Ryan Adams @ DAR

Moving from guitar to organ to piano to harmonica, Adams showed off his musicianship without stopping to take credit for anything. He and his band — made up of a second guitarist, a pedal steel player, a bassist and a drummer — were flawless. As they played through the first dozen songs, drawing mainly from this year's Easy Tiger with a few older tracks peppered in, musical missteps were completely absent. The audience was captivated when the band was playing; during a long a capella moment on "Cold Roses," you could hear a pin drop in the crowd.

One of the highlights of the night was the re-arrangement of "Halloweenhead". The version on the record is one of t Easy Tiger's low points because it just doesn't sound like Ryan Adams. In fact, it sounds so little like Ryan Adams, that it sounds like Better Than Ezra. Last night's version slowed it down, countried it up, and turned it into one of the most enjoyable songs of the night. The spooky and seasonally-appropriate orange, purple and green lighting on this very timely track was a nice touch.

A couple of light interludes broke up the music; one for the nightly joke with (pedal steel player) Jon Graboff (who credits all his jokes to Rodney Dangerfield), and one to sing an off-the-wall birthday song he'd written for bassist "Space Wolf." While completely beautiful, Adams' music can be pretty heavy, and last night's set drew mainly from the deeper tracks, so the breaks were a welcome respite. Adams' quirkiness shone through even as he sang, making giant shadow puppets on the wall during "The Sun Also Sets."

The crowd was the real X-factor last night. Problems didn't happen when the band was playing. Problems happened during a few longer-than-recommended between-song breaks, when a few hell raisers in the crowd took to their soap boxes ("It's a rock show! Can we stand up?", "Shut the fuck up!", etc.) and clearly shook up Adams. In response to a few early cat calls, Adams wandered to empty corners of the stage with a bull horn and shouted through distortion, "remember, it's the 21st century, everyone's fucking in control of everything." After playing 1 hour of music, they abruptly finished "When Stars Go Blue" (arguably the only "hit" they played all night), Adams mumbled into the microphone "that was set one, we'll be back for set two," over an audience that was still clapping for the last song and could barely hear his message, and shot off the stage. The house lights and music came up and a lot of people awkwardly sat around wondering what the hell was going on.

After about 20 minutes of an unexpected intermission, Set Two kicked off. Whatever his grievances with the crowd, Adams didn't seem to carry those concerns over to the second arm of his performance. He bent and bowed as he sang, as though his whole body was an instrument, extending only five songs into the full second hour. As his web site's hilarious glossary points out, the band doesn't refer to these long extended takes on songs as "jams." No, for Adams and The Cardinals, each is "a freak" or a "Bruce Wayne." (That glossary has another term that might have applied last night: "Rubberneckers." Definition: loud assholes.) Those long extended "freaks" let the band do what they're so good at — integrate country and rock in ways that seem completely implausible but end up working out just right. "Blue Hotel" is a heart-string-pulling country ballad that he tore out of with a long metal riff. And it made perfect sense. Without stopping, they glided right into a very long extension of "Goodnight Rose," one of Easy Tiger's stand outs. Throughout that song and throughout the night, the incredible beauty of Adams' voice was unmistakable and easily glossed over the other discomforts.

As Adams finished up his second hour, he announced that it was time to go home. "This is an interesting venue to play, very prestigious. So it has a curfew." Again responding to the few squeaky wheels rather than the cheers-at-large, Adams delivered another admonishment, explaining that the people who run DAR have families and lives so we all need to go home. It was one of many times that he scolded the crowd in parental way — making us seriously think about what we'd done, and hinting at disappointment rather than anger. Whether or not it was necessary, it was effective. The crowd accepted his message, cheered for several minutes, and brought the band back out for a one-song encore of "Goodnight Hollywood Blvd."

SET ONE

"Goodnight Hollywood Blvd" (Gold)

Photos by Amanda Mattos