Ryan Adams and the Cardinals released their new record Cardinology this week.  Ryan Adams has been quite prolific throughout his career, but he hadn’t officially released anything yet in 2008.  Was Cardinology worth the wait?

In a word – YES.  This is one hell of a band ladies and gentlemen, and this album feels like they have finally made their collective creative peace and gone for it – esp. guitarist/vocalist Neil Casal and Ryan.  I’m a sucker for a great harmony, and these two really know how to sing together and are obviously sonically simpatico.  They are also excellent guitarists in an understated, riffy sort of way, and the guitar work is about as solid as I’ve heard from anybody in a long time.  The tradecraft learned while constantly touring really shows – listening to some of the tracks I get the feeling every pick stroke, every pickup mic setting is there for a reason.  And the pedal steel played by John Graboff is as good as any you’ll hear anywhere.

I will admit that on first run through I was somewhat disappointed by the record because the songs themselves are less hooky and don’t all hang together as well as the previous RA albums I play so often.  The catchiest songs are front loaded, and from there they really slow down and become less accessible till you get to a really raw piano only ballad “Stop” for the last track.   But listening to the album a few times (esp on headphones) I at some point “got it”.  Its a lot less about hooks than it is about making a really great band get everything they can out of every track.  Thanks – applause.

That being said the single “Fix It” is right there in the pantheon of great Ryan Adams songs.  The lyrics are genius.  I automatically assumed at first that he was referring to “fixing” a broken relationship (life’s greatest cliche?), but what he’s really referring to is fixing the game of breaking up.  Its dark and funny and personal all at the same time.  And the song itself rocks – I found myself playing it on repeat more than once this week.

I know its not a game

but it feels like losing

when someone you love throws you away.

I’d fix it

if I could

and I’d always win (and you would always lose)

I’d always win in the end

Cardinology – Fix It

Cardinology – Evergreen

Cardinology on Amazon

Review at Aquarium Drunkard

Update:  Someone from the Cardinals followed me on Twitter and just tweeted this sweet live acoustic show:

Posted: October 31st, 2008 under mp3blog.
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Great post/

The most insidious ignorance meme going forward is the liberal-bias-in-media propaganda. Lately (the last week or so) I am seeing a lot of objective data being presented by the MSM about the proportion of “positive” coverage Obama has gotten vs. the amount of “negative” coverage McCain’s campaign has gotten, and then using that data to draw the conclusion that the media is biased.

The problem with that line of logic is that OBAMA/BIDEN ARE OBJECTIVELY THE BETTER CAMPAIGNERS AND THEIR CAMPAIGN HAS BEEN OPERATED MUCH MORE SKILLFULLY THAN MCCAIN/PALIN’s HAS.

By any impartial objective measurement this can be shown to be true – politics aside. Obama has made fewer mistakes, been more consistently on message, been more skillful with his communication strategy, been the better debater, given the better speeches, and shown better judgment. When Obama has made a mistake (clinging to guns and religion, having a batshit crazy minister friend) the press has been all over him. But his mistakes in aggregate don’t compare with not knowing the difference between a Sunni and Shiite, prattling on and on about the surge and whether its successful or not, choosing a woefully unqualified ideologue as a running mate, saying he’s going to suspend his campaign and cancel the debate and then not doing it, saying the economy fundamentally sound, scowling like a crazy old coot during the debate, etc. Obama has kicked McCain’s ass at politics for 5 months and an objective non-biased press should indicate that fact, just like the polls do now and just like the ballots will next week. There is a difference between fairness and justice, and an objective press doesn’t have a duty to make sure the positive/negative ratio is 1 for both candidates. When one guy is better, its OK for that fact to come out.

But to come back to Mark’s post, perpetuating this liberal bias myth is the ultimate Orwellian capitalization of a populace’s ignorance. As long as the Republican spin meisters can find a home deep oin our public consciousness for this line of bull, they’ll have a reliable patch of ignorance from which to launch their other misleading screeds. It doesn’t matter what FACTS YOU READ OR HEAR, the only unbiased truth comes from Hannity and Rush and the other troglodytes.

Originally posted as a comment by steveray on Mark, my words using Disqus.

Posted: October 30th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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MTV just launched a cool site that has legal embeds for their entire music video catalog.  Its also integrated with Flux, which is excellent. Here is a Wilco vid grabbed at random. As of now there doesn’t appear to be any advertising, although I’m betting that will change.

Posted: October 27th, 2008 under digital entertainment, digital music, flux, mp3blog, social networking, work.
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