Ryan Adams - Halloween Head: Track Review
When I heard that Ryan Adams had a new song called "Halloween Head," of course the first thing I could think of was that dumbass Bush record "Machine Head." Amusingly enough, the chorus to the new Ryan Adams song really does go, "Got a Halloween head." But in a good way, really.
After putting out three albums in 2005, he didn't release anything in 2006 (or the first half of this year, for that matter). But I think he spent a lot of time touring. I saw him here in the STL last summer on the Thursday night before last year's Lollapalooza. I remember he spent a lot of time bantering about eggs, and his personal hygiene (or lack thereof) and arguing with his impossibly tall and hot (from where I was standing) chick bassist, who from what I understand has since left the group. Roffle.
I bring all this up because you can hear quite a bit of it in "Halloween Head," which I think actually bodes well for the album. One of the things about those albums he put out in '05, especially Cold Roses, is that they had more of a full band sound than most of his solo work up until that point. This first single from "Halloween Head" definitely continues that trend and sounds more like Whiskeytown than anything I've heard since the days of Strangers Almanac.
There's also lots of the douchebaggy Ryan Adams that's become legendary in the past few years - the guy who has no problem stopping a concert mid-song to talk to you about eggs, leaving angry messages on random-ass blogs and message boards, kicking people out of his shows for requesting "Summer of '69," and so on and so forth. I didn't bother to count, but there's quite a bit of casual swearing in the lyrics to "Halloween Head." He also yells out guitar solo right before the... um, guitar solo.
Stream/download "Halloween Head."
And you can stream his other new song, a duet with Sheryl Crow of all people, on Ryan Adams' MySpace profile.
