Ryan Adams Celebrates His Birthday With Album Announcement
(Pax-Am) Today, on his 52nd birthday, seven-time Grammy nominee Ryan Adams announces Animal, a ten-track album out February 12, 2027, on his own PAX-AM label. The first single, "Amethyst", is out now, and the album is available to pre-order on vinyl, CD and digital.
Animal is an almost entirely solo record. Adams played drums, bass, guitars, piano, synths, percussion and harmonica himself, and wrote every song. He produced and mixed the album with Dror Mohar, who also engineered it, and it was mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound. Long-time friend Daniel Clarke adds synths to "Jesus Christ", "Animal" and "Jesus H", and Hammond B3 to "Soon", where J.C. Khul's saxophone carries the coda.
The songs are night-time songs: neon, bar lights, wet streets, a car out on the 101. Adams is wry and exposed; "Automatic Heart", a confession from someone who "falls for people all the time"; "Pass Me By" is a plain-spoken ache; "Jesus H" asks what the H stands for and answers with a horror-film walk through October streets. The record closes on "Outsiders In", a cold, wintry song about what a prayer is worth "if you just break even".
Lead single "Amethyst" is the album's most direct statement: a bruised, funny and defiant look at the music business, aging and survival that ends with Adams naming himself "the ghost in the attic ... the color of driftwood and amethyst".
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