Jacksonville City Nights: Ryan Adams and The Cardinals (Lost Highway) Jacksonville City Nights is the second of a projected three albums Ryan Adams plans to release this year.

He is certainly prolific - songs just seem to flow out of him at the moment His music is also very diverse, ranging form the mainstream Gold; the indie/hard rock of Rock N Roll to the melancholy ballads of last year's Love Is Hell.

Earlier this year Adams released Cold Roses, a double album with his talented new band The Cardinals. It contained some great songs, many with a country flavour.

The country element is even more to the fore on Jacksonville City Nights, where most tracks feature the distinctive sound of a pedal steel guitar.

Like many of Adams' albums, it's a grower which needs repeated playings before its treasures reveal themselves entirely. In fact, the first time I played it I was rather disappointed. The songs seemed a bit ordinary.

But Adams knows what he's doing and ploughs his own furrow and it's up to the listener to keep up. And if you do that, it's certainly worth the effort.

In truth, this is not my favourite Adams' set - the vocal acrobatics on a few tracks still irritate me a little and one or two songs are rather earnest.

But there are also plenty of gems - A Kiss Before I Go, Hard Way To Fall, September and an excellent version of Presley's Always On My Mind, for example.

And there's still another album to come later this year...