EASE DOWN THE ROAD

Blue lights swelled from the stage into a theater full of jittery fans as Ryan Adams and his Cardinals — Brad Pemberton, Neil Casal, Jon Graboff and Chris Feinstein — took the Murat stage this past Wednesday, in support of Adams’ just-released EP, Follow the Lights. Fumbling to center stage, sans his guitar, was a smiling Adams, who spent the whole of his crowd’s initial undivided attention joking about the local mall, a leather jacket he’d just bought, ’80s metal singers and some unidentified hearing contraptions he claimed someone made him put in his ears.

Sound strange? Well, that’s because Adams is strange. He dresses his stage up with action figures, blasts his fans with blue spotlights all night, keeps a gaudy keyboard nearby for comedic swells and often summons a “spotlight from the heavens” for the occasional needed dramatic effect. Oh, and the gigantic disco ball — ostensibly there for irony — actually creates a surprisingly serene ambiance when activated during any one of the Cardinals’ many improvised jams. That, and it supposedly belonged to Prince at some point (Sign O’ the Times, anyone?).

Several shows thus far on Adams’ Easy Tiger tour have seen very brief set lists, possibly due to mischievous heckling from fans and inadequate sound systems. But that’s neither here nor there. Adams loved the Murat, even at one point stopping to say, “This place is awesome,” in a rare moment of giddy candidness. On a roll from the opening duo of “Peacefully Valley” and “Beautiful Sorta,” Adams and Co. went on to play for nearly four hours, stopping only once, possibly to play with action figures.

Already hailed by Adams’ ever-growing mass of message board fanboys as his best show of the year, he played with the crowd all through the night, often citing the aforementioned hearing contraption as a censor for song requests and mumbling witticisms as if he was trying to see how much he could get away with. Thankfully, the crowd ate it up. Even more so, they loved the songs. From a better-than-ever full-band version of “Bartering Lines” to a meandering translation of “Easy Plateau,” Adams and his band enjoyed their tunes every bit as much as his crowd, most of whom stayed for the duration of the lengthy weeknight show.

Tina Toledo made a surprising appearance, as did “Nightbirds” and “The End,” all-in-all amounting to a show worthy of every bit of the Murat’s beautiful setting, sound and the crowd’s anxious hopefulness. Most of all, Adams seemed on, and — believe it or not — like a true blue band leader, a quality that’s often seemed lacking in the past.