Folksy Troubadour Brings Back Country

Lost somewhere in the continuing urbanization of North Carolina, in the mass production of giant cigarette warehouses, in the slow homogenization of American society and the destruction of small-town America, lies the rubble of what was country music. Distorted in recent years, with more "country" artists hailing from Los Angeles or Chicago than Nashville, the genre has gone the way of over-produced pap, flavored vodka where pure grain alcohol once flowed. Thankfully there is Jacksonville City Nights, the second album of the year from Ryan Adams. Adams is an intriguing artist, a man who has turned the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" into a dirge and, on one tour, made a sing-along out of Madonna's "Like a Virgin." But it is in this true kick-stomp country that Adams finds a unique and canonical voice for the future of Americana.

On the album's opener, "A Kiss Before I Go," Adams and his four-piece band The Cardinals romp their way through some good old-fashioned honky-tonk, the singer's normally plaintive voice wailing and whooping as he sings, "You can't find the truth in a house of lies/you can't see tomorrow with yesterday's eyes/one shot, one beer and a place where nobody cries." It's a rollicking opening number, and it stands as a mark of the quality of the album as a whole. "The End" is also especially strong, beginning with the heartbreaking couplet "I don't know the sound of my father's voice/I don't even know how he says my name," then rumbling through a visit to Jacksonville, N.C., Adams' childhood home. Each chorus bursts with emotion with the singer crying, "Oh Jacksonville, how you burden my soul/how you hold all my dreams captive."

Rural North Carolina is no new subject for Adams, whose earlier band work with Whiskeytown also featured a Jacksonville-ode ("Jacksonville Skyline," off of Pneumonia), and whose first solo effort oozed traces of the artist's Southern roots. But now, six years after the end of Whiskeytown, Adams' own maturity and distance from the simple life of his childhood has paid huge dividends in terms of examining his own relationship with the South. Much like Junebug, Phil Morrison's excellent film from earlier this year, Jacksonville City Nights makes no positive or negative generalizations about the region, but rather stands as a pitch-perfect representation of its feel and lifestyle.

In "Pa," the album's best track, the singer-songwriter details the death of a wife, a mother, a father, and the grieving process of a son and a daughter-all in 4 minutes. It seems a monumental task, but the simplicity of lyrics and ease of craft that Adams displays is even more astounding. He's always been incredible at using his voice as an instrument of mood, and here, his lyrics stand beside his voice, evoking at various times barren country roads, humid nights and half-empty whiskey bottles.

Adams is often compared to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Gram Parsons and, on his more rockish days, The Strokes. But while he can sound a bit like each of those artists at various times, it is Adams' steadfast refusal to be confined to one genre or style that is most reminiscent of early rock pioneers. This is at once what makes him frustrating for critics and exciting for fans: the gnawing anticipation of what will come next. It is also what keeps his music sounding fresh.

Many will claim that Adams lacks the editing ability to produce a single classic album, but it's the crackling energy, the passion and the honesty of the imperfections that make his music so powerful. In the last minute of the Jacksonville City Nights, as Adams softly whispers "Why do you do me wrong/When the rope gets tight?" with enough throaty passion to bring Ann Coulter back from the underworld, it's easy to believe that Adams will one day be to our generation what his predecessors were to our parents.