Gig Review: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Tuesday 3rd February, The Opera House

8:35pm: "I'll give you ten bucks if you set off the fire alarm." I give the boyfriend a dirty look. He looks back pleadingly. "Twenty bucks?" Cue another dirty look. "Okay, fifty."

"You know, I didn't force you to come to this concert," I say, more amused than irritated. The excitement is mounting and, as lame as it would be to see a concert by myself, I'm looking forward to seeing Ryan Adams so much that if Jacob decided he just wanted to leave, I probably wouldn't notice.

"I didn't say I didn't want to be here," he clarifies. "I just said I'd give you fifty bucks if you set off the fire alarm." This is, of course, Jacob's way of saying "I'm bored", which in all honesty is probably fair enough. The concert hasn't started yet and we've been here since 7.30. Why oh why do I never remember that gigs never ever start on time? I should know this by know. I've done enough gigs myself. We have already seen a duo singing rather modern arrangements of Maori waiata which involved lots of "come on guys, you know this, sing along!" so I'm assuming this means that we'll get Ryan Adams and the Cardinals onstage at about 9pm. This means, of course, that there's 25 more minutes to keep the boyfriend entertained.

When I went to the ticket office a week after tickets to Ryan Adams and the Cardinals went onsale, I was informed that there were very few left, so I bought two on the spot, figuring I'd be able to find someone to go with me. Boyfriend seemed the easiest option. Rewind to three weeks ago when Jacob realised he'd never actually heard Ryan Adams before. I lent him the Cardinology album I'd gotten from my sister for Christmas. A few days later, we had the following conversation:

Jacob: "So, I listened to that CD you lent me."
Rose: "Oh yeah? What did you think."
Jacob: *pause for effect, then continues* "Well... it made me really angry."
Rose: *pause, as is unsure how to continue* "Okay..."
Jacob: "I tried to like it. I really did. It just... it made me really angry."
Rose: *silence - is still unsure how to continue, thoughts flying through her head like 'Ryan Adams is one of my favourite artists ever' ... 'how is "it made me really angry" any kind of response to listening to his album?' ... 'clearly, I have nothing in common with this man and should break up with him immediately'....*
Jacob: "I'm sorry! I really tried. Maybe they'll be better live?"

This lead to an ensuing conversation where I decided it was best not to take him to the concert if all it was going to do was make him "really angry". He seemed to agree. I was sure I could find someone else to go along. I had someone lined up who unfortunately couldn't make it at the last minute. So there I was on February 2nd, looking forward to the prospect of going to see a concert all by myself. Jacob called that evening and I commented that I was going alone. His reaction was surprising. "I'll just get work off and go with you." I took a moment to point out that going to a concert where you don't like the music was a bit like drilling a hole through your ear - pointless, messy and painful. He insisted, however, that he had listened to the CD again and really liked it. "But you gave the CD back to me." He then informed me he'd dropped the files to his MP3 player and had listened again and really liked it. "You're completely full of it." No, he informs me - in fact, he's deadly serious. This went on for some time until I realised he probably wasn't going to let this go. Oh well, I figured. I always like Jacob's company and he's a theatre student - if he truly, truly hated the music, he'd just have to act like he liked it, considering all the fuss he made about going to the concert with me. Consider it a test of his acting abilities.

8.55pm: I have not set off the fire alarm. Jacob has not given me fifty dollars. He has, however, bought a drink and is sitting there, looking slightly less agitated and slightly less bored. The lights in the room start to dim. I look at the time on my phone and realise my estimate of 9pm start was pretty much right on schedule. And here we go...

First impression: that's one hell of a weird stage. The band's symbol is right there in the middle of the stage behind the drum kit and attached to it is a giant gong. I wonder what they're going to do with the giant gong. Also, two giant blue roses hanging from either side of the stage. Fairly certain it's a reference to Cold Roses. It really does seem like Ryan Adams has a thing about roses. I think there was one in the middle of his webpage for awhile, if I recall correctly. Probably my musings about the stage, along with trying to figure out which one of the many skinny looking men on stage is actually Ryan Adams, is the reason why I can't remember for the life of me what the first song he played was. I enjoyed it - to be honest, I've yet to met a Ryan Adams song I can't stand to listen to - but I cannot remember what it was. From that song, they went straight into something I actually knew - "Two", which I've always very much enjoyed (I like the opening lyrics: 'if you take me back / back to your place / I'll try not to bother you, I promise') Knowing the song made it a lot easier to appreciate but I still felt like they hadn't quite warmed up yet.

Going into the third song, I realised that aside from a "Hello, Wellington", no one in the band had really said all that much yet. I was quickly distracted by the awesomeness that was a guitar driven version of "I See Monsters" which culminated in the truly epic wailing of guitars and my realisation that this band know what they're doing and play extremely well together. My earlier comment about not having warmed up yet - not necessarily a general hadn't warmed up but hadn't warmed up to the audience. I felt like they were a bunch of guys having an awesome time jamming together but not necessarily engaging with the audience. Sometime after "I See Monsters" finished, Jacob commented to me "okay, so that was cool"... and I felt quite justified in having brought him along.

I'm going by memory on the set list here and I'm going by what stuck in my mind. There were songs that were completely inoffensive that I enjoyed at the time but were easy enough to forget. I'm fairly certain that the next song that stuck in my head was "Crossed Out Name" from Cardinology. Despite the boyfriend's non-appreciation of Cardinology, I actually thought it was a pretty decent album and "Crossed Out Name" was one of my favourite tracks from it. They do it very differently live! It's got a more melancholy feel to it recorded and less frantic instrumentation, whereas to me live it sounded... well, frantic. Frantic in a good way. "Crossed Out Name" has some fantastic lyrics in it that I love that were perhaps lost to someone who hadn't heard the studio version due to the noise but to me the frantic instrumentation really worked with the feel of the lyric. What sticks out in my head lyrically is "I kiss her mouth and I know / for everything there is a word, for everything but this..." Studio version conveys this quieter sense of desperation but in the live version, the sense of desperation is stronger and more urgent. I can't say which I prefer as both have their merits but I did thoroughly enjoy this song.

"When The Stars Go Blue" was a crowd favourite, being one of the more well known of Ryan's songs and was done beautifully live. (I admit - there was singing along, right from the moment I found a song I knew the words to). Here's where the order of what went on in my head gets a little hazy so I'm just going to go with a vague approximation of order and the songs that stuck out in my head. "Everybody Knows" was decent, not amazing, but decent and I do always enjoy it (although it reminds me of "Two" and I liked "Two" better from Easy Tiger... Easy Tiger is a little same-y in places). "Fix It" was pretty awesome - done kind of reggae styles, which I did enjoy, and also seemed to loosen the band up, as they started bantering right after the song. From then on in, things started to feel more comfortable. They had a bit of a rave about how much they liked Wellington - Ryan dubbed it "Chillington" and continued to call it thus the remainder of the concert.

I was not expecting to hear "Come Pick Me Up" at the concert but I was very, very, very happy to, as I adore the song. He announced first that he didn't necessarily agree with this song anymore... or at least, wasn't wearing the right outfit for it. Cue about 2 minutes straight of clothing related puns. Then he was into it and I recognised it within a few seconds and was insanely excited because a) awesome song and b) harmonica! Oh, and have I mentioned I love "Come Pick Me Up"? I think it's something to do with a mellow sounding song with hilariously depressing lyrics. "Come pick me up / take me out / f**k me up / steal my records / screw all my friends / they're all full of sh*t" .... I did quite like his announcement at the end: "So, that was my well-adjusted ballad".

One of the standout songs of the night was "Cold Roses" with some fantastic 4 part vocal harmonies that were just so, so, so tight. Great vocal harmonies are something I really, really love so I was pretty darn excited. They really did a fabulous job and it almost made up for the distraction of the two big blue lit up roses at the back of the stage (although to be fair, you got used to them in the end). And of course, the crowd went pretty nuts for the cover of Oasis's "Wonderwall" that Ryan Adams does so well. The key to a good cover is always making it different from the original and it was sure as hell different. I'm a big fan of the Ryan Adams "Wonderwall" because of the lack of whiny Oasis vocals - I do realise that others feel differently, but allow me my opinion - Ryan Adams > Oasis. Always.

Somewhere around here they had a break where Ryan waxed poetic about Laser Force and how gutted he was that he wouldn't be around for Thursday, where apparently you can pay $15 and play all the arcade games you want and laser tag between 7 and 11. Sounds like a good deal. You may have sold me on that, Ryan. Maybe next week.


"Oh My God, Whatever, Etc." was a happy surprise. It had a real quiet intensity to it and reminded me exactly what that was the first song that really got stuck in my head on my first listen of Easy Tiger. The lyrics are quite something - stand out in my mind "everybody tips, but not enough to knock me over". This had a really great feel to it and I really, really enjoyed it. Somewhere around here they did a couple of numbers where Ryan went without guitar - did I mention the guitar swapping? I don't think I mentioned the guitar swapping. The first few tracks, I swear he changed guitar pretty much every song, it was mildly distracting but also really kept me thinking "how many guitars does one guy need?" and "poor guy who has to keep coming onstage to swap guitars". Anyway, Ryan did comment that he didn't like being the front man, he didn't have the right jacket and then proceeded to do... something involving his wrist, which he then described as a bracelet made with metal from outer space (this guy is nuts, I love crazy guys... I wasn't the one yelling "I love you, Ryan" but had boyfriend not been sitting next to me, I may have). I did particularly enjoy him sitting on an amp reading what looked like a comic book while the rest of the band rocked out an instrumental break. Heh.

He got the guitar back for "Born Into A Light" and... something else that they finished on, I can't remember the song but I do remember being impressed and entertained. The whole way through they looked like they were having a heck of a lot of fun and by the end it was clear they were just enjoying themselves. I like nothing more than watching musicians enjoying themselves. So the show finished, we clapped for ages and ages and ages for an encore... and then something awesome happened.

Firstly, I have to insist that I've been a Ryan Adams fan long before this song, but I was absolutely entertained to discover that the first encore song they played was "Goodnight Rose". When the lyrics came in at the chorus and Jacob realised what they were singing, he did give me a rather bemused look. In response... shut up, that's awesome. I could hold to the illusion that he was singing to me, though he clearly wasn't. Still... Ryan Adams sang my name, how cool is that? Then a second awesome thing happened. I'd been hanging out for "Magick" from Cardinology and that's what they finished the show on. "Magick" is two minutes and seventeen seconds of really tight, really rocking awesomeness and I pretty much squealed when I heard it start. I got given a bemused look for that, as well. In my defense, it's a great song.

11.03pm: A very, very happy Rose leaves the Opera House. Boyfriend is appeased. Comments to me at the bus stop "they're much better live". All in all... a win.