Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

Heartbreaker opens with an argument about a Morrissey song before the band kicks into the sloppy and rollicking "To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)," and certainly the gloomster's self-referential sadness hangs over Ryan Adams's songs. But Adams, the notoriously raucous frontman for the defunct Whiskeytown, is a country boy at heart if not in attitude, so there is a lingering pastoral beauty that imbues the album with a happy sweetness as well. That, along with Ryan's expressive, gravelly voice (equal parts Paul Westerberg and Merle Haggard), gives Heartbreaker enduring power. --Tod Nelson