Adam Green - Minor Love

Genre indie Publisher Fat Possum External Links

“You’re a scumbag and I’m sad about that. Oh Shucks.” That’s the very sentiment flowing proudly throughout the entire album.  Lead singer and songwriter Adam Green, formerly of The Moldy Peaches (popularized by the trendy teen-something movie Juno), recently came out with an almost perfect album titled Minor Love. Although its essence is vapid, patronizing and only marginally marketable to the festival-ites, it is darn catchy and there are apparent moments of clarity where he realizes the virtue of getting more with honey than hateful vinegar.

On Green’s sixth album, being released on February 16, 2010, he feeds his listeners a surf and turf of musical entertainment. Although certain song styles just don’t seem to go together, in this case, everything was artfully blended. As I listened to the album once through, I was annoyed. I had to listen to it again and then again. After a while of getting accustomed to the transitions (and assumed subliminal messages), the fact that there were country-western style songs next to folk Americana songs next to electronically mixed songs was…interesting.  As a woman, I cannot forget to mention his palpable distaste for other ladies in his life.  According to this album alone, women who betray him are considered ‘dyke[s]’ who blacken the sky with their presence.  Adam Green is a chick magnet and according to his Myspace page, he had to record this album sans women, so as to try his hand at bi-sexuality.  Some say that this album is a departure from his more misogynist work. That’s like saying we should applaud “Mississippi Burning” racists for having the fortitude to reform from lynching bastards into more appropriate cross torching bastards.  Understatedly distasteful, plain and simple.

On a happier note, Green surprisingly offers some songs that are rich and profound.  In “Give Them A Token,” Green sings “Take the time to find out why I bowed out. I was flat on my own my darling, fought the lessons of grace for so long. When your trip’s only five meters long and you find you’ve been grown all along, join the living in noxious lullabies.” Moreover, while he channels Johnny Cash on “Boss Inside,” he sings “somewhere there’s a prince and he likes to strike me down. I know I’m not the reason, I’m just the one he found, and all these other cowards they’re not hard to boss around, you just get them in your arms and you hold them till they drown…he finally started screaming and pointing to the bed, he wanted me to kill him, but I took his life instead: ugly moments strung together and the poor guy couldn’t even find his temper and he could no longer make me cry, I guess the boss inside of him died.”

Overall, Minor Love is a huge success. Some of the songs are superficially immature and others are deeply emotional. I admire his mellow Lou Reed style, flippant ‘devil may care’ demeanor, and obnoxious intelligence. The composition of the album is like a like a bell curve of intensity. While I don’t necessarily like having to listen to a hodgepodge of genres on one supposedly cohesive album and obviously misogynistic lyrics, there are some relatively brief glimpses of a real human being under the covers. That kind of dichotomous simplicity and complexity is what makes Minor Love a must-listen.