Former Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams claims to have written and recorded enough songs over the past several years to fill a four-CD collection--and that's in addition to his acclaimed 2001 breakthrough Gold. Wisely, Adams decided to skip the box set--hey, he's only 27--and issue a sort of "best of" compilation comprising 13 unreleased demos. Recorded at four different studio sessions in Nashville, Los Angeles, and Stockholm, with a cast of musicians that includes his road band the Pinkhearts, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Ethan Johns, Chris Stills, Bucky Baxter, and Greg Leisz, Demolition proves that Adams is still a work in progress: brilliant one moment, sloppy the next. When he's good, he's very good: the rousing country-rocker "Hallelujah," the brooding acoustic ballads "Dear Chicago" and "Tomorrow," and the jangly power-pop number "Gimme a Sign" are as fine as anything on Gold. But Adams sometimes lapses into mimicry, as he does on "Nuclear" and "Starting to Hurt," both of which could be outtakes from a U2 album. "Tennessee Sucks," a chronicle of a boredom-filled summer day in Nashville, sounds half-baked, while the closing track, "Jesus (Don't Touch My Baby)," which finds Adams (on synthesizer, guitars, bass, and drum machine) droning on like Leonard Cohen, falls in the "failed experiment" category. Despite its bright spots, Demolition ultimately comes off as a mixed bag. --David Hill