Ryan Adams, Paul Westerberg and Wabi-Sabi

Ryan Adams doesn’t keep you standing around waiting for new songs. Nope. He’s like a nation with four growing seasons, exporting a ton-o-song on a quarterly basis. He’s not concerned with being precious — he wants to flood yer house with music.

And if you’d like yer house flooded with Ryan Adams’ music, I’d suggest you set up a stereo –nothing fancy, a boombox, whatever — but something that’ll fill the room with sound. Move the furniture out of the way. Have yer significant other help out. Have a few cocktails ready. Dive into this Ryan Adams & The Cardinals elpee III/V.

Begin at the beginning. “I get my dreams confused with wishes and bad ideas” sings Adams, as he and The Cardinals open up with four minutes and two seconds of luminous power pop they’ve named “Breakdown Into The Resolve.” You and yer significant other should totally lose yerselves in it around the two-minute mark, because Adams doesn’t just make pop/rock music that reaches straight for the heart, he signals it, and you, as a human being who is working yer way through every one of the 360 degrees of romantic entanglement (I HOPE YOU ARE), yer heart’s receptors are tuned to receive those signals.

Let me tell you about wabi-sabi for a minute. Have I ever told you about wabi-sabi? It’s the Japanese mindset of finding beauty in imperfection. Discordant notes are a fine example of wabi-sabi. Paul Westerberg could be the very definition of wabi-sabi. His voice would crack, beautifully, and that perfect imperfection, combined with his Midwestern working-class poetics made him special. Westerberg dared to be vulnerable in the age of cock rock. The off-key piano notes that wrap up “Androgynous” could be flown to Japan as the main exhibit in the rock and roll wing of the wabi-sabi museum, if only there were one.

Anyway, Ryan Adams, post-Whiskeytown, has that off-key wabi-sabi in common with Westerberg. As you and yer partner dance yer way through these 21 tracks, keep that wabi-sabi thing in mind. There’s perfection in the admission of one’s own lack of perfection. It elevates the cracked voice, the odd note, the missed beat, and the dorky dance move. Here’s to hoping you’ll dance like fools, fall in love, and celebrate yer ridiculously improbable existence together. It’s a pretty good time.