Ryan Adams "Nightbirds"

It’s probably safe to assume that more people hate Ryan Adams than own his records. His reputation as a prolific genius-boy has clashed over the past few years with the much more inked tempestous prick identity, leaving casual fans with little to appreciate other than his bizarre non-recorded reputation. I’m far from an Adams expert, and am only a passing fan, but I’ve always appreciated his pugnacity in the face of the consistently polarized (mostly hipster) opinions toward him. He’s shown himself to be a deft interpreter of all musics supposedly anachronistic, from roots-rock to twangy country, and his constant self-mythologizing I’ve always found fun. That’s rock and roll, right? But with the album 29, he’s immersed himself into one of the most maligned, even by the most ironic of music fan, genres—what I like to call MomRock.

MomRock incorporates everything post Let It Be and pre-Disco that involves an acoustic guitar and piano, slick LA production, early 30’s sentimentality and a small mountain of cocaine. We’re talking The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Harvest Neil Young, James Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Gerry Rafferty, Something/Anything Todd Rundgren, Fleetwood Mac, and so on. It's post-hippie/new adult music, and my mom still loves this stuff. So do a lot of moms, if you take a glance at the RIAA all-time list. True, most of it (especially the Eagles) can cause nausea, and I certainly can't vouch for it's rockist-ness, but as far as triggering good memories, it's untouchable. I grew up listening to it in the Mustang to and from Little League games (in the early/mid 80s--well after its sell-by date, but this stuff mummifies upon release), and I can’t say it doesn’t hold a special place in my heart. And in the same way it helped my mom in the early-mid 80s relive that early Seventies adulthood, the song “Nightbirds” takes me back to those times listening to "Baker Street" as a kid, in a second-gen kind of way. Adams, just like his predecessors, allows those piano chords to resonate the imagined feeling the oh-so-trite lyrics could never hope to encompass, and sings with that calculated delicacy mastered by Rundgren and, oh yeah, Carly Simon. And I can’t get enough of it. Especially the way it dives into the ocean there at the end. He's definitely not going to convert any non-believers with this album, but it works really well as a rear-view mirror.

Buy Nightbirds here.