The enigmatic juggernaut that is Ryan Adams keeps on rollin'. It's exhausting to be a Ryan fan - he's just so prolific, and it's become difficult to digest one new album before another one comes along. That being said, it's important that you spend some time with his latest, Easy Tiger. What we have here is a truly great American songwriter who's really just hitting his stride.

He’s been one of the most prolific songwriters over the past decade; a musical shape-shifter whose ambition and fearless desire to create regardless the genre has made him one of the most admired songwriters in recent memory. For Ryan Adams making music was the only option. So when a near career-ending wrist injury forced him to not just slow down, but halt his music the future was unclear to say the least. The announcement of Ashes & Fire, Ryan’s new release, brought a new kind of excitement but the usual question of what to expect. No it’s not a metal record, nor is it a Cardinals collaboration or trip back to Rock N Roll. Simply stated, it’s Ryan Adams.

The enigmatic juggernaut that is Ryan Adams keeps on rollin'. It's exhausting to be a Ryan fan - he's just so prolific, and it's become difficult to digest one new album before another one comes along. That being said, it's important that you spend some time with his latest, Easy Tiger. What we have here is a truly great American songwriter who's really just hitting his stride.

Wrapping up a dizzying year of activity, Adams new album "29" was released the last week of 2005. It was his third (!) official release of the year, hot on the heels of Jacksonville City Nights and the double CD Cold Roses.

Cold Roses, the new double album from Ryan Adams, is probably very much the record that his hardcore fans have been waiting for him to make since his days with Whiskeytown. But since his 2000 collection of rustic Dylan-esque songs on Heartbreaker, alt-country rocker Ryan Adams made a nod towards his love for Morrissey and Brit-rock on 2003’s Rock N Roll and was followed by the dark double Love Is Hell (Parts 1 and 2). Now he returns with the 18 song Cold Roses. Writing for amazon.com, music critic Don McLeese sums up Roses succinctly: “This double-disc gem delineates the possibilities of alt-country in 2005 while transcending the limitations typically associated with the genre.”

When Ryan Adams’ first band Whiskeytown debuted in the mid-Nineties they were one of the few “alt-country” bands that critics and fans of the genre felt could break through to mainstream success. Truth is however, while Whiskeytown was a critical success, creatively that had as much to do with “country” music as the Eagles did during their prime. If anything, Adams established himself as an excellent songwriter with a variety of influences, country music being just one of them.