Adam Green

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Adam Green

Have you heard of anti-folk? Does anyone have any idea what the hell that is? Well Adam Green is a torchbearer of the anti-folk NYC scene. Adam Green got his start as one-half (the other half being Kimya Dawson) of the New York City group The Moldy Peaches. Forming in 1994 and, after playing a Halloween show in 2002, went on a hiatus that continues today, not counting a brief reunion in 2008 after the 2007 film Juno and its accompanying soundtrack catapulted the Moldy Peaches into the spotlight thanks to their 2001 song “Anyone Else But You.” That, however, is all backstory. This is about Adam Green’s solo career after the Moldy Peaches. He just released a new album, this year’s Engine of Paradise, on Danger Mouse’s record label 30^th Century Records. But what about the time in between when Moldy Peaches broke up and him releasing his 10^th solo album this year? Well, let’s take a closer look at each of his albums. It started with the lo-fi (think early Beck releases, pre-major-label-signings) solo-debut Garfield. Although his debut album had hints of genius, it was his next three releases, 2003’s Friends of Mine, 2005’s Gemstones, and 2006’s Jacket Full of Danger that really solidified Green’s genius for me. I came on board with Adam Green with his second album, Friends of Mind, which, with is lush string arrangements and tongue-in-cheek songs about Jessica Simpson or songs about ladies with no legs, songs about broken joysticks, or songs about wanting to die. Friends of Mine is only his second album, but he had plenty of time to incubate as a songwriter as a Moldy Peach. His second album is string-driven with pop oriented songs. His singing is like Elvis, he swoons you… his baritone will rattled your bones, his songs will you send into space. With 2005’s Gemstones, he got rid of the strings and focused more on the electric Rhodes piano. 2006’s Jacket Full of Danger saw a perfect mix of his two previous albums- we got the luxurious strings of Friends of Mine and the groovy electric organ off of Gemstones. Then came 2008’s Sixes & Sevens, his Wowee Zowee if you will, at least in relation to the sheer amount of volume and genres covered on that album. Two years later we received 2010’s Minor Love, which saw him getting rid of dick jokes and songs about crack cocaine for more pop-oriented songs that came across as a cool-minimalistic-downtown-leather-wearin’-vibe. Two highlights from that album, the songs "Stadium Soul" and "Give Them a Token" both share a similar downtown-cool appeal, yet still retain a helpful bit of the sweetness and whimsy found in Green's earlier work. 2010’s MuisK for a Play, was a solid, instrumental release. It was a companion album to a play, a score for a theatrical version of Paul Auster’s novel about a homeless man's dog entitled Timbuktu.  2013 gave us the collaboration album of Adam Green & Binki Shapiro while 2016 gave us Adam Green’s soundtrack to Aladdin. This soundtrack coincides with a movie he also directed. If you ever wondered what would happen if you wanted to re-tell the famous Middle Eastern story through the eyes of a weird Sesame-Street-goes-to-Pepperlan-vibe… with a setting and wonderland created with cardboard cutouts… then go check out Adam’s reinterpretation of Aladdin… or sit this one out. This all leads us to his most recent album 2019’s Engine of Paradise. He’s collaborated with and hung around the same circles as Ben Kweller, Bikini Shapiro, Macaulay Culkin, Father John Misty, even The Strokes. It no wonder why, set aside his songwriting chops, his voice alone is enough to make him a star. Green has long possessed a mature voice-even in his faux-naif, Robin-Hood days. His resonant baritone has always been startlingly emotive, and, okay let’s put his songwriting back into the mix, his songs are worthy and perfect match for his warm, velvety delivery. Adam greens shows off a developed croon that's as richly colored and evocative as Elvis'… in fact… Adam Green is kinda’ like Elvis on crack. He may get a bad rap for his bathroom humor, which tackles everything from drugs and pharmaceuticals to hipster ideals, and is spread throughout his whole discography. Green's self-consciously dweeby vocals hang his off-kilter lyrics like a doomed curveball. We're supposed to see how clever he is when he invokes celebrities' names or naughty images. Occasionally, he gets his giggles, usually with stream-of-consciousness imagery about "blank-faced footprints of the zebras in the glen" or non sequiturs like "her lips taste just like Sun Chips." Adam Green's prolific output—TEN(!) solo albums since The Moldy Peaches' self-titled debut in 2001-- partly derives from the brevity. With songs averaging around two minutes, replete with gratuitous pop-culture references and illusory in-jokes, and devolving occasionally into inscrutable ramblings, Green seems to fit the mold of college-quadrangle-musician jamming ironic Bob Dylan covers for the Birkenstock literati. His best work, though, is self-indulgent, redundant, and exasperating, and therein lay its charms.  He's been called an "anti-folk torchbearer" along the lines of Jonathan Richman and Townes Van Zandt, but says he's "medium-serious" about his music (pick one, kiddo-- either you are or you aren't), an attitude that often breeds complacency. So what do you really need to know about Adam Green? Friends of Mine, his second solo album, is his real crowning achievement. Although I’m partial to Jacket Full of Danger for nostalgic reasons… any newcomer to the world of Adam Green would be wise to start with Friends of Mine. So in short: He started in a legendary NYC anti-folk band, a small little band that he began with Kimya Dawson, writing songs in which they alternated lines that seemed designed mostly to crack each other up-he continued this trend of trying to make others crack up- and now he’s a successful solo artist- particularly in Germany for some reason. He swoons, he’s tuneful, he’ll bubble you over ‘til all you see is red, yellow, and….

Adam Green