Though “predictable” is surely not a word used in reference to Ryan Adams very often — try instead: “erratic,” “troubled” and “prolific” — he is in fact just that in at least two respects: his annual NYC Halloween show (okay, two years running anyway), and in his unpredictability.

This Halloween, The Cardinals (as he and his band are now collectively known) took the stage at Harlem’s famed Apollo, an intimate seated venue, to celebrate the release of Cardinology. In stark contrast to the past few years, what followed was an impressive show that presented Adams as an artist focused and at ease, establishing an infallible integrity that has hitherto been missing from him in action and reputation.

It was four days before Adams’ 34^th birthday, a relatively short life span in which to have released an impressive ten full-length studio albums either solo or with The Cardinals (counting Love & Hell as one release), not to mention three albums with Whiskeytown. I own every one of these albums on CD, and a few on vinyl as well. I have maintained that he is my favorite contemporary artist ever since discovering Gold in 2001 during my first radio gig, and have every intention of keeping him atop my musical pedestal.

But until the Apollo show, I’d never seen him give a really great live performance. The first time I saw him was an opening slot for Alanis Morissette (yes, really) in Kansas City in the summer of 2002. It was Adams solo, playing songs from Gold and Heartbreaker that would be swallowed up in the large, open-air amphitheater, amongst the excited chatter of college girls waiting for a different brand of angst. Even then there were whispers that this was an artist who could be really great if he survived the excesses of his existence.

Three albums later, in 2004, I tried to see him again at the Blue Note in Columbia, Missouri. But, he broke his wrist falling off stage in Liverpool, resulting in a cancelled tour and much speculation as to the reason for his fall. By the time he made up the date, I’d moved to Vermont, and when I saw him there in 2005 on the Cold Roses tour, it was the experience of watching a musical genius fight his demons that stuck in my mind more than the music. Between his visible intoxication and the antagonism of the crowd, it was a night of rapid fire verbal insults between musician and audience punctuated by shouts for more vodka and red wine to be brought to the stage. I remember his refusal to play “Chicago” despite the incessant urgings, but I don’t remember a single song he actually played.

For me, the first glimmer of hope that he might be on the road to delivering live performances as great as his recordings came last year in Louisville, shortly before the release of Easy Tiger. I won’t deny that the show was unusual; Adams requested the lights be dimmed almost completely, and those who were able to see him in the obscurity reported he was wearing a shower cap on stage, but I think we were mostly in agreement that he sounded better than he had in a long time, boasting a voice that shone with the clarity of a year of sobriety.

On Halloween night, I finally saw the show I’ve been waiting to see for eight years. Set against the backdrop of one enormous blue cardinal that’s featured on the cover of Cardinology, the Cardinals seamlessly set upon a large portion Adams’ catalog of rock and roll, alt-country and haunting blues, balancing the disparity of his material with highly accomplished musicianship. Instead of commandeering center stage, Adams took a spot slightly to the left of center, alternating between his guitar and keyboards, even turning the spotlight on guitarist Neal Casal who sang lead on his own original composition “Freeway to the Canyon.”

Where Adams historically and at times aggressively has refused to perform songs from any album prior to the one he’s currently promoting, this night he compromised with complete reworkings of older songs like “Rescue Blues.” He dressed smartly and ignored the occasional obnoxious cat call from a frat boy urging him to drink. Instead of turning the lights out to mask his stage fright, he interacted very little with the crowd, but let us know he hasn’t changed beyond recognition with the occasional dry allusion to his trodden-upon heart (”This next song is another song in the long line of songs about how I’m so fucking happy in my romantic life. I’m so happy I’m dancing for fucking joy. I’m gonna die under a stack of comic books alone”).

In short, the show lacked in nothing but melodrama and distraction. Adams’ greatest career accomplishment may well be finding the balance between knowing he’s a great musician and proving it.

–Julia Clarke

In many ways, the Americana Honors & Awards ceremony last week served as Robert Plant’s final induction into the world of American roots music, completing a long journey that began in the West Midlands, assumed the title of rock God, hitched a ride with early blues, and arrived last year at the foot of the Appalachians.

Following a #2 debut on the Billboard Album Chart, and a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration, the former Led Zepplin frontman and Alison Krauss completed their seemingly effortless marriage of bluegrass and rock by scooping up the Best Album award for Raising Sand at the Nashville ceremony. They were also award Best Duo.

Plant displayed his newfound ease with American roots when he joined Levon Helm on stage at the Ryman Auditorium. Helm left with Artist of the Year honors, capping off a year that saw his triumphant return from cancer of the vocal chords with the Grammy-winning release Dirt Farmer.

The charm of Plant continued as his Raising Sand touring bandmate Buddy Miller earned the Instrumentalist of the Year nod, before performing “Whatcha Gonna Do, Leroy?” a brand new collaboration with Plant that will be featured on Miller’s 2009 album.

Complete List of Winners from the 2008 Americana Honors & Awards:

Album of the Year: Alison Krauss & Robert Plant / Raising Sand
Artist of the Year: Levon Helm
Duo/Group of the Year: Alison Krauss & Robert Plant
Instrumentalist of the Year: Buddy Miller
New Emerging Artist of the Year: Mike Farris
Song of the Year: “She Left Me for Jesus” by Hayes Carll and Brian Keane
“Spirit of Americana” Free Speech in Music – Joan Baez
Lifetime Achievement / Songwriting – John Hiatt
Jack Emerson Lifetime Achievement / Executive – Terry Lickona (Austin City Limits)
Lifetime Achievement / Performance – Jason & The Scorchers
Presidents Award – Jerry Garcia
Lifetime Achievement / Instrumentalist – Larry Campbell
Trailblazer – Nanci Griffith
Lifetime Achievement / Producer / Engineer – Tony Brown

– Julia Clarke

Mikel Jollet, lead singer of The Airborne Toxic Event, is drenched in sweat, his shirt and hair stuck to him as he clings desperately to the microphone. Bassist Noah Harmon appears to be in a trance, his head tipped back revealing a glistening face. His sodden shirt is half unbuttoned, while behind him Daren Taylor beats the drums with a bare and gleaming chest on display.

The L.A. band’s feverish appearance has less to do with their vigorous performance than with the fact that the air conditioning at the Roseland Ballroom is malfunctioning, and they’re sharing the packed space with 3000 New Yorkers. But nobody seems to mind too much; in fact, the steamy conditions only enhance their agonized, self-questioning lyrics delivered in the form of energetic, post-punk indie rock. Gasping for breath, Jollet’s face forms a tortured howl as he screams:

“the walls spin and you’re paper thin from the haze of the smoke and the mescaline / the sweat of your brow under unmade sheets in your ear with the noise from the darkened streets where you ran far and wide/you screamed / you cried / you thought suicide was an alibi”

“Wishing Well” is the opening track to the band’s self-titled debut, released a month ago on Majordomo Records. The album is laden with heartbreak and regret in songs like “Happiness Is Overrated” and “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?”. If Jollet comes across as a tortured wordsmith, he has good reason; in one week in 2006, the writer was diagnosed with auto-immune disease, learned his mother had cancer, and experienced a breakup. Promptly, the novel he had been writing turned into song lines, and the result is a record of highly literate lyrics channeled through Jollet’s dynamic baritone that diminishes to a sigh only to swell into an anguished wail.

Violinist Anna Bulbrook leads the way on the first single “Sometime Around Midnight.” Though the intro sounds like a full string section on the record, in fact it’s all Bulbrook joined tonight by Harmon, who plays his electric bass with a bow. After several dramatic minutes of strings, Jollet chimes in, in a shaky whisper describing a girl he sees across the room in a bar. When the drums kick in, we realize she’s no stranger, but a gone and clearly not forgotten lover. The song intensifies as they drift towards each other and talk, and by the time she leaves with someone else, Jollet is screaming the words in pain.

The strings return to the forefront again as the song ends, reducing to a lament, leaving Jollet, and the rest of us, emotionally drained, and soaking wet. Then he kicks his microphone stand over and reminds that they are, after all, a rock band.

The Airborne Toxic Event are currently on tour with the Fratellis. Find out if they’re coming to your hometown.

–Julia Clarke

Amy MacDonald wrote the song “The Road Home” six years ago, more than a quarter of a lifetime for the twenty-year-old Scottish musician. Aged 14, three years before signing her record deal, she had no idea that in 2007, the song would play a role in a moment of great national pride for her country, when it was used as the soundtrack to the city of Glasgow’s successful bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. MacDonald’s lack of foresight in this matter is understandable given that, as she revealed last week onstage at the Living Room in New York City, the song was actually written about her dead dog.

The diminutive Scot is playing her final night of a three-night introduction to America, following in the footsteps of so many before her who have tried to break into the US market. Declaring that this is every UK musician’s dream is perhaps no secret, but it is certainly endearing. She jokingly dubs her band (four equally youthful and spirited players) as “the aliens with unusual abilities” referring to their US visa designations, but the relief and excitement at having finally made their first trip across the Atlantic literally rises the temperature in the room. Her acoustic guitar is held high like a shield, and she strums it confidently. MacDonald and her band emit an aura that is at once assured and genuine.

Amy MacDonald and Julia Clarke

Whereas many overseas musicians like U2 and the Beatles have reigned in their accents in song to achieve success Stateside, or even acquired a vaguely ambiguous spoken English accent a la KT Tunstall, MacDonald seems clear she’s not going to temper her Scottishness to become more accessible. She makes no attempt to mask her thick Bishopbriggs brogue between songs, and the stories she tells on her debut album This Is the Life are equally local in theme. She sings that “nothing beats the feeling of the high Barrowland ceiling” in “Barrowland Ballroom” — about the famed Glasgow music venue where the country’s most famous serial killer scoped out his victims, and where past acts have included Dylan, Costello, Bowie (and now McDonald) — and includes a cover of Dougie McLean’s “Caledonia,” one of Scotland’s unofficial national anthems, as the hidden track.

Yet she’s not making a patriotic assertion of national identity. She’s simply singing about what she knows and who she is, which is exactly what a twenty-year-old should be singing about. The contrast between the young singer’s soft speaking voice and her nuclear-powered singing voice that blasts the room like a rough-edged Dolores O’Riordan transform her remarkable tales of ordinariness into an astonishing live performance. With enough confidence and skill to be impressive and convincing, there’s no sheen here, just real roots rock with the best of folk.

–Julia Clarke

“Speak slowly/My eyes are so bleary/I guess I’m young but I feel so weary”

A night after canceling their first New York City show due to illness, Zooey Deschanel cheekily apologized by way of self-deprecation, poking fun at her ailment with “Black Hole,” a dreary tale of loneliness belied by a chipper melody, twangy slide guitar and jaunty pace that is one of ten original songs on Volume One, her new collaboration with M. Ward.

Certainly she looked the picture of health; exuberant, and unapologetically effervescent, wearing an uncontained smile as she tapped a tambourine cheerily against her thigh. But at the end of the song, she turned her back to the audience to reach for something behind her, then returned holding up a large sign with a handwritten message: “Hello New York.”

She’d lost her voice the day before and in order to give it all during the performance, she had to silently woo the crowd between songs. The effect was in fact as charming and as quirky as Deschanel herself, who produced various signs (“Hi,” “Thank You,” and “You Look Great, You Really Do!”), held her heart in a mock swoon at the applause, and jumped up and down like an excited school girl before launching into “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

But perhaps more importantly, her muteness presented her with the challenge of winning over a first-time audience without the safety net so many new musicians fall into – witty stage banter to fill up the 90 minutes. Instead, Deschanel was left with charm, which she oozes, and of course the sweetly crafted compositions she recorded last year with M. Ward.

The songs on Volume One are almost without exception playful: “I’m just sitting on the shelf” she sings on “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” teasing a lover to come sweep her up; and deliciously retro – “I Was Taking a Walk” is pure 1950s swing. But to say Deschanel is simply imitating art would be not only wrong, but a huge underestimation of her talent; she is genuine in her inspiration from the music of her forbearers. Her voice is buttery smooth, at times haunting when she evokes the distant past on Smoky Robinson’s 1962 hit “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” and she effortlessly harnesses country, blues and jazz.

Though she’s better known as an indie actress with roles in films like Almost Famous, Deschanel grew up singing in church choirs, and has been singing with the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies since 2001. She and M. Ward first recorded a duet together in 2006, and their chemistry lead to the full-blown collaboration, which they recorded retro-style using as few machines as possible. A year has passed since they laid down the tracks, and when they play live, the songs take on the perfection of practice, and the comfort of easy improvisation.

For his part, M. Ward remains mostly mum, and at first, I wonder why he didn’t simply take over emceeing responsibilities, but as the show went on it became clear that despite his omnipresence on Volume One, the grammatical order of their moniker is intentional. Though he has several shining moments on electric bass, his aim seems to be to shine that spotlight on Deschanel.

–Julia Clarke

“White Guy at the Apollo” jokes were rampant Tuesday night with Joe Jackson headlining the famed Harlem venue, but it was Jackson himself who took the cake, covering a song by 1970s spandex-flashing, Eurovision Song Contest sovereigns ABBA.

“I guarantee you this is the whitest thing ever played at the Apollo,” Jackson declared triumphantly, before launching into “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” a hit single in 1977 when he was still in the band Edwards Bear and was yet to establish his eclectic New Wave/jazz blend that over the years has incorporated rock, pop, and R&B (and on this surprising cover, even calypso). With a high-energy performance, Jackson spanned thirty years of fame and loneliness, from New York to New Orleans, in a set marked simply by extraordinary musicianship.

It only took seven songs to bring the fervent audience to its feet, which the band did during “On Your Radio,” a song Jackson called Jurassic-era, either due to its approaching 30th anniversary, or possibly as a swipe at the state of radio today. “At least he didn’t sing ‘Sunday Papers,’” I thought, “that would be positively Triassic.” But when you’ve been around and prolific for as long as Jackson has, the different phases of your career must begin to seem like eons. And with the showmanship on display that night, you’d think the last three decades had been one long wait to make his Apollo debut.

Things kicked off with “Steppin’ Out,” setting the New York theme with a song released as he was making the city his new home in 1982. In the years that followed that top ten hit, Jackson’s success has often been contrasted by a desire for personal anonymity, and the next two songs confronted this longing pointedly. After “Invisible Man,” the lead single from the new album Rain in which he yearns for an invincibility to the pressures of fame, Jackson segued into “Too Tough,” a more personal proclamation of solitude:

“I know you think that I protest too much / I’m like a Diva with the tragic touch / But if I wanna hide from the pouring sun / It has to be alright”

At the end of the song, Jackson melodramatically shielded his eyes as he looked out at the crowd, before having the house turn the glaring spotlight away from the stage and onto his audience. Now at ease, he confided, “I never thought I could play here.”

Jackson’s delight at finally playing the venue is understandable given that he lived here for 20 years, mostly during the theater’s 1980s renaissance. He departed in a huff in 2003, not for the usual (and forgivable) 9/11 reasons, but in protest of the city’s smoking ban, a movement that Jackson has actively campaigned in essay and song. He now lives in Berlin, where there is no smoking ban. Appropriately, after the doomsday satire “Cancer” from Night and Day, he provided the antidote by detailing the exploits of a hedonistic immortal in “King Pleasure Time.”

Suffice to say, the songs on Rain do not elude Jackson’s trademark sharp wit, but there is plenty of romance and loneliness to go round; he closed the set with “A Place in the Rain,” which he called “angry, sad, funny, romantic,” and is startlingly akin structurally to the W.H. Auden poem “Funeral Blues.” During “Solo (So Low),” a song about being alone, he fittingly ordered his band mates off stage to perform unaccompanied.

His band on the road and on Rain consists of bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton, original members of the Joe Jackson Band with whom Jackson reunited in 2004 for Volume 4. Paying tribute to cocktails and New Orleans on “Dirty Martini,” the trio appeared to have the most fun, with Maby dancing round to press his cheek against Houghton’s as they shared a mic for the echo refrain, while the drummer awkwardly tried to keep rhythm.

At the end of the day though, the city that got the most love was the one we were in, with “The Uptown Train” and “Chinatown” played back to back. Even sans ashtrays and nicotine-stained ceilings, Joe Jackson still hearts New York.

–Julia Clarke

Wearing a simple blue cotton dress, Yael Naim flits waiflike onto the stage at the Bowery Ballroom around 9:45pm, grabbing her acoustic guitar and nimbly hopping onto a stool where she sits bathed in a warm yellow spotlight that might as well be the adoration of her audience. To call them “fans” might be a tad premature at this stage, it being one of her first ever US shows, and her self-titled collaboration with David Donatien having been released only on Tuesday.

Indeed, waiting outside the Bowery before the show, I overhear more than one conversation that indicates many of these concertgoers came tonight because they heard that one song. One twenty-something student-type says he checked out a few of her songs on MySpace, while his companion appears to be here based on buzz alone. They agree that the song “from the Apple commercial” is “really great.”

Inside, the sold-out crowd is similarly young, mixed-race, and slightly female-heavy. I note a solid showing of Eastern Europeans, which might be the Regina Spektor factor. Yet to call these people merely curious scenesters would also be an understatement. They have been locked in place for a while, standing firm to make sure they don’t lose their precious sliver of unobstructed view. There is an unmitigated air of excitement when Yael does make her ethereal entrance. “Oh, she’s so cute!” a few people squawk; having never set eyes on her before, there is something gratifying about seeing the enchanting voice physically manifest.

At the opening chords of “Paris,” the first track on her album, there are some delighted gasps of recognition at the song, which is sung in two of Naim’s native tongues, French and Hebrew (the latter, endearingly, with a French accent). Then, half way through, as she is nearing the French part of the refrain, she leans away from the mic — boldly, I think, for someone who has never played this city before — and invites the audience to finish the verse. They do.

“Thank you so much for coming!” she gasps afterwards, explaining in her heavy French accent how especially glad she is to be here after spending so many months holed up in the living room of her tiny Paris apartment with Donatien working on these songs “for an album we didn’t even know if it was going to be released.” With that, she launches into “Far Far,” an autobiographical account of a girl with music inside her that’s bursting to get out:

“How can you stay inside? / There’s a beautiful mess inside.”

This beautiful mess is what she and Donatien made in that Paris apartment. After a personally disappointing stab at recording with 2001’s In a Man’s Womb, Naim retreated from music, disheartened. Meeting Donatien has been the inspiration she needed. Listed as “Artistic Director” on the album, the multi-instrumentalist took her exquisitely simple compositions and added strings, horns, choirs, effects, even encouraging her to sing in Hebrew for the first time. When they were finished, they put it all back together, and what they have is a complicated, beautiful mess that sounds effortless.

Donatien, for his part, remains an invisible force in the music even in a live setting. He stays far behind her on stage, easy to miss physically, but he is there with every swell, twist and turn of the music.

Naim is no fool; she knows what brought the crowd here in the first place, and she takes great pleasure in teasing us, seated at her piano now and playfully tapping out the first three (now almost universally recognizable) notes of “New Soul,” then stopping as cheers erupt. “What is that song?” she asks gleefully. “I used to think I was an old soul,” Naim explains, adding “which means you’re really smart. But then, real life begins…”

Real life for Naim has changed irrevocably these past months. With “New Soul” being featured in Apple’s MacBook Air ad campaign before her name had ever been whispered in the US, it became her first top 40 US hit long before the album was released. The song tiptoes into your head before breaking into a whimsical waltz that subsides but never leaves.

In observing Naim in the flesh, you get all the proof you need that she is more than just one song. For one thing, her album doesn’t illustrate quite how powerful her voice is. At times boasting a soaring aria and others a bluesy roar, I’m reminded of Alanis Morrissette in her role as God in the movie Ðogma, with her earth-shattering voice (minus the exploding human heads). Also in her favor for staying power, Naim is delectably funny — whether she’s doing her “Dance du Canard” (duck dance, literally) or rhyming “mon coeur” and “fleur” with “for sure” — and charismatic, as she manages to keep wholly engaged a crowd that until this instant undoubtedly have had no real connection with her beyond a commercial and the internet.

She ends the set in this way, connected, having her now adoring fans take the place of her missing cellist by becoming her choir. After teaching the females in the room the aria, she instructs the males to take a lower pitch and we gladly oblige as her string section while she stands in the center of the stage again, leading us like a tiny fairy-conductor. Afterwards, those more-than-just-curious-scenesters and not-quite-fans-yet float out, probably deeply in love.

–Julia Clarke