That's pretty much the gist, yeah. But more than a backing ensemble, Ryan felt that the Cardinals should represent an actual artistic entity unto themselves, to the point where he was pretty royally pissed off that Lost Highway wouldn't release their albums without his name on them. I obviously can't speak first-hand about the creative processes of those records, but my impression is that they ended up just being fundamentally Ryan Adams albums, regardless of who else was playing on them (and many people did--the Cardinals were never a static group, often changing lineups from one album to the next).Kevin Davis wrote:I will make it a point to do that. I don't know a lot about the Ryan Adams "story," but I always got the impression that Ryan thought the Cardinals gave more creatively to his music than they really did, that they were a backing ensemble in the vein of the Bad Seeds or the Attractions or the E Street Band, when really they were a group of capable studio musicians that he managed to keep signed on for multiple albums in a row and coerce out onto the road. That may not be the case in reality, but I remember when "29" came out feeling like, "Finally, those bozos are out of his way and the spotlight is back on his songs and voice." I remember thinking "Jacksonville City Nights" in particular was just a totally mediocre genre exercise, salvaged only by Ryan's wonderful singing and the disproportionate number of songs in waltz time. But that was 7-8 years ago, and my tastes then were even worse then than they are now, so I will pay those records a return visit someday soon.
Honestly, it sounds like lame rationale ("You just haven't listened to them enough, man"), but more than any of Adams' output the Cardinals stuff took the longest to gestate for me. Your feelings on JCN are more or less an exact reflection of how I felt about it for the first few months I owned it; but gradually, and often outside the context of the record itself (i.e. live performances and iPod shuffles), the songs opened up. I can't really say why, other than that I came to feel that my less-than-stellar mindset at the time was pretty accurately reflected in those songs (which seems like it could be applied to any number of RA albums, but Jacksonville's bleak mortality obsession always felt like the bell-dinger on the Ryan Adams sad-bastard scale to me; he just sounds totally off his rocker in a Tonight's the Night kind of way, and it's enthralling), but it's continued to grow in my esteem over the years. If I really consider it, it's probably still bottom-tier in the Adams catalog, but for me that's kind of like saying a Tom Waits or R.E.M. record is bottom-tier--it pretty much just means I love it a little less than the others.
As for Cold Roses, I wouldn't make any claims about "originality" (especially since I have no more than a cursory knowledge of the Grateful Dead, and that's reputedly who the album harkens back to the most; "Rosebud" is a tribute to Jerry Garcia) but I just think the songwriting, musicianship, and vocal performances are on a higher plain than anything else he's done. Hearing it described as "overlong" has always thrown me for a loop; it's really the only Adams album I sometimes think isn't long enough, which is a strange and commendable accomplishment for a double album. Weirdly, I came to that record in the exact opposite frame of mind from how I approached JCN--emotionally stable for the first time in a while--and the album hit home in the same fundamental way: it felt like an all-too-authentic depiction of my life at that particular moment, in which I felt spiritually cleansed and, if not happy, content with the cards life had dealt me.
Anyway, long story short: I love those albums. Hopefully revisiting them unlocks something for you.
