Description
“It’s nice to try and illuminate the more complicated stuff,” Adams recently told the BBC. “I feel like I’m leaving a map for people if they’re in a hard place.” And it’s the brutal honesty with which he charts his own course that will make Prisoner a guide, or at least a shoulder, to others. It’s not an album glorifying the great love that got away. It’s a wounded but mature record that understands things run their course, relationships end for a reason, and that there’s some sort of tomorrow waiting out there. “Outbound Train” looks back with skepticism, “Broken Anyway” spots the warts, and beautiful closer “We Disappear” gets down to all that’s really left to do: sort out “what’s the rubble/ And the parts I want to save.” Some might say that a predilection for sad songs made Ryan Adams a likely candidate to record the next great breakup album. That could be true, but the real story here is that one of our generation’s great songwriters was willing to dig through his own rubble and share whatever turned up — sad, hopeful, or otherwise.
