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Ryan Adams is a little bit country, and he's a little bit rock 'n' roll. Don't confuse him with Canadian pop-rocker Bryan (Cuts Like a Knife) Adams--the two are no relation, by blood or by music. Ryan, 26, the former lead singer for the alt-country band Whiskeytown, writes songs that have the passion of youth and a melancholy that one might think would be beyond his years. Sometimes he sounds like the old Bruce Springsteen; other times he sounds like a new Hank Williams. Adams' last album, Heartbreaker (2000), was released on a small label, and few fans heard it. His new CD, Gold (due out Sept. 25), is his major-label debut and should win him the larger audience he deserves.
DESIGN
BIGGEST BUZZ
Two New High Rollers in Vegas
It would be safe to say that Rem Koolhaas is the only renowned architect who also once wrote a screenplay for Russ Meyer, the director of Mondo Topless. But the Dutch architect's immersion in mass culture is part of what made him just the man to design the two latest additions to the Guggenheim Museum's global museum line, opening on Oct. 7. That's because both will be located at the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
Koolhaas has promised that the two structures, his first completed projects in the U.S., will provide a "stark contrast" yet "merge completely with the casino experience." One is an exhibition space that boasts on its ceiling (which opens like shutters to admit light) a campy version of Michelangelo's Creation from the Sistine Chapel. The other museum is a Guggenheim collaboration with Russia's great Hermitage that will feature shows drawn from both institutions. Koolhaas is one of the world's most influential architects, a man brimming with ideas about how cities are shaped by shopping, entertainment, the pleasures of spectacle and the frustrations of desire. Sounds like Las Vegas to us.
CRITIC'S PICK
Aerial Dynamics
To design its new addition, the Milwaukee Museum of Art picked one of Europe's most original architects, Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish-born engineer whose buildings and bridges are high-wire acts of structural and aesthetic daring. His centerpiece for the museum, in Milwaukee, Wis., is a tall sunscreen with wings that open and close. But tests on building material hit a snag, pushing back the screen's official May debut to Oct. 14. It's a thing of beauty, but will it fly?
DANCE
BIGGEST BUZZ
Glories Past And Present