The myth of Ryan Adams is a good, frequently gripping one. There he is, the boy who just can't stop himself from writing songs: frail heartbreakers, barrelling garage rock, stadium anthems, spittle-drenched punk, country ballads, indie reveries. And there is his stern, incomprehending record label, continually rejecting his albums, his mutable plans, the seemingly unstoppable flow of music.
The latest chapter in this melodrama is resolved with the release of 19 songs on two jumbo EPs called 'Love Is Hell'. This is the album Lost Highway purportedly rejected last year, spurring Adams into recording 'Rock'n'Roll', his full-throttle pastiche of '80s stadium rock from last November. As a result, Adams and Lost Highway have released what are effectively three albums in three months, having generated enough publicity to sustain such an unusual release schedule. A cynic might suspect the whole business had been contrived to perpetuate the legend and, of course, sell more records.
For while Adams may be unpredictable, he is far from uncalculating. He may change his mind about who he wants to be - Springsteen or Gram Parsons, Morrissey or Jeff Buckley, Bono or Julian Casablancas - but his desire to be a star remains unwavering. Certainly, it's hard to see why Lost Highway would want to suppress 'Love Is Hell' on any grounds other than excessive length. It's more musically downbeat than 'Rock'n'Roll', for sure, but hardly commercial anathema.
In fact, it's more commercial - and much better - than 'Rock'n'Roll', occasionally resembling the grandstand melancholia of Coldplay, and more frequently their antecedents The Smiths (whose sometime producer, John Porter, is in charge here) and Jeff Buckley. The measured strums of 'World War 24' and 'Afraid Not Scared' are particularly striking, though it's significant that the most agonised moment is a gutted acoustic version of 'Wonderwall'.
This is the ongoing problem with Adams. He pleads so desperately for our love, but is never quite as engaging and intense as he claims to be. Although 'Love Is Hell' comes with the assumption that it's more honest than 'Rock'n'Roll', the influences here - albeit different - are just as distracting. He faces, too, the same dilemma that Beck had with 'Sea Change'. Given we know how effective he is at role-playing, why should we take this wounded lover schtick as anything more than another off-the-peg persona?
So on 'City Rain, City Streets', he bluntly notes: "I really miss you/ I f*cked you over a million times," while playing the romantic New York f*ck-up in the Chelsea Hotel. Two songs later, he's singing about 'English Girls Approximately' and "falling down the Camden like a couple drunken criminals". Another two songs, and we're back in 'Hotel Chelsea Nights', a blousy bit of 'beautiful loser' self-mythologising that cops its moves from Prince's 'Purple Rain', of all places.
There's a Ryan Adams for every occasion, a tragic one for every territory, and by the end of these clever, engrossing, emotionally manipulative, ultimately unmoving records, you trust him less than ever. "I'm a faker, I'm a faker," he howls on the fine and turbulent 'F*ck The Universe'. At this point, it seems to be the most straightforwardly plausible thing he's ever said.
