Review: Ryan Adams at Astor Theatre
Ryan Adams at Astor Theatre
Saturday, October 4, 2025
“‘Go tour the world playing Heartbreaker,’ they said. ‘It will be fun,’ they said.”
Ryan Adams lay flat on his back at the front of the stage, as if his breakthrough debut album was more of a burden to be carried rather than an achievement to be celebrated.
“This record is so depressing I have to tell jokes between each song just to keep the mood up,” he said.
And for a Perth crowd seeing the US alt-country star for the first time in years, that’s exactly what he did. Whether recounting run-ins with Keith Urban and Sam Shepard, his days as a drug-addled upstart in New York, or the emotional and financial fallout of his high-profile separations (“She took seven million dollars… do you know how many Maseratis that is?”), Adams had no shortage of material to spin a yarn.
A prolific and prodigious musician, Adams began his career in 1994 as the frontman of North Carolina alt-country band Whiskeytown before launching his solo career with Heartbreaker in 2000. In the quarter century since, Adams released a stunning thirty studio albums along with a series of popular cover albums and notched up seven Grammy nominations.
But with the highs have come undeniable lows. A self-confessed drug user since his early years, Adams never claimed to be a saint. But when multiple women—including former partners and fellow musicians Mandy Moore and Phoebe Bridgers—came forward in the late 2010s with allegations of abuse and harassment, it left a lasting mark on his name. On this night, he didn’t ignore the subject, even if some in the crowd might have preferred he stuck to the music.
Indeed, the music was something everyone in attendance could get behind, and the night was an opportunity to step back to where it all began. Adams kicked off the set performing his 2000 record pretty much cover to cover. Without a support act or a backing band, it felt as though we were there in his lounge room, with nothing but a few acoustic guitars and a grand piano, his voice, his harmonica and some lamps.
Fresh off releasing the 25th anniversary edition of Heartbreaker—featuring re-recorded and reimagined versions of the original tracks—it was no surprise that some of his finest early work got a new treatment on the night. The opener, To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High), set the tone, followed by highlights including Oh My Sweet Carolina (dedicated to his late brother), the delicate Amy, and Sweet Lil Gal (23rd/1st), which was accompanied by a story about buying drugs in downtown New York and living next door to a ghost.
Having previously postponed his Australian tour due to illness, Adams explained the lengths he’d gone to make this performance happen given he now lives with Ménière’s disease, a degenerative disorder that puts him at risk of seizures from bright lights or flash photography. Although a few incidents occurred early in the set, Adams handled them with disarming wit. After reminding the audience to lay off the flash photos, someone responded with a garbled shout which he misheard as ‘boiled meat’, which he hilariously made the subject of an impromptu song.
Performing for an impressive three hours, Adams’ engagement with the crowd throughout kept people hanging on every word with his sardonic and self-deprecating humour. “I like Australia. You guys get my sense of humour. I can’t talk like this everywhere I go.” Having said that, if anyone wanted to get a drink or go to the bathroom during said time, they ran the risk of Adams singling them out in front of a sold-out Astor Theatre.
After being reassured several times that people were going to the bar and not going home, he asked if someone else could get him a beer too. Predictably this led to a handful of patrons heading to the front of the stage to give Adams beers during the show.
Putting down the guitar for his first stint on the piano, Adams lined up his haul of beers to give a running critique, winning cheers for his praise of “E-Moo” (Emu Export), and while he enjoyed the Hazy, he felt Air Time was called as such because “it’s the kind of beer they give you on a plane.”
As loose as it might sound, even an entourage of brews couldn’t throw Adams off his musical game. Armed with a selection of acoustic guitars, but tending to favour his iconic blue, white and red six-string, Adams’ voice and instruments could not have sounded more pristine in the historic theatre.
From the outset, Adams had clearly explained how the night was going to go: he was going to play Heartbreaker back to back, followed by an intermission and then a set of other hits from his career (but he saved one song from Heartbreaker for last). Given his lengthy stories between songs, it wasn’t surprising he ran overtime, but when his roadie whispered in his ear that he should skip the intermission, he wasn’t a fan of the idea.
Saying he was fanging for a smoke, he compromised that we would have to have a very short intermission and he would have to “drop a few Smiths covers” from the final set.
When he returned, he was true to his word, and after a bit of crowd feedback, he opted for That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore. “I can’t count on all my fingers and toes the number of Australian artists who not only inspired me but helped shape Heartbreaker as a record,” he said, and paid tribute to INXS and their WA roots with an absorbing cover of Never Tear Us Apart. When the Stars Go Blue, from 2001’s Gold, was another late highlight before the crowd found full voice singing along to the closer, Heartbreaker‘s centrepiece, Come Pick Me Up.
Although the clock had ticked past curfew, Adams had proved so entertaining you got the sense that everyone could have watched another hour, which is remarkable for just one person on stage. As he thanked the crowd and his ‘sponsor’, Emu Export, it capped off one of the funniest live shows many had ever seen in Perth. With Adams’ health likely to make international touring more challenging, there’s no certainty he’ll return to Perth, but if this was his final performance here, he certainly made it a memorable one.
BRAYDEN EDWARDS