Ryan Adams

Vicar Street

★★★☆☆

There have, to use Taylor Swift’s terminology, been several eras of Ryan Adams. The North Carolina-born musician began as a darling of the alt-country music scene with Whiskeytown, before embarking on a successful solo career that exploded with 2001’s Gold. Later, a sorrowful cover of Oasis’s Wonderwall provided him with the indie-rock crossover appeal; he formed a new band, The Cardinals, which imploded and would later go on to famously record a track-by-track cover of the aforementioned Swift’s album 1989. It’s safe to say that his career has charted an unpredictable course.

Adams has also become known for less than savoury reasons. In 2019, a New York Times report saw several female musicians allege harassment and controlling behaviour, as well as the alleged exchange of graphic texts with an underage girl. In 2020, Adams has apologised for “the ways I’ve mistreated people throughout my life and career” in a statement but offered no specific response to allegations. As with Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and many others, the age-old conundrum of separating the art from the artist rears its head once more.

The now 50-year-old Adams is at Vicar Street for the first of two sold-out gigs celebrating the 25th anniversary of his debut (and arguably, his best) album Heartbreaker. He has always had a fractious relationship with his fandom and following reports of tantrums, walk-offs and bizarre behaviour from the weekend’s gig in Belfast, there is a nervy edginess to the crowd. He takes the stage carrying a cane and wearing a three-piece suit before launching into a loose, bluesy version of Heartbreaker’s sprightly opening track To Be Young. It’s clear that this is not going to be an ordinary gig.

What follows over the next three hours is certainly unorthodox. It’s clear that Adams seems fragile, to say the least; an array of rambling anecdotes trail off unfinished, he stops some songs abruptly to address members of the crowd, and makes repeated references to both his seizure disorder (there is a stern warning about flash photography tonight) and dying. At one point, he references the 2019 controversy, muttering how he’s “terrified of women” and “they called me a lech” and something about “faked texts”, but later, he requests that any “hot Irish girls” in the audience come to his hotel, describing its location and the name his room is booked under. The audience, who have been entirely respectful throughout, react to the erratic babble with a mixture of puzzlement and nervous laughter. It’s behaviour that he may think is endearingly eccentric, but it creates an often unsettling tone and comes across as self-indulgent, bordering on narcissistic.

The thing is, when Adams actually lets the music do the talking, he is often in tremendous form. Winding Wheel, dedicated to his young son, is an early highlight; the soft, sonorous rumble of Amy is another, and the delicate ripple of Oh My Sweet Carolina is perfectly-pitched. Surrounded by an array of lamps, he switches between acoustic guitar and upright piano, except for when he takes up an electric guitar, backed by two musicians – one of them his “merch guy” – for a ferocious Bartering Lines.

There is a 20-minute interlude where Adams allows the crowd to “go get a beer”, during which he remains on stage, dancing around and twirling his cane. The second set is filled with cuts from his other albums, as well as a smattering of covers including Fats Domino’s Ain’t That a Shame, a scuzzy, ramshackle Waiting for My Man, and a tentative tribute to Shane MacGowan in the form of a feeble take on Dirty Old Town. His own material fares better: the tremulous shimmer of Desire is goosebump-inducing, while a Bolero-infused version of Gimme Something Good is delightful and closer Come Pick Me Up is a huge crowd-pleaser. Yet once again, the rambling anecdotes are patience-stretching, tipping from “quirky” into “tedious”; if Adams was to receive a report card, it would probably read “Ryan is clearly a talented musician, but he needs to apply himself more.” It’s certainly a gig that nobody will forget anytime soon, but perhaps not for all the right reasons.