Album of the Week: Suicide Handbook by Ryan Adams

Don't assume that I actually mean we'll have a new album I plug every week. It's just an easy title.

(On a related note, a secret: The Thirty Second Movie Reviews take me longer than thirty seconds.)

Anyways. I'm still on my Ryan Adams kick. We're probably going on six months now. It probably would have died out by now if he wasn't such a prolific little bastard-- when I think I've gotten comfortable with his five albums, I discover his old band Whiskeytown. And just when I work through their catalogue, I discover the wealth of material to be found in shady places on the internet.

Adams apparently has four albums worth of unreleased demo material. (Samplings of this material were assembled for the unofficial album Demolition.) One such set of material is Suicide Handbook.

I found a bootleg of it at Sharing the Groove some time ago. I've listened to it a few times, it's settled in... and it's lovely.

Suicide Handbook is mostly just Ryan Adams and an acoustic guitar. But it's Adams doing what he does best: Sad Bastard Music. Fluttery, morose, ethereal, delicate.

The disc gets points for some early versions of several of the better songs from Gold, particularly "Firecracker" and my beloved "La Cienega Just Smiled."

You can probably find Suicide Handbook online if you try, or I could be convinced to make you a copy if you ask nice enough. It's lovely background music, and it's a perfect piece of music with which to fall asleep.

Pete Yorn at the Barrymore Theatre, Madison

Has Pete Yorn been reading my blog? I've been complaining for years that Yorn doesn't know what he does best-- he plays rock shows when he should be going the acoustic route, and he resolutely avoids playing the sad bastard songs he writes so well.

But last night's show had the best Yorn setlist I've seen in years-- not exactly full of the acoustic stuff I would like, but he definitely avoided the muddle of forgettable rock that he's been churning out since Day I Forgot. Those are the songs that can make a show deadly boring.

The highlight was a pumped-up "Splendid Isolation," but I was also delighted to hear "Undercover" for the first time. And, of course, "Just Another" is always a pleasure.

One thing I didn't get to hear, as usual, was "Lose You." It's become a running joke that I call out "Lose You, please" at every Pete Yorn show-- but this time I got shushed by the man himself. It wasn't a particularly hostile shush-- more like "Shhhhh..."-- and I don't think he was mad or anything, because if he was going to get mad it would be at the people repeatedly screaming for "Burrito" behind me. But yeah. So that happened.

Setlist: Vampyre, For Us, Undercover, Intro > Come Back Home, The Man, Life on a Chain, Pass Me By, Just Another, Alive, I Am the Cosmos (tease) > Closet, Policies, Dead Flowers (Rolling Stones cover), Strange Condition, Crystal Village. Encore: Murray, Bandstand in the Sky, Splendid Isolation, For Nancy.

A note on the Barrymore: The place had a nice, spacious layout-- I'm always fond of general admission seating. But it's sort of a dump nonetheless and the sound is lousy. Avoid it if you can.

Update 3/15. Corrected the setlist after it was posted at PeteYorn.com.

Ryan Adams at the Cedar, Minneapolis

Picture a perfect Ryan Adams concert, as imagined by a devotee of the sad bastard stuff like myself. What does it look like? Maybe a small venue and an acoustic set. Mr. Adams is in a low-key mood. The lights are low. Oh, and I'm drinking a bottle of wine.

So that would be my perfect Ryan Adams concert, I think. Which would probably make it my perfect concert, period. And that's pretty much the concert I saw on Monday night. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, it was.

The setlist was full of Easy Tiger material, which was fine. I've heard the album enough by now to know the songs and to know I like them. The rest was a showcase for his incredible songwriting-- "Dear John," "Carolina Rain," and so on. Adams just sang the whole night, apparently still recovering from a sprained wrist a few weeks ago. The Cardinals provided the instrumentation.

And I got to hear "Elizabeth, You Were Born to Play the Part." Beautiful, beautiful, that was, too.

Setlist: Goodnite Rose, Dear John, Oh My God Whatever Etc..., Halloween Head, Nightbirds, My Winding Wheel, The Sun Also Sets, Let It Ride, Blue Hotel, How Do You Keep Love Alive, Carolina Rain, Rip Off, Goodnight Hollywood Blvd., I Taught Myself How To Grow Old, Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play the Part, Two, Starlite Diner, I See Monsters.

2005 Just Got Better

Just noted on Ryan Adams' website:

2005 will see the release of not one, not two, but three new Ryan Adams albums. The first, Cold Roses, is due April 19. The second, Jacksonville, and the third, 29, will follow. And tour dates are expected.

Part of what makes being a Ryan Adams fan so rewarding is his sheer prolificacy-- the guy writes a lot of music.

It's been noted that his quality-control switch is often faulty: sometimes, he just puts out some bad music. (It would almost be impossible not to, with his rate of output.) But on the whole, he produces much more good than bad. If past performance is any indication, I'm going to predict that one of this year's three albums will be mediocre, one will be good, and one will be my favorite album of the whole year.

The audio sample on the website is promising, as is the unofficial material that's surfaced since Adams recovered from his broken wrist last January.

As his best material is the excrutiating, sad bastard stuff, I can only hope his last year has been truly miserable. We'll all be better off.

The iPod is Coming

I ordered the iPod last night. Here’s the story.

On Tuesday, Apple introduced the new, flash memory-based member of the iPod family: iPod Shuffle. It’s a tiny thing, holding up to 1 GB of songs, for about $149. Because of the smaller capacity, I was hesitant. Because it has no screen, I passed.

And so, because I wanted neither iPod Shuffle nor iPod mini, my choice was the original iPod. Because I can get an educational discount as a staff member at Marquette, the 20 GB iPod would be $269.

I wanted three accessories: the AppleCare Protection Plan, a protective case, and a dock.

The AppleCare plan is $47 with the discount and extends my warranty to two years. (As I plan on jogging with the thing, I figured the peace of mind is worth the money.) The case I chose was the best-reviewed on Apple’s site, and is $23 at Amazon. The dock is what tripped me up.

With the educational discount, the dock, which syncs and recharges the iPod, would be $35. But I noticed that the 40 GB iPod, which is $100 more than the 20 GB model, includes the dock. In other words, because I’d want the dock regardless of which model I chose, the difference between a 20 GB model and a 40 GB model-- one with twice the capacity-- is a mere $65.

I ordered the 40 GB model.

They shipped it this morning, addressed to me here at work, and it will arrive in three to five days. I had the option of adding a free engraving, which I passed on-- it may have been nice to have an identifying mark in case of theft, but it would take longer to ship, make it harder to resell, and make it impossible to return to Apple.

For those curious, the engraving would have been:

For Sad Bastard Music, Press Play.