By 
Ryan Adams was right: His pedal board did look a little weird in the daylight.
Adams kept a handful of his dates unplugged when he was touring behind his last LP, 2011's Ashes & Fire. He shifted between a piano and an acoustic guitar, and the indie mainstay was illuminated only as minimally as the light rigs the intimate (and bursting-at-the-seams) venues would allow. The sing-alongs of his greatest hits were moving, familiar comforts. "Oh My Sweet Carolina" remained the anchor of the set list, and Adams's banter was smooth and restrained. He cracked a couple of jokes to keep the otherwise solemn evenings light, and there was no need for him to wear the sunglasses he favors for portraits. In short, the last time Adams went out on tour, it was predictable and satisfying, and the darkness was felt beyond the flick of a light switch in a totally benevolent way.
That's not what happened at Newport Folk yesterday, its opening night, even though a folk festival is exactly the kind of place where you'd expect Adams to dial it down.
After pursuing him for years, the Newport Folk Festival succeeded in finally bringing Adams to Fort Adams for a twilight set, and the guitar/piano volleys were replaced by lyrical ones that had him leaping between sharp, self-deprecating jabs and the lines that have stunned listeners with their brutalizing clarity since 2000's Heartbreaker. (The fact that the fest got him to perform before sunset was an added bonus, thus prompting him to comment on his ability to see his own pedal board for a change.) Adams's eagerly awaited self-titled, fourteenth release drops September 9, and Newport Folk served as the first big-stage premiere for the bulk of the forthcoming record's track list. "My Wrecking Ball"—a song protesting the death of his grandmother—was particularly stunning, with its chorus carrying across the bay from the Fort straight to the beams of the Claiborne Pell Bridge. "Nothin' much left in the tank/Somehow this thing still drives/Forgot what it needed, but somehow still survives." It's been a minute, but Adams's ability to pair language with devastating weight and his mellow timbre is stronger than it's ever been.
This run kicked off at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, just a couple of days prior, and Adams and crew continued to work out the kinks before the Newport crowd. The playful digs he threw bassist Charlie Stavish's way were warmly received by both the newest member of his band and the audience, and Adams's propensity for meandering banter involved some scenery-inspired goofiness. ("What are the chances of Michael McDonald being on one of those boats right now?" and "You better believe there are lobster rolls on sailboats!" led to a brief yacht rock deluge before Adams got back to business.) As it tends to do, "Oh My Sweet Carolina" hushed thousands with its steeled reserve and tempted tear ducts with its heartbreaking, hymnal quality. The new stuff immediately resonated with the familiarity of the songs we found before them, if only because Adams's balancing act between haltingly gorgeous phrasing and slicing words is a refreshing one in a genre in which tired tropes and old chords grow rustier by the verse.
This festival season, the cinematic demands of the Yeezus live show and Jack White's eccentric Lazaretto epic are main stage fixtures that thrive on hubris and controversy, dueling zeitgeists that whip fans into a frenzy while blitzing their senses. If anything, Adams's Newport Folk set was the antidote to this, a straightforward, thoughtful, and timeless marriage of fresh takes and catalog throwbacks that prompted you to listen without risking your eardrums or self-control, and the promise of new material left fans insatiable instead of exhausted. You watch West roar his way through "Black Skinhead" and "Blood on the Leaves" or White succumb to the body-shaking might of "Seven Nation Army" and you're left reeling, dumbfounded and dazed by a stunning production. You witness Ryan Adams cut through the ocean air with the resentful strains of "Come Pick Me Up" and you make a mental note of which of his records to revisit first on the ride home. You listen to Adams in his current state and you immediately wonder if you've been really listening to him the way you should've been all along.
Before the yacht rock riffs and Charlie jokes, Adams looked out over Newport Folk, at the barrier between the peninsula and the sea spotted with sails before him. "Ten years ago I was depressed," he said. "Now I'm playing music with fking sailboats in the background." A smirk of a line, but the songs spanning his career and the shows of his future confronted each other at Newport for a moment. The darkness surrounding Adams on the stages of his past has retreated, and this new work and the shows behind it could be his most illuminating yet.
