'Cold Roses', the heroic double-album from Americana's golden child, gets Fresh Deer Meat's Inside Track treatment as album high-point 'How Do You Keep Love Alive' finds itself on the right end of some gushing praise....

Artist : Ryan Adams and The Cardinals

Album : 'Cold Roses' (Lost Highway, 2nd May 2005)

Song : Track 11, Disk One 'How Do You Keep Love Alive'

Background to the album : 'Cold Roses' is Ryan Adams' glorious opus. A double-album that signifies the pinnacle of the songwriter's career to date, it houses 19 tracks, each forming part of a rich tapestry so complex and insightful that - in truth - Adams has struggled to live creatively in its shadow ever since. From wild, foot-stomping country-rock bluster ('Beautiful Sorta') through wind-swept Americana ('If I Am A Stranger'), intelligent power-pop ('Let It Ride') and onto heart-stopping melancholy ('How Do You Keep Love Alive'), 'Cold Roses' is an album that just belies catagorisation. That a double-album can retain such a soaring consistency is unrivalled, that it can do so and also be a vehicle for some of Adams' most introspective and poignant career moments is nothing short of phenomenal.

Why this song? : 'How Do You Keep Love Alive' is the final track on Disk One. It punctuates the first half of the album in true Adams fashion; unexpectedly melancholic, painfully beautiful and laden with emotion. It's also the moment Adams' finally lets his mask slip and this troubled, fragile young man reveals an aching vulnerability. Backed by The Cardinals, the song's success is its sheer simplicity. Adams' vocals are raw, uncluttered and sound unfathomably dark. A tale of a guy desperate to hang on to his girl but unable to work out how, it's told with such melancholy that the following couplet has already established itself as one of country-rock's most infamous... "She runs through my veins like a long black river / and rattles my cage like a thunderstorm". Utter genius.

What the critics said about 'How Do You Keep Love Alive' :

DiS : "... 'How Do You Keep Love Alive' is a slow, crushing heartbreak of piano and slide guitar that has his voice at its most gravelly, full of worn-out, Springsteen-esque sincerity and evocative imagery ("She runs through my veins like a long black river/and rattles my cage like a thunderstorm")..."

http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/12080

NME "...This is his second break-up album, chockfull of steel guitar laments to a lost love with plaintive cries of 'How Do You Keep Love Live'. Adams turned 30 last November and it shows. 'Cold Roses' is more reflective and less intimate than the brash open wound of 'Heartbreaker'..."

http://www.nme.com/reviews/ryan-adams/7665

Pitchfork"...while the preciously titled 'How Do You Keep Love Alive' mopes along, wearied and oddly pretty, half-sung over a languishing piano line. Adams' songwriting proclivities have always flirted with MOR, adult-alternative sappiness, but for the most part, 'Cold Roses' is clever and uncommonly listenable, far less bombastic and contrived than its predecessor. Even lyrically, Adams is modest and cautiously confessional, careful to avoid the cocky caterwauling that invades much of his back catalogue..."

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/14806-ryan-adams-and-the-cardinals-cold-roses

Listen to 'How Do You Keep Love Alive' on Letterman :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udkLvfp-Vco