- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Q MagazinePart 1's eight deluxe country rock essays all impress. [Feb 2004, p.98]
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A collection of preposterously cheerless (and charmless) songs that try much too hard to achieve a poignancy-- or anything, really-- that might hide their complete insignificance.
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Some of the most focused, artful, and affecting work of his career. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]
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Shares some influences -- the Replacements, '80s English alt-pop -- with ''Rock N Roll,'' but the writing is tighter, the production cleaner, and the performances more considered.
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Stripped of arrangements, the songs are mostly brooding ballads, shadowy blends of folk mixed with traditional country that highlight Adams' shaky voice and caustic songwriting. [combined review of 1&2]
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UncutAn utterly gloomungous affair with barely a crack of light piercing the lowering clouds of misery. [Jan 2004, p.116]
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MojoSome of the best songs he's written since Heartbreaker. [Jan 2004, p.98]
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More commercial - and much better - than 'Rock'n'Roll', occasionally resembling the grandstand melancholia of Coldplay, and more frequently their antecedents The Smiths and Jeff Buckley. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]
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If Love Is Hell, Pt. 1 has the edge over Rock n Roll, it's because it's more carefully considered in its production and writing, and he manages to hide his allusions better than he does on Rock, where every title and chord progression plays like an homage.
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'Love Is Hell' is proof that Ryan Adams is still on form and as splendid as ever.
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When [Love is Hell] works, and it does so only sporadically, Adams creates songs of suffocating closeness and density.
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The Love Is Hell discs are far more dense and dark, making the songs a fun challenge to crack open, though it isn't difficult to determine what a no-brainer it must have been for Lost Highway to favor the brilliant Roll over the more spotty Hell discs. [Review applies to both EPs and 'Rock N Roll']
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SpinEverything is underwritten or overwrought. [Feb 2004, p.104]
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BlenderThe bleakness is stirring as often as it is enervating. [#23, p.100]
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The songs comprising both parts of Love Is Hell constitute the worst songwriting by Adams ever stamped with a price tag.
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The Adams of ‘Love Is Hell’ has gone out to make an album that actually is classic rock ‘n’ roll rather than one that can simply impersonate it, and sound convincing. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 20 out of 21
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Mixed: 1 out of 21
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Negative: 0 out of 21
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Sep 5, 2011
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ZachJMay 16, 2006
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NastyRFeb 3, 2006