Review: Ryan Adams at The Olympia 8th June 2011
By Sean Cullivan
Ryan Adams’ second Irish show on his solo acoustic tour was to a sold out Olympia theatre on Wednesday night. I must admit I had mixed feelings about this concert. On one hand I was delighted at getting to see one of the 21st century’s best songwriters in action. However, I’d also heard plenty of horror stories about Adams’ solo acoustic concerts where he’d show up sullen and moody and only play songs that he’d written that day. I’m also not really a fan of his live material with backing band The Cardinals where he tries too hard to be a rocker. As it turned out, though, he was fantastic.
The opening act was Jesse Malin. He played six songs interspersed with lengthy monologues consisting of cringe-worthy anti-corporate clichés, stories about growing up in New York and criticism of Brooklyn hipsters. As a warm-up act he was suitably terrible.
Ryan Adams took to the stage at 9:20pm. It was immediately apparent that he was in a good mood when someone in the audience roared out “how’s it going Ryan” in a thick country accent and Adams whispered back “don’t make me nervous” before launching into a fantastic rendition of Oh My Sweet Carolina. He continued his strong start with Call Me On Your Way Back Home, another track off his acclaimed debut album Heartbreaker. Adams paused for some joking with the crowd before going on to Everybody Knows off the Easy Tiger record.
The rest of the show was of a similarly high standard. Pretty much everything you could want him to play, he played. In My Time of Need, Firecracker, Damn Sam (I Love a Woman that Rains) and Let It ride were just some of the crowd favourites from the set.
Throughout the show Adams was in great form. As I mentioned earlier, he had a reputation in the past for being moody and confrontational when playing live but he seems to have mellowed with age or maybe his break from music has refreshed him. At one stage he paused to banter with the crowd about being on what he called the “Barry’s Tea wave” and even when his guitar tuner malfunctioned he managed to turn it into a joke about Star Trek saying “I’m gonna play them all the slow ones, Scotty”.
Twice Adams made up joke songs on the spot. The first, Mr. Man after a guy in the audience shouted at him to play a love song and the second after someone asked him to play Chopsticks which lead into a song he dubbed Animal Jail. Everyone had a good laugh at those and he really won the audience with his wit as well as his performance.
For a solo acoustic show the crowd was by and large quiet but several times people started cheering when Adams played an intro only for him to stop and say “that could be anything”. He seemed a bit baffled by this behaviour on more than one occasion but always managed to put a humorous spin on it to keep control of the audience.
The highlight of the gig for me was a piano version of his biggest hit New York, New York off the album Gold. He only used the piano twice, for New York, New York and Sylvia Plath, both of which were high points of what was ultimately an outstanding concert.
He came back on for an encore around 11pm which consisted of Bartering Lines from the Heartbreaker album and the last song of the evening was Strawberry Wine, a long song off 29, which I feel is one of his worst albums. I personally felt that Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard off Gold would have been a perfect finish and would have turned a wonderful concert into a magical concert. Still, it was an absolutely fantastic show and I really hope he comes back soon. 5 Stars