The return of Ryan Adams As comebacks go it was fairly stealth. Had anybody actually realised that Ryan Adams had gone away, let alone come back, when his name turned up this year in the nominations for the Brits? Either way, it was a quietly triumphant return to music making for the 37-year-old American singer-songwriter. Although it had only been three years since the release of his previous album, for the normally hyperactively productive Adams this was an age. If anything, the boyishly tousled-haired guitarist could be accused of having been too profuse and scattergun in his musical output since he crossed over from the alt-country underground in 2000 with his first solo album, Heartbreaker. Although his mix of vulnerable troubadour and brattish punk-rocker was beguiling, it also seemed to wear thin, strung out over releases of variable quality and length, or produced ad hoc in the midst of Adams's apparently chaotic personal life. The appearance last year of a new album, Ashes and Fire, suggests even within its title a kind of ritual cleansing before a phoenix-like return. The latest incarnation of Adams sounds less inflamed, more burnished by the gentle Seventies country-pop that infuses the whole album. The lyrics circle around the midlife themes of reviewing the past, letting go and accepting a level of melancholy and "rain" into one's life. It is an understated, simple album, full of silences and spaces that let Adams's affectingly emotional voice stand out. It is also deceptively smooth, hooking you in, as the small crowds who got to see Adams perform last year - like this year's Brits judges - will testify. Whether you noticed he was gone or not, it is good to have Adams's mercurial talent back. Ryan Adams tours to April 30