Prisoner

Ryan Adams (Pax Am/Blue Note)

Ryan Adams’s last album was a cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989. Courageous or crazy? He pulled it off to a degree that confounded his detractors and there are many. The surprise with Prisoner is that there isn’t any. After the rattling opener Do You Still Love Me? it settles into the melancholy Bruce Springsteen meets -The Smiths shtick that is his default. You don’t doubt his sincerity on songs which deal with the fallout from his divorce but there is little new insight despite the evident emotion on To Be Without You, Doomsday and Breakdown.