Ryan Adams

The "Year of Ryan Adams" hasn't quite garnered the attention one would expect. When announced at the start of 2005, the plan was bold: three new studio albums within twelve months, one of them a double album. So the critics started their tutting: why should Adams, who they haven't liked since 2000's Heartbreaker, even consider one-upping indie-darling Bright Eyes' douple-drop year? Well, Adams' has let the music speak for itself: Cold Roses, May's double-album, made for a strong start with 18 of the country-tinged rock songs that made the songwriter popular. Then, Jacksonville City Nights, released in September, went way country (and way good) and slipped under the radar. Now, 29, the final release of '05 will drops with hardly a whisper of publicity, just five days before Christmas.

29 was the first of the 2005 releases to be recorded, put to tape shortly after recovery from a career threatening wrist injury, and it's fairly dark, completing the cold, rainy-day boxset Adams began with 2003's Love is Hell. The standouts are "Blue Sky Blues," a simple piano song that suddenly billows and soars away as strings sweep through the last two minutes, and "Carolina Rain," five minutes of strong poetic storytelling capped by a mammoth, cinematic climax of a chorus. Adams is at his best when he's twisting what's left of his southern twang into lines like "One night at the diner over eggs/Over easy she showed me the length of her legs," and 29's late night fatalism is a good setting for his repeating imagery of diners, dreams and lakes.

The transition between the delicate "Starlite Diner" and flamenco-infused "The Sadness" is awkward, demanding a sudden adjustment of stereo volume. The startling change in tone is especially frustrating for so late in the record, but "Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part," written for a grieving friend, refocuses 29 on dreamy sadness. Only Adams can make the death of a child and the pain of lost love sound so beautiful.

On "Strawberry Wine," an 8-minute narrative that weaves three parts of a story around a single acoustic guitar and a mandolin, Adams asks what may be the question that now hangs over the remainder of his career: "Can you still have famous last words/if you're somebody nobody knows?" Because if 2005 couldn't bring him to the forefront of the modern music scene, nothing will, and the former "It" boy of alt-country will have to be satisfied with what he has: a smallish but loyal fan base and a huge back-catalogue just waiting for history's final judgment.