Ryan Adams Live and Acoustic on the Moon

"And my two older sisters were very important in manipulating my music tastes; one turned me on to classical music, and the other gave me Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams." - Laura Marling.

Heartbreaker is Mr Adams debut solo LP and it is a good place to start with his very extensive back catalogue, as it is almost perfect and one of his more consistent records soundwise as it is mainly acoustic and he has recently released a Live at Carnegie Hall album which turns out to be a solo acoustic album just like the 174 track Live after Deaf box set that was released on to Spotify etc last year, so there now is a great deal of live acoustic Ryan Adams to choose from. 

I would not have wanted him to have simply tried to recreate Heartbreaker and I am glad he has such a diverse back catalogue, but it is great to hear his songs performed with just his guitar and the odd blast of harmonica, In many cases the songs sound deeper, more serious and reveal more of the place from which they came.

Below is a playlist of 35 of them, it is not the 35 best songs but the ones that I think are either very different or an improvement on the original or both. There is also a few songs from Whiskeytown, his pre-solo band, and a couple of new songs. Across both of the releases there are multiple version of the same track and I have not listened to them all to pick the best version, but I have picked the ones with the least of the self depreciative talking before and after, some of it is pretty funny, but the reverential audience laugh away as though he is the reincarnation of Bill Hicks, although they are incredibly quiet when Mr Adams is doing what he does best.

The playlist started life in Deezer so you can stream/sync it there as well.

For much more of Mr Adams Heartbreaker style then check out Ryan Adams Re-Demolition on the Moon. A Moon exclusive playlist of a best of his classic unreleased albums.

And for a lot more diverse sounding Mr Adams check out A Best of Ryan Adams 2014.