On his 52nd birthday, seven-time Grammy nominee Ryan Adams announces Animal, a ten-track album out 12th February 2027, on his own PAX-AM label. The first single, ‘Amethyst’, is out now, and the album is available to pre-save and pre-order on vinyl, CD and digital.
Animal is an almost entirely solo record. Adams played drums, bass, guitars, piano, synths, percussion and harmonica himself, and wrote every song. He produced and mixed the album with Dror Mohar, who also engineered it, and it was mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound. Long-time friend Daniel Clarke adds synths to ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘Animal’ and ‘Jesus H’, and Hammond B3 to ‘Soon’, where J.C. Khul’s saxophone carries the coda.
The songs are night-time songs: neon, bar lights, wet streets, a car out on the 101. Adams is wry and exposed ‘Automatic Heart’ is a confession from someone who “falls for people all the time”; ‘Pass Me By’ is a plain-spoken ache; ‘Jesus H’ asks what the H stands for and answers with a horror-film walk through October streets. The record closes on ‘Outsiders In’, a cold, wintry song about what a prayer is worth “if you just break even”.
Lead single ‘Amethyst’ is the album’s most direct statement: a bruised, funny and defiant look at the music business, aging and survival that ends with Adams naming himself “the ghost in the attic … the color of driftwood and amethyst”.
Animal follows a prolific run of PAX-AM releases and the 25th-anniversary re-imagination of his debut Heartbreaker in 2025. Fans can expect a run of exclusive vinyl variants and bundles at ryanadamsanimal.com, with further singles and visuals to come before release.
Animal is the sound of Adams alone in the room. Like 2017’s Prisoner, it finds him playing nearly everything himself: drums, bass, guitars, piano, synths, percussion and harmonica, on ten songs he wrote alone. He produced and mixed it with Dror Mohar, with mastering by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound. The only other hands on the record belong to Daniel Clarke on synths and Hammond B3 and J.C. Khul on saxophone.
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