considering the remarkable accessibility and artistic quality packed into his first ever purposefully gratis album, devolving into a primordial musical core might just be the name-checked clue that’s hiding in plain sight.

Review (Alt Country) : Het houdt niet op, niet vanzelf. Onlangs deelde Ryan Adams een nieuw album uit: Devolver (Paxam). Het is inmiddels het vierde album van hem dat dit jaar verschijnt. En er schijnen er nog twee op de plank te liggen voor later in 2022. Devolver betekent in het Spaans: teruggeven. Adams wil iets terug doen voor de fans. Daarom is dit album gratis te downloaden op zijn website. Ironisch genoeg heeft het openingsnummer de titel Don’t Give It Away. Maar die titel slaat niet op het weggeven van dit album. Maar wat treffen we verder aan? Een plaat die weer wat steviger klinkt dan de voorganger FM. Maar nog steeds voornamelijk rock, recht door het midden rock met punky uitstapjes. Bij Free Yourself is de verleiding groot om te denken dat de tekst op de positie van Adams zelf slaat. I don’t like g?tting old / Cause it feels like losing control / I want to be free but I just can’t be right now / I want to be free but I just can’t free myself. Alsof hij niet meer jan doen wat hij wil doordat hij gecanceld is vanwege de metoo-affaire. Ik weet het, het is onzin om van teksten te denken dat die een autobiografische achtergrond hebben. Ik elk geval heeft Adams zijn kast weer ietsje verder opgeruimd. Voor de liefhebber zit er vast wel weer genoeg tussen om plezier van te hebben. Voor de overigen: een paar lekkere nummers die je op je eigen verzamelalbum Ryan Adams 2022 kan zetten.