Ryan Adams: Love is Hell part 1 and 2

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Love is Hell Part 1
(Herald rating: * * * *)

Love is Hell Part 2
(Herald rating: * * * *)

When maverick American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams presented the songs that now make up these two EPs to his label he was told by the company to go try again.

He did, and his late-2003 album Rock N Roll was the highly satisfactory, if knockabout result.

But the Love is Hell collections - which at nine and 10 tracks apiece are effectively album-length anyway - are reminders of just how affecting a balladeer he can be. Both his Heartbreaker and Gold albums have proved he's a smarter songsmith when he turns it down.

As well in this split-personality collection there's much further evidence of his ongoing musical identity crisis. On Rock N Roll he did his bit for the 80s revival and embraced his English rock influences. Here, he's doing that and more.

Most obvious is his brilliant solo cover of Oasis' Wonderwall on Part 1, while on Part 2's English Girls Approximately he rings in one Marianne Faithfull to help frighten the microphone.

There are many an echo of his apparent Smiths infatuation - in a sort of Springsteen hybrid on This House is Not For Sale, or applying for that tribute band job on City Rain, City Streets.

Add some finger-picked solo acoustic moments which suggest the Anglo-folk of Nick Drake (Thank You Louise) more than Adams' own alt-country roots (embraced briefly on Please Do Not Let Me Go).

The New York-based Adams here sounds very much like a man happier to be on the cover of NME than Rolling Stone.

But even if sometimes he also sounds like Jeff Buckley (Part 1 opener Political Scientist), Leonard Cohen (Part 2 Opener My Blue Manhattan) or even Prince (the Purple Rain-like Hotel Chelsea Nights), the style-hopping can't disguise the emotionally bruised sentiments behind the songs.

That's at its most tender on the likes of the piano ballad of Shadowlands and the quietly desperate Afraid Not Scared.

Playing these albums individually, it's hard to know what the great lost Adams album might have felt like if these songs had been properly sequenced.

Confused and traumatic, possibly. But in all likelihood, strangely brilliant.

Label: Lost Highway