Bonus Album Review
The Long-Awaited BLACKHOLE
Being a fan of Ryan Adams is a lot like believing in Santa Claus. There is a certain mythology that exists, but at the end of the day he is a human, or was a human in the case of Santa Claus, based on St. Nicholas of Myra. The real St. Nicholas had a habit of dropping secret gifts to people and somehow that, and a combination of other things, turned into what we have today.1
One thing Santa doesn’t do is make promises and commitments and then never follow through. He doesn’t promise he will get little Timmy that new bike, but he takes what little Timmy is asking into consideration—if he’s good.
Ryan Adams has teased the release of BLACKHOLE for the last 20 years in some form or another. I won’t bore you with the details or a super detailed timeline. Quick and dirty one is below, so read on. Many internet sleuths and devotees have done pretty good job of that. Upon first listen, which I will get into more later, I really think this would have been an excellent release in 2014.
I, like many others, have carefully curated and stashed away the couple of bootleg versions circulating out there on the internet. A couple of the tracks were released via the PAX-AM single series, “Tomorrowland” and “Disco Queen.” But wait, what’s that coming through my earpiece? Disco Queen is not on the official release, despite Adams saying it was at times the last 20 years. Color me surprised.
A few live versions of songs from the album have been performed here and there, and folks let me tell you the live version of “The Door” absolutely wallops the album version. Check out this version from September 2014 below starting at 49:13ish.
I miss the glory days of The Shining, Mike Viola and Charlie Stavish are no longer in Ryan’s orbit—mostly because they both were originally in Mandy Moore’s orbit I believe. In any event, this version is better than the album in my humble opinion. “The Door” was played one other time, in Philadelphia at the NPR World Cafe—also in September of 2014.
The song, “Catherine” was played live in July of 2014 at the Newport Folk Festival. On my cobbled together version of BLACKHOLE there is a demo version that sounds essentially the same and I am happy to report that the official album version is cleaned up and sounds pretty good.
Quick and Dirty Timeline for the Uninitiated
The first inkling that this album was going to come out was back in 2006, but nothing really came of the announcement. Then in 2007, Adams announced a box set called 20:20 that was supposed to include well-circulated bootlegs all now well-known to Ryan Adams fans worldwide, The Suicide Handbook, 48 Hours, Pink Hearts, Darkbreaker, and Blackhole.2 It should come as no surprise that this project never came to fruition. It even has its own well-sourced Wikipedia article!
When he began playing these songs live, Catherine in particular, many speculated that he was still working on the album again. I know in 2006, some tracks were originally laid down with Jaime Candiloro and Johnny T. Yerington—most of which made it onto the official release. Strangely, or maybe not that strange given the artist, the liner notes are bereft of ANY kind of personnel listing, production, etc. I didn’t buy the CD, so maybe that’s in there?
From 2014, when I think “Catherine” and “The Door” were actually recorded and added to the project, NME did a story on a possible Record Store Day release. Well, that of course did not happen either.
Finally, in 2018, there was another tease of BLACKHOLE and another NME article discussing the “news.” We all know what happened about 6 months after that.
The Music
The official track listing is as follows:
The Door
Call me Back
Help Us
Likening Love to War
Starfire
Just You Wait
For the Sun
Catherine
Tomorrowland
Runaway
When I Smile
Tracks included on the circulated bootleg version(s) as well as the officially released “Disco Queen” that did not make it on the official album (in no particular order):
White Light
The Vanishing
Number 3
When You’re There
Thunderclouds
Disco Queen
Truth or Dare (This one is a ROUGH version of “Call Me Back” above.)
Do I know why that many songs didn’t make the official release? No. However, I would have to guess that many of these demos were not worth rescuing. For example, “White Light” sounds pretty rough. A few of those songs sounded fairly polished or near complete with a little work. I am surprised he didn’t just go all-in and make this a double LP. As we learned with the Tetralogy that was released on New Years Day this year, he has many songs that were on many bootlegs that he can pull from at any time and present it as “new” music.
My first spin of this album was wearing headphones, I wanted to get as much fidelity as I could. I also wanted to see if I could dispel some of the early complaints I had read about: “Too much bass” “guitars too shrill” “this sounds like The Smiths”3. I won’t lie, the mix is not great. I have read the CD version is better, or maybe my pressing is kind of meh? The songs all sound a bit compressed. Now, from an audiophile standpoint, they may have done the egregious thing that some artists do these days, and just press those digital masters to wax and release on vinyl hoping that people will buy it for “better sound.” Either way, I am happy to have it on wax because I am a bit of a completist.
“Help Us” and “Runaway” are the only songs that I have never heard before and are not seemingly found as a different song on the bootleg like “Call Me Back” being originally “Truth or Dare.” I would say “Runaway” is my favorite of the two of songs I have never heard any version of. It is probably the most Smiths-sounding song too. Not quite as bad as his clear ripoff of “The Headmaster Ritual.” At the end of the day, for any fans looking for that Love is Hell era of Ryan Adams, this one really does sound like part 3.
This is usually where I’d provide the songs for y’all to stream, but it will not be released to those platforms until December 6. As a fan, it is nice to see this project finally be given an official release, but after all that has happened since 2019, it seems like a real pyrrhic victory for fans to be getting this release in the same year he dropped 4 other albums. I get the feeling he could have struck while the iron was hot back in 2014 and given this a proper release. It’s not my place to tell an artist what to do or how to act, though.
When it drops to streaming services on December 6, give it as listen and let me know what you think. I don’t think this release will get Ryan Adams the traction and attention he wants, but it’s nice to see that fans that have stuck around are being rewarded.
Not trying to do the history of Santa Claus here.
These are all out there on the internet, easy to find.
What Ryan Adams was going for in 2006 by the way.