Ryan Adams

After a couple of self-conscious forays into rock, Adams revisits his alt country stomping grounds, and his footing seems sure when he's pacing his band through heartfelt tunes like "Let It Ride" and "Rosebud." Perhaps not as fresh as 2000's brilliant Heartbreaker, Roses is still a solid return to form for the mercurial singer.

At its best, Cold Roses lives between the twin blooms of the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers"
and the Grateful Dead's American Beauty, each of which turned to country music at the
start of the Seventies to sustain a counterculture rapidly running out of gas. That sound --
exhaustion and transcendence chasing each other round and round -- gives Cold Roses its
peculiar charge, and it is peculiar. Because in many ways this is just another Rya... More >