The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

116. Ryan Adams – Come Pick Me Up

How many New Dylans have there been now? Donovan, Bruce Springsteen, Loudon Wainwright III. Jakob Dylan, ironically. Do you play harmonica along with your git-fiddle? Are your songs pamphlet-length retellings of novel-length stories? Are you doomed to either immediate career evolution or failure? Then you are, in fact, just one more in the long, tenuous line of New Dylans. Get in line right behind Ryan Adams, circa 2000.

That the first paragraph of my post about Ryan Adams is actually about Bob Dylan is honestly the biggest compliment I can give. If you told me the homeless guy behind your office sounds like Dylan, I would buy his album. And on Adams' first solo venture after splitting with his band Whiskeytown, 2000's Heartbreaker, there is enough harmonica and tall-tales from the heart lyricism to match any of the former Zimmerman proteges. But this album has something more, something that none of the others (except the Boss) had: Heart. Where others made the mistake of plodding down into pure storytelling and imagery, Ryan Adams combines these with a raw, sad emotionalism not unlike Woody Guthrie or Waylon Jennings. Unlike the other 200 new singer-songwriters who release shitty sappy capo-and-stocking-cap generics every single year, Adams is genuine and believable, not to mention funny and self-deprecating, a skill that only Dylan has truly mastered.

"Come Pick Me Up" is the emotional centerpiece of Adams' entire career. Nine years and ten albums later, he's never come close to tapping this same exposed nerve and putting it out in the ether, a bleeding heart out on display. Although he never recaptured the initial sincerity of this song, this is really enough to redeem an entire career of failed attempts and pompous storm-offs (let's say this decade and artist's 'Billie Jean" shall we?) The harmonica intro lazily sways into a swagger with the other tried and true Dylan staples, the capo'd up guitar and organ. A bluesy line quickly gives way to near silence, exposing Adams' tortured but assured voice. I'm not sure how, but he figures out how to focus the spotlight on the emotion of the song, not the lyrics or the vocals or the instrumentation, but the raw feeling of loss that prompted it. That's impressive. When the second voice joins in and the chorus ramps up, pulling in the plucking banjo and the hazey-jane organ, I almost forget that it's the most overused chord structure in all of popular music. But again, that's not the point. Like Nirvana's soft-loud-soft song structure, this is pure primalism, some natural instinct we have with music that forces us to feel, no matter what, and Ryan Adams plays that shit to a T. He knows what he is doing, and we're just trailing along in his wake of weepy longing. He deftly throws us for a loop with the bridge, not melodically but rythmically now, and when we fall back into the reassuring swagger and harmonica with, FINALLY, the vocals over top, we get the emotional payoff that's been brewing for four and a half minutes. Maybe he'll never be Dylan, but Ryan Adams does something here better than any other artist in his long lineage - plays guitar strings like our heart strings, and brings us along for his sappy, funny, and ultimately fulfilling emotional ride.