Released in the Australasian market about a month after the American appearance of the Follow the Lights EP, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals' Everybody Knows EP is simply Follow the Lights with the track "Everybody Knows" from Easy Tiger stuck on the front. That means the disc now has eight instead of seven tracks and runs 33:39, which would constitute a full-length CD for a lot of bands. The core of the collection is still the four new songs -- "Follow the Lights," "My Love for You Is Real," "Blue Hotel," and "Down in a Hole" -- and it's a melancholy batch, filled out by new versions of three old songs, "This Is It" from Rock N Roll, "If I Am a Stranger" from Cold Roses, and "Dear John" from Jacksonville City Nights. It may be that the Far East branches of Adams' record label, Lost Highway, felt that the short disc served as a good introduction to Adams in a region where he is not as well known but has considerable potential, and that is true as long as the version of the artist likely to appeal Down Under is his most low-key, despairing one.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo