Ryan Adams played a show last year at Madison’s Barrymore Theatre that has already become infamous. Although it has been debated, the general consensus is that it was a fiasco, with an extremely drunk Adams prancing around the stage, wasting up to five minutes between songs and launching into angry tirades directed at the audience.

I was at that show (I wrote about it beforehand, in fact), and was so disgusted by it that I left early, something I very rarely do. I love much of what Adams has done in the past — he has yet to release a truly great album, but songs like “Firecracker,” “To Be Young” and “Oh My Sweet Carolina,” along with his work with Whiskeytown, stand with the best pop/rock of the last 10 years — but I was about to give up on him.

When the release of Demolition, a one-disc culling of four albums’ worth of various sessions, was announced, I was praying that the bastard hadn’t done it again.

Unfortunately, the bastard has done it again. Demolition is no better than Gold or Heartbreaker, and no more consistent, but it is another mostly solid collection of songs, with some definite stand-outs, written and performed with the odd brand of cynical vulnerability that Adams seems close to patenting.

Mostly a collection of demos (hence the name), the album’s songs, at least the slower ones, are spare and unvarnished, with few of the sonic frills that populated Gold; it’s much more akin to the raggedness of Heartbreaker. This is not as true of the album’s rockers, which, for the most part, are a somewhat boring bunch: “Nuclear,” “Starting to Hurt” and “Gimme A Sign,” all recorded as part of a session with Adams’ “punk band” The Pink Hearts, sound less like The Clash than Matchbox 20; they’re, at best, a bad Replacements rip-off.

Speaking of The Replacements, all these songs suffer from Adams’ failed attempts at Westerberg-style shouting vocals. “Starting To Hurt,” in particular, carries Adams’ throat-ripping vocals into painful territory. On the other hand, “Hallelujah,” which most closely resembles the highlights of his previous records, is an exception, a gently swaggering effort with Byrds-esque jangle and sweet harmonies.

It’s one of the album’s highlights, as is “Chin Up, Cheer Up,” an unusual message of hope from the normally sourpuss Adams that benefits greatly from its near-bluegrass arrangement.

When Adams slows down, the results are generally better than when he rocks out, though still as inconsistent. “Dear Chicago” is the album’s best song — well-sung, well-played and well-written, an example of the high-quality song craft that marks Adams’ best material. It also contains a lyric that seems to sum up Adams’ philosophy: “I’ve been contemplating suicide, but there’s bars out here for miles.”

“Desire” is also a classic, with its smoky, spare arrangement and ethereal vocal performance. “Tomorrow” is a beautiful duet with occasional collaborators Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. These three songs are more evidence that Adams may well be on his way to becoming a new king of heartbreak.

“Tennessee Sucks” and “Cry On Demand” are one level below those three, but they both come off better than “She Wants To Play Hearts,” on which Adams comes unintentionally close to parodying his impressionistic lyrics and fluttery vocal style in four endless minutes of interminable sulk. “Tennessee Sucks” benefits from a druggy cleverness that is also becoming an Adams trademark.

“Jesus (Don’t Touch My Baby),” which closes Demolition, is the album’s oddest track, recalling the early-’80s doom-and-gloom of Joy Division or The Smiths, with its synthesized drums and muted vocals. It’s okay, but it by no means ranks with even the best stuff of this album.

Originally, the plan for this material was to release all of it, either as four separate albums or as a boxed set; Adams has suggested that this still might happen, depending on the reaction to Demolition.

Although I won’t be starting any petitions against it, this record’s spottiness causes one to seriously wonder what all four albums’ worth of this stuff would’ve sounded like. Ryan Adams, for once, may have shown discretion as the better part of valor in only releasing this one good, though by no means classic, record.