Ryan Adams Oxford New Theatre, 2024
Ryan Adams is back celebrating Love is Hell and his eponymous album, Ryan Adams, covering a 20-year career span. Despite the allegations against him a few years back (see apology below), he retains his on-stage hilarity, offering slightly left-field mushroom-head stories behind his compositions and career. He brilliantly swerved the usual Bryan Adams (with whom he shares a birthday, who knew!) heckle with a story of how his self-titled album font was lifted from Bryan’s Reckless album cover. Brilliant and crazy, and Bryan is cool with it all by the sounds of it.
The concert seemed to get off to a distant and nervous start. The set had three performing areas, the central being an acoustic guitar sit-down affair. A standing microphone flanked this (that was used for the brilliant English Girls Approximately only), and the third area featured a piano facing away from the audience!
one of the most noticeable aspects of the performance is that you think Adams … is putting absolutely everything into every song
The concert’s intimacy lifted with a bizarre shambling transition to the piano, where Adams ruminated on the piano stool being like a sushi tray (what else?). This audience member prefers Adams’ piano-based version of New York, New York, to the guitar version, and he seemed to feel this song and ease nicely into the evening after the sishi incident. Aside from his brilliant musicianship, one of the most noticeable aspects of the performance is that you think Adams sounds like he is putting absolutely everything into every song and not just going through the motions.
A further amusing story about taking mushrooms preceded a high-energy rendition of I See Monsters from the Love is Hell album, which was celebrating its 20th Anniversary.
And then, still in the first set, Adams gets up and shambolically wanders over the piano again. He proclaims he’s never played this song ‘like ever’ and then knocks out The Smiths’ greatest ever song, There Is a Light, That Will Never Go Out. What a moment. I hope it appears in Qobuz, as does his version of Panic.
Finally, before the intermission, in a three-hour-plus evening, Adams played Please Don’t Let Me Go, which was as heartfelt as any song all evening. Whomever he penned this song for cannot be left in any doubt as to his feelings. I have a feeling, however, that the track was written for a now-departed cat!
After a much-needed intermission and a return with English Girls Approximately, the evening flew by with, let’s call them niche, contemporary (Devolver, Wednesdays, Romeo & Juliet) tracks interspersed with Heartbreaker classics and Love is Hell forgotten favourite, Hotel Chelsea Nights.
A further highlight was a crushingly sincere cover of Oasis’ Cast No Shadow, a homage to fellow flawed genius Richard Ashcroft. The evening concluded warmly with Come Pick Me Up lifting a relatively buoyant audience despite Adams’ self-deprecating outlook.
This Ryan Adams fan, who had misgivings over the allegations (where he has since profusely apologised for his actions and was cleared of wrongdoing by the FBI and others), has had his love of the early catalogue restated. He is left with confirmation of Adams’ undoubted talent and, through his lonely yet funny stories, his flaws.
Here’s the set list on Qobuz, I think…
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