Big Colors

Album review

This is the second album in a trilogy that the singer started with Wednesdays in 2020. Big Colors is the 18th album from Adams, and as he puts it, it is meant to sound like the soundtrack to an imaginary 1980s film, a kind of road movie set between New York and California. After a few run-ins with the law (which upset the release schedule for this trilogy), the Jacksonville native decided to bring a little colour back into his life with this album. But the tones he has chosen are less vivid and more pastel, as evidenced by the layers of dreamlike synths and delicate guitars that infuse these 12 songs. The Smiths' melancholy influence on Ryan Adams - especially the guitarist Johnny Marr – can be heard on tracks like the single Fuck the Rain or the introspective What I Am. Alongside these sombre ballads, other songs display Ryan Adams's rock vigour (Power). Unlike many of his colleagues, the singer did not opt for a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the 1980s. Instead, he brings unfailing sincerity to this homage to a decade he associates with "watercolor painting of neon blue smoke rising up off summer streets in the night". © Nicolas Magenham / Qobuz