One of the most baffling critics' positions of the past year surely has to be the hyperbolic praise lavished upon the film Shrek. Sure, it's pretty enough, but Shrek itself essentially boils down to a cloying game of Name! That! Reference!, in which the viewer is supposedly "rewarded" for picking up on anti-clever pop culture references, influences, and in-jokes. With only a handful of truly inspired moments, the sum of the influences amounts to very, very little.

Now, re-read that last paragraph, replacing the title "Shrek" with "Ryan Adams' Gold." The analogy holds, with the exception that there are aspects of Gold which I genuinely enjoy, whereas sitting through Shrek was a uniformly unpleasant experience.

I just don't know what to do with Ryan Adams. I like Ryan Adams. A lot. But I'm constantly frustrated by the way he undermines his own talents, and my patience is wearing thin. From his days with alt-country band Whiskeytown through his two solo albums, in his scorching live performances, and in the artists he clearly identifies as his influences, he absolutely has the potential to create an essential, classic album. Gold, critics' and Sir Elton John's accolades nonwithstanding, is not that album. There are moments on Gold, just as there were on his solo debut, Heartbreaker, that suggest the astonishing album he could create if only he had a sense of discipline. As is, the jarringly uneven album skips around from one "tribute" and/or "rip-off" to the next.

Adams is frequently hailed for being one of pop music's most prolific songwriters. In the past 18 months, he's released the overly long Heartbreaker, the long-delayed final Whiskeytown release Pneumonia (easily the best of his recent work), and Gold, which clocks in at around 70 minutes, plus another four songs on the bonus Side B disc, and the ten songs reportedly cut from the album so it could fit onto a single CD. He's also recorded tracks for a half-dozen tribute albums, in addition to twelve songs he's recorded with British singer-songwriter Beth Orton.

So he stays pretty busy.

And the sheer volume of his output is admirable, to an extent. Thing is, Adams hasn't yet learned the fine art of quality control. It's as though he's so enthralled by the process of songwriting that he's forgotten that the quality of the final product is what's most important. He obviously can't tell which of his songs are good, and which of his songs are bad.

As was the case with Heartbreaker, Gold is an album desperately in need of some selective editing. The difference, though, is an important one that brings into question the direction of Adams' career. While Heartbreaker needed to be cut because it was just flat-out boring, Gold needs to be cut because it often makes Adams sound like an unintentional parody of a B-list cover band.

That influences take precedence over innovation is apparent before the album even begins. Gold's obnoxious cover art attempts to position Adams as a sort of "anti" Springsteen. With an upside-down American Flag in the background and a forward-facing Adams with his head down, the photo is the reverse of Springsteen's memorable Born in the U.S.A. album cover. I can't even pretend to understand the reasoning behind this. The straight-ahead, introspective granola-rock of Gold makes Adams a prime candidate for Springsteen's heir apparent. And, honestly, popular music is in desperate need of a new Springsteen-- an artist of substance with mass appeal to wake people up to the fact that Nickelback and Creed blow.

Adams' sound on Gold is polished (and safe) enough that he could do just that, with the right attitude and marketing strategy. Because, as derivative as this material is, it's a helluva lot better than Creed. Instead, Adams defies that opportunity. Maybe he just didn't want a photo of his backside as his album cover-- even though he's notorious for spending a good 80 - 90% of his live shows with his back to the audience...

But trying to understand Adams' decisions is ultimately an exercise in futility. So, what of the actual songs on Gold?

The album opens with one of its three standout tracks, the rollicking New York, New York, which ranks among the absolute best singles of 2001. Buoyed by hands-down the single best couplet to come along in ages--
"Found myself a picture that would fit in the folds of my wallet/
And it stayed pretty good//
Still amazed I didn't lose it on the roof of the place/
When I was drunk and I was thinkin' of you"--
Adams perfectly recaptures the vitality of being young and madly in love. With its refrain of "Hell, I still love you though, New York", the song became and accidental mini-anthem after 9/11, although that's obviously not the intent of the song. New York, New York climaxes with a flourish of acoustic guitars and a bluesy sax solo that's both gratuitous and forgivable. The electrifying song establishes a level of energy that the ballad-heavy Gold doesn't maintain.

While New York, New York is hardly revolutionary, Firecracker is a more blatant stylistic homage. With its heavy, foregrounded harmonica and three-chord guitar riffs, the song sounds dead-on John Fogerty. But the lyrics, perhaps the album's most telling, are strikingly similar to Everybody Knows this is Nowhere by Neil Young. "Well, everybody wants to go forever/ I just wanna burn up hard and bright." Don't worry there, Ryan. For better or worse, you're well on your way.

The second-single, Answering Bell, has a huge hook to its favor, as Adams stretches to a high note at the refrain. Lyrically, however, it's one of the album's weakest offerings. The self-contradicting lyrics-- "Did I slip/ I know I stumbled// Did I trip/ 'Cause I know I fell"-- come across like a Townes Van Zandt throwaway. Unlike New York, New York, Answering Bell did not garner much attention from radio-- most likely because of the banjo.

The lilting, delicate ballad La Cienega Just Smiled is indicative of Adams' overall problem with lilting, delicate ballads. The quiet instrumentation and brushed snare drums are clearly inspired by Van Morrisson and Neil Young, but with Adams' smoother vocals. Admittedly, La Cienega... is a beautiful song, with an aching refrain of "And I'm too scared to know/ How I feel about you now." The lyrics overcome their inherent cliches and are almost poetic in their simplicity.

The problem, then, is that Adams' sincerity is suspect. When a singer-songwriter fills an album with songs written with the work of other artists in mind, how can the "emotion" within those songs be construed as genuine? On the uptempo tracks, Adams' rock-star swagger compensates for the calculated soul-baring. But on the ballads, that calculation behind each "vulnerable" voice-break catches up with him. From the get-go, he has to fight an uphill battle for credibility. He has to come up with something pretty spectacular to make up for all of the posturing. La Cienega doesn't cut it.

But The Rescue Blues, another of the album's standouts, certainly does. On this track, Adams melds equal parts Morrissey and The Rolling Stones, coming up with one of his finest songs. "They throw you down a rope/ When you're in trouble, baby/ Screamin' 'Save me'/ Then they charge you with the rescue blues", he sings in the chorus. With a lovely faux-gospel choir providing subtle background harmony in the chorus, a perfectly used Hammond organ (provided by the amazing Benmont Tench), a lovely piano melody, and a more soulful vocal than one might expect from Adams, The Rescue Blues is a perfectly produced song. It's Gold's best example of what heights Adams is capable of reaching.

The other worthwhile song is When the Stars Go Blue, which is currently garnering some Top 40 radio airplay, thanks to a bland, terribly-executed cover by The Corrs and (Dear God, someone has to stop him) Bono. The vastly superior version on Gold opens with a surprising a capella vocal. An even better surprise, though, occurs when Adams lapses into a lithe falsetto at the peak of the refrain:
"Where do you go when you're lonely/
Where do you go when you're blue/
Where do you go when you're lonely/
I'll follow you/
When the stars go blue"
The lyrics in the verses are a bit shaky-- there's an awful line about a wooden shoe-- but the song's other attributes make up for it.

Unfortunately, seven songs in, Adams runs out of whatever few ideas he had, allowing the influences to take complete control, and Gold seems to drag on longer than... well, longer than this review.

Nobody Girl stretches a single, tired idea-- an idea, incidentally, with a curiously anti-feminist politic that further betrays the sincerity of those sensitive ballads-- into a nine-and-a-half minute jam session, which turns out to be more interesting than the song itself. Because Nobody Girl, a kiss-off to a promiscuous female, sounds like Pete Townshend recorded a song Paul Westerberg wrote during his not-very-good solo career. Thinking that the song is about Adams' ex, Winona Ryder, makes the song slightly more interesting, but only marginally so.

And there's really no one I can think of offhand who could manage to write a song entitled Sylvia Plath and not have it turn out unbearably pretentious. "And maybe she'd give me a bath/ I wish I had a Sylvia Plath", Adams whines at the end of the chorus. If Plath's head ended up in the oven, this song proves that Adams' head is often up his... that thing he didn't want to put on the album cover.

Enemy Fire, a tribute to Adams' contemporaries and former Bloodshot labelmates (and the much, much better) Old 97s, and the Gram Parsons inflected Touch, Feel, and Lose are notable only because they constitute the two weakest songs ever written by the usually relaible pair of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Welch and Adams co-wrote Enemy Fire, while Rawlings and Adams penned Touch....

Wild Flowers and Harder Now That It's Over, both of which fall back into Neil Young territory, are so inconsequential and repetitive that there's really no reason that they couldn't have been cut. ... Over milks any and all metaphorical possibilities out of a pair of handcuffs. Apparently, a dying relationship is quite a lot like being in handcuffs...

The awkwardly titled Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues, like Nobody Girl eventually devolves into a modestly fun jam session. And, again, the song itself pales in comparisons to a modestly fun jam session. This time out, however, the song sounds like a castoff from the Stones' Exile on Main Street, but without Mick Jagger's rough vocals to make it work. Again, Adams ends up sounding like the frontman for a halfway decent cover band, rather than an artist with a distinct personality.

The album closes with Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd, one of those uncomfortable "perils of fame" songs (Britney Spears' Lucky, Kid Rock's Only God Knows Why, etc) that either criticize the perks of celebrity privilege or lament the loss of identity. When Hollywood Blvd is compared to both "a clown's saloon and "a room full of wh*res", it isn't very hard to figure out which category Adams' song falls into. Some (re: Rolling Stone) have tried to imply that ...Hollywood Blvd, by closing the album, symbolizes some sort of cross-country odyssey from New York to California. Those people are giving Adams entirely too much credit and are ignoring the 14 songs in between.

Gold is, ultimately, an infuriating album. A casual music fan might not be bothered by the blatantly derivative material here, but casual music fans might never pick up this album in favor of the latest Goo Goo Dolls or Matchbox Twenty release. Adams' baseline of talent keeps Gold from being a genuinely bad album. If it weren't so needlessly long, it would never be less than pleasant and listenable.

And, admittedly, I like this album. But I know that it's not the great album some have made it out to be, and I know that it's far from the best album Adams is capable of making. If I had reviewed this album when I first bought it late last summer, I probably would've given it a 4 or 5 star rating. Having lived with the album, however, I can't do that.

I return to the Shrek analogy. If I want to watch an assortment of cartoonish characters in a montage set to Smash Mouth's All Star, I watch Mystery Men, not Shrek. Similarly, if I want to listen to a Rolling Stones, a Neil Young, a Gram Parsons, or an Old 97s song, I'll listen to one of those artists' albums, not to Ryan Adams' Gold.

Because it's more consistently engaging than Heartbreaker, this one gets a 3 star rating. And I have to reccommend it, with some reservations. Those who aren't bothered by derivative, straightforward rock-- and, more importantly, those who are unfamiliar with Adams and, therefore, have no expectations based on his potential-- will probably find a lot to like on Gold. And, by all means, if you're thinking of buying the new Creed album, pick this up instead.

For Fans Of: Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews Band, Natalie Merchant, or Alanis Morissette (who is mentioned an alarming 5 times in the album's "thank-yous").

Recommended: Yes