THEY wouldn’t wish it on him, of course, but fans of Ryan Adams may have have benefited from their hero’s personal strife.

His 16th album in 17 years – as spiders have webs, so does Ryan Adams has albums out – is born of the break-up of his marriage, and while that may have left the North Carolinian forlorn, it’s also given him the thematics and mindset to produce his best collection of songs for years.

Prisoner might not match up to the raw intensity of Heartbreaker and Gold, the double-whammy that launched his post-Whiskeytown solo career at the start of the 2000s, but it’s probably his most cohesive, impactful album since, being neither a dashed-off, two-fingers-up-at-the-record-company effort like Rock N Roll, a slog like Love Is Hell, or an act of bizarre wilfulness like his Taylor Swift homage 1989, Adams’ previous outing.

Prisoner has its faults – chiefly the weak soft-rock soundscapes of Do You Still Love Me? and Anything I Say To You Now – but it’s easily read, undemanding in the best possible way, and packed with classic, focused, affecting songcraft that serves as a reminder of not just how disgracefully talented Adams is, but how that talent shows itself best when he has a well-defined channel for his rockslide of ideas.

With echoes of Springsteen in the vocals and The Smiths in its guitar-jangle coating, Prisoner is both deeply introspective and outwardly kinetic, less an anguished wail as an attempt to heal a wound.

Doomsday, Outbound Train and Broken Anyway are perfect drive-time Americana, pain repurposed as power, while the title track and Shiver And Shake – where Adams mumbles “You used to give me scraps/You don’t do it any more” – work as contrasting emotional states, gritted-teeth defiance followed three songs later by a slump into desolation.

Given the circumstances in which it was made, and the excellence of the outcome, Prisoner risks leaving its creator scared to be happy.

Ryan Adams plays Leeds O2 Academy on September 18; tickets on sale at gigst.rs/RA