You reviewer must confess he'd previously dismissed ADAM GREEN out of hand. He can't exactly pinpoint the specific reason, though Green's antics with The Moldy Peaches (dressing in a pixie suit while his cohort Kimya Dawson cavorted in a rabbit outfit onstage; banging on about drinking piss milkshakes during interviews) and their propensity for singing stupid songs about crack seemed peurile at best.
Thus, when Adam Green launched a solo career running concurrently with The MPs, your reviewer shrugged indifferently. So what? More useless, meagre-selling quirky singer/ songwriter trash to disappear into obscurity, surely?
Green's third solo album "Gemstones", though, suggests your reviewer deserves to be strung up for this reprehensibly blinkered attitude. And not before time, too, if the rest of Green's catalogue contains unlikely brilliance of this calibre.
Because, in the space of a hectic 35 minutes and 15 quirkily fantastic songs, Adam Green manages to stake his claim as a performer of note. Yes, he's on first name terms with that typically idiosyncratic New York club of kookily literate songwriters that also includes Stephin Merritt and Jeffrey Lewis (though he lacks the former's camp archness or the latter's vaguely annoying stoned charm), but "Gemstones" is the product of an original, fertile mind with plenty to say and a wonderfully goofy way of saying it.
The looned-out genius of the opening title track gives you some idea what to expect. Green's band (including Jeff Buckley's old drummer Parker Kindred) proves themselves to be remarkably versatile as they flit from gentle ballad to madcap polka rush and Adam's darkly charismatic layrnx delivers a crateload of lyrical gems before settling on a chorus ("Dunkin' donuts, gimme dunkin' donuts, she's a really crazy girl, but I love that crazy bitch alright!") that's one of the most out-there you'll holler back this or any year.
As it turns out, it's merely the first of fifteen brevity-fuelled offbeat pop moments and all manner of riches come scattered in its' wake. Parts of it ("Teddy Boys", the "Exile On Main Street"-era Stones of "Crackhouse Blues") rock surprisingly hard, while "Down On The Sreet" comes on like a loopily brilliant indie Bo Diddley being backed by the Motown house band and casually knocking out a tribute to cartoon character Pepe Le Pew. And no, I'm not on drugs. Really.
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Elsewhere, Adam plays hilariously witty games with the neo-plagiarism police. "He's The Brat" virtually quotes from The Doors' "Soul Kitchen" with its' "stumbling in the neon groves" chorus; "Emily"s strident indie-pop appears to use "Da Doo Ron Ron" as its' starting point and both the malevolent tango of "Caroline" and the hilarious "Choke On A Cock" ("I'd dance on NBC and say I shook hands with George Bush and then I'd go and choke on a cock") strongly recall the daffiest moments from Sparks' "Indiscreet". But such is the strength of Adam's tremendously warped vision and the band's adroit dexterity that the end results could only have been fashioned by their own communal imagination. Besides, any songwriter who gets away with rhyming "Dostoyevsky" with "Fab Moretti" ("Caroline") can't fail to get my vote.
Crucially, though, on the rare occasions Green lets up on the quirk factor, he's a surprisingly affecting singer/ songwriter. "Before My Bedtime", for instance, features a dramatic, Scott Walker-style intro before morphing into a lascivious, jazzy strut, while "Where's Your Boyfriend?" is low-key acoustic pop harbouring tangible reserves of vengeance and "Losing On A Tuesday" shows Green can do 'reflective' to great effect when he so chooses.
So the more your reviewer listens, the more he realises how rash it was to prematurely write this talented character off. A trip down back catalogue lane would seem to be the next move for me, but whether you're familiar with Adam Green's past or not, "Gemstones" is a quality, shammer-free bag of sparklers that won't lose their lustre in a hurry.
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