Love is hell is a watermark in Ryan Adams career. Adams poured his heart into an album that eventually got rejected, so he scrambled back in the studio and recorded the very Strokes-y Rock n roll. Love is hell was split in half as two EPs, eventually re-released as an album.

I only knew him thanks to his inclusion in the Elizabethtown. Both his songs were good and I found a copy of gold for cheap. I wasn’t impressed and it wasn’t until a few years later that I heard Love is hell while on the downward spiral of a break up.

The shadowlands is a meditative piano driven song. A melancholic dirge that comes as a moment of clarity amongst the chaotic emotions strewn on love is hell. Eventually we found out how messed everything was in Ryan Adams’ life and now what remains is hope for becoming a better person, something you can only earn after walking through the darkest of hinterlands.

-Sam J Valdés López