Adam Green
Minor Love
Release Date: Feb 16, 2010
Genre(s): Indie, Pop, Alternative, Folk
Record label: Fat Possum
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Album Review: Minor Love by Adam Green
Very Good, Based on 7 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Juno is to blame for a lot of things. Quirky, non-realistically verbose teens, and Michael Cera becoming an on screen father amongst others. However, the soundtrack did bring Kimya Dawson to wider attention, allowing her to ride a career high with the rapidfire 'Loose Lips', and The Moldy Peaches finally got recognition for their naïve genius with 'Anyone Else But You'.
Based on rating 8/10
In the video for Adam Green’s “Buddy Bradley”, the singer is shown ambling through the streets of New York City while bystanders look on, the way they would look at anyone being filmed like that. Adam Green has made a career out of this—being the musical equivalent of a guy walking down the street. He does do not much more than strum a guitar and sing words that sound much like speaking.
Based on rating 3.5/5
[a]Adam Green[/a]’s flowering from puerile anti-folk twonk with [a]The Moldy Peaches[/a] to suave lounge-country crooner is laudable. This sixth solo outing widens his cultural rehabilitation, carving splinters of [a]Lambchop[/a] (‘[b]Cigarette Burns Forever[/b]’), Magnetic Fields (‘[b]Castles And Tassels[/b]’), Nilsson (‘[b]Give Them A Token[/b]’), [a]The Velvet Underground[/a] (‘[b]What Makes Him Act So Bad[/b]’), [a]The Strokes[/a] (‘[b]Goblin[/b]’) and [a]Scott Walker[/a] (‘[b]Boss Inside[/b]’) from a sawdusty bar-stool. An absence of hookers, drugs and wanking – coupled with Wurlitzer, desert echo and Mexican arpeggio – suggest a wonk.
Based on rating 6.5/10
For Adam Green, it's been a strange path from the the Moldy Peaches to now -- unexpected, it seems, for audience and artist alike. While his partner in that former group, Kimya Dawson, continued to sing simple folk songs that walk a fine line between childhood innocence and frank maturity, Green has, admittedly, carved his own path. From the orchestra-backed swoon of Friends of Mine through last year's swinging Sixes and Sevens, he has continued to experiment with his writing style, a mix of cut-up wordplay and irreverent humor.
Based on rating 5.7/10
It's the end of an era: An Adam Green record without a single dick joke or crack-cocaine reference. In fact, much of the former Moldy Peach's latest album, Minor Love, finds Green trying to obstruct the persona he's spent almost a decade fine-tuning. As occasionally funny as he was while cloaking his emotions with crudeness and junk-pop crooning, he was rarely as forthcoming as he is on his sixth solo outing.
Based on rating 2.5/5
If you’ve been paying attention to Adam Green’s solo career, which truly began when The Moldy Peaches went on extended hiatus in 2004, then you might recognize Minor Love as a simpler, more earnest, and perhaps less overtly irreverent outing. Previous efforts included gospel choirs, string sections, and all manner of orchestral elements, but these grandiose flourishes and production tricks are absent on this album. What’s left is a simpler, stripped-down sound that hones in on Green’s voice.
Opinion: Excellent
Adam Green occupies the same crossover niche of Conor Oberst and Andrew Bird – that being sulky, good-looking young men who prefer to keep their guitars un-electrified. However he’s always been more exploratory, and decidedly less poppy, than his peers. Minor Love is, in a lot of ways, his career culmination – even more so than his stint in the oft-adored, oft-maligned Moldy Peaches.
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