Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
Cold Roses
Lost Highway

Since Whiskeytown disbanded in 1999, Ryan Adams has adopted a number of styles, drifting variously through pop, rock and punk, often with a suggestion, but little more, of his country roots. Indeed, only his first solo release, Heartbreaker, even came close. Certain performers thrive on reinvention, but Adams' forays away from alt-country have been less successful, in part because Whiskeytown was arguably the genre's finest act. Still, Adams' inability to match his Whiskeytown form was never cause for too much concern; his subsequent releases were interesting enough on their own terms. More important, until the release of Cold Roses, there was consolation in the fact that he hadn't really tried to make an alt-country record.

Without the first disc, the double disc Cold Roses wouldn't be half bad. As it is, Adams' return to alt-country, supported by his new band, the Cardinals, is baggy and watered down by nine opening songs that are unworthy of the second set. Still, Cold Roses sounds less like a follow-up to Rock N Roll (his unapologetic emulation of the Strokes) than an album that might have foreshadowed Heartbreaker, and that's reason to listen.

After the first two songs, the first disc is largely mediocre. The opener, mid-tempo "Magnolia Mountain," meanders self-assuredly through nearly six minutes of solid songwriting and assertive guitar. Next up, "Sweet Illusions" is satisfying country-pop weighed down by several awkward verses ("You never knew me though I tried my best/ I'm just lonely and sad I guess/ You gave me everything you really tried/ Thanks") and an adult contemporary chorus so catchy it sounds like a Shania Twain rip-off. Then the disc loses direction, toiling through seven forgettable songs.

Contrasting sleepy lyrics with a hopping delivery, "Easy Plateau" confidently kicks off the second set. "Let It Ride," the album's first single, gallops along to a lively steel guitar, and though Adams sings "Twenty-seven years of nothing but failures and promises that I couldn't keep, oh lord," it's driven and authoritative. Adams also sings in his natural voice, which is refreshing after the all-falsetto "Meadowlake Street" and self-aware punk persona on "Beautiful Sorta," both from the first disc.

The second disc's next seven songs are all well crafted (if afflicted with too much rose imagery), with the exception of "Blossom," where a compelling buildup fizzles at the chorus. Whereas the middle and end of the first disc sounded tedious, the same region of the second disc, especially "If I Am a Stranger," "Dance All Night," and "Life Is Beautiful," is one pleasure after another, and "Friends" — subdued instrumentation, sober lyrics (it has already been used in an episode of "The O.C.") — is a fine way to end the album.

Both discs begin with declarations of fatigue: "I want to go to Magnolia Mountain and lay my weary head down" and "I want an easy plateau, some place to rest my head." This overriding sense of laziness that shades the first half of the album doesn't mean that with a leaner selection of songs Cold Roses would be a perfect specimen of alt-country. Instead, Cold Roses is merely that, a specimen of alt-country, and the first in a while from Ryan Adams.

— George Quraishi (george dot quraishi at gmail dot com)