Review:  Ryan Adams on melodic, calmer ground with new album

Ryan Adams says that before he wrote and recorded his new, self-titled album, he scrapped an entirely different record he’d completed with the esteemed English producer Glyn Johns, who earlier had overseen Adams’ “Ashes & Fire” from 2011.

No surprise there: At 39, Adams already has made more music than many — perhaps most — artists twice his age; his catalog is full of limited-edition releases that live in the shadows of his higher-profile projects. What’s unexpected about “Ryan Adams” if you know the record’s back story, though, is how even-tempered it feels, not at all like the impulsive bloodletting its origin story might suggest.

Featuring a small rock band that includes Tal Wilkenfeld on bass and Benmont Tench on organ, the 11-track set has a bigger, more forceful sound than the acoustic “Ashes & Fire”; “Kim” even crests with a noisy guitar solo by Johnny Depp, one of many luminaries known to drop by regularly at Adams’ Hollywood recording studio.

But the handsome melodic hooks and sturdy roots-music grooves, some of which are downright Tom Petty-ish, provide a hard-won equilibrium in songs about searching for relief from unspecified ailments. “All my life been shaking, wanting something / Holding everything I had like it was broken,” he sings in the album’s low-slung opener, “Gimme Something Good.”

Whatever Adams was after, he appears to have found it.

Ryan Adams

“Ryan Adams”

(Pax Am/Blue Note)

Two and a half stars out of four