I’m not sure what I expected when Ryan Adam’s new album showed up on my doorstep ... Ryan has always made me feel rather like a stone being kicked down the street, never finding a comfortable place to land, and at those times when I did, his toe has always found my hiding place, and kicked me yet again. So when I heard that the man was going to self-title this outing, I figured, “Hey, this might just be the album that dives a bit deeper and reveals a bit more honesty from this illusionary character.”In a recent interview he went on to suggest that his inspirations here were The Smiths and The Velvet Underground ... though I don’t hear it. Perhaps those two legendary bands were just roaming though his head because of their honesty, and he thought that a bit of honesty might just help his music be more inclusive, and a bit more legendary. What you’re actually going to get is a grouping of songs that hang together tough, spiriting ghosts of punchy jangling guitars, vintage reverb, and the chilled essence of an organ riding the undercurrent, while distilling questionable isolation and loneliness, ah la Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. After that, it’s a flat out highway riding right into the night, with the face of Bruce Springsteen shining down as the man in the moon, harking back memories of Nebraska and guitar driven vocal desperation.But it’s not until he slows things down that one hears the optimism buried beneath the music, where he struggles to keep hope alive, refusing to give in to a jaded landscape of people who don’t, or refuse to see each other as they pass. It’s a fine album filled with corners that are easy to take, always bringing you right back home to the things that matter ... the things that need to be escaped, and sometimes broken, to understand the beauty that lies within.Review by Jenell Kesler