Orphans, Bastards and Timewasters

The Assignment: Ryan Adams put out (at the time of writing) 11 albums on his website, accessible (at the time of writing) here. You’ll note they were all recorded under aliases – DJ Reggie, the Shit, and WereWolph. Hoboy, here we go. The task ahead of me? Simple. Answer the natural questions: (a) WTF? (b) are they any good? (c) in the infinite cycle of decay and rebirth that governs the natural order of things can one person structure their actions in such a way as to achieve extraordinary transcendence through the sheer casting off of the implicit logic of cause and effect so as to realize through randomness the intelligent designs inherent in the eventuality of serendipitous spontaneity? (d) no, seriously, WTF?

Hypotheses:

1. Ryan Adams has got our number. I’ve always suspected that Andy Warhol spent hours filming himself SLEEPING because in some smart-but-antisocial corner of his clever mind he was utterly glowing in an orgy of cynical schadenfreude over the notion that people would buy his shtick so deeply that they’d watch it, fawn over it, spend a thousand cocktail-party hours gibbering about how existentially meaningful it was, and he could sit back and smirk beneath his platinum mop knowing that he had pulled the string and watched the clueless self-appointed experts prove their essential gullibility. Adams has got to know very well that the rap on him is that he can’t edit, won’t edit, and most of all, needs an editor, and so, naturally, the contrarian imp that he is, he churns out ten albums worth of musical diarrhea in one sitting to set our tongues wagging. The fact that you’re reading this is proof that he won.

2. A simple mix of hyperactivity and in-studio boredom coupled with the fact that Ryan Adams, refreshingly enough, isn’t so precious about the process of songwriting that he feels any shame in sharing outtakes-of-outtakes-of-sketches with his shrinking-but-sometimes-slobbering public (see #1 above).

3. So tortured by the pressures exerted upon him by those who expected his early precociousness to flower into breathtaking, deeply culturally significant, legendary talent, Adams continues the task of frightened Westerbergesque self-sabotage by repeatedly becoming the punchline ad absurdam of his own inside jokes and ironic pose-coppings.

4. A mix of insomnia, clearly way too much caffeine and too-cheap studio time, coupled with a lack of self-consciousness because, after all, he’s giving the stuff away for free.

5. Ryan is actually legitimately nuts, artistically lost and rather than stuffing his ten-part Chinese Democracy somewhere in the floorboards, he’s decided to just release it all while he makes tea for his sock puppets.

6. It’s actually fun to let off steam, and why not with music?