Album Review: I Want to Grow Up by Colleen Green

I Want To Grow Up is the third LP from LA pop-punker, Colleen Green. She’s all about simplicity. You could call her brand of guitar pop “minimalist” - but that would be way too contrived. The whole album is pretty much Green, a guitar, some bass and a drum machine – with the occasional synth thrown in.

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While Colleen Green's first LP for Hardly Art, Sock It to Me, was a slice of breezy, self-aware stoner bubblegum that insisted on a shallow read—perhaps to force us to turn away from deeper truths—its follow-up, I Want to Grow Up, is weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze. (In keeping with her first record, Milo Goes to Compton, Green named I Want To Grow Up after another Descendents album.) On this record, Green has managed to capture in very real and human terms the existential terror that everything is futile and that our lives will never amount to much: no small feat. She is keenly aware of her own limitations and has turned her reflection on those limitations into strengths.

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When you hit 30, you can suck it up and adopt a blind optimism about it all. You can think “30 is the new 20” (it’s not) or “Look at all I’ve accomplished! Bring it on!” (congrats on that). Or you can give it all the finger and shotgun a beer with a bong rip chaser, realizing that it’s just another day. The latter feeling dominates fuzz punk champion Colleen Green’s newest album, I Want to Grow Up.

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After recording a bunch of singles, some tapes, and a strong debut album for Hardly Art in 2013, Colleen Green's second album, Sock It to Me, was her first to be made in a studio with other musicians helping out. I Want to Grow Up was recorded in Nashville with JEFF the Brotherhood's Jake Orrall producing and playing guitar, and Diarrhea Planet's Casey Weissbuch on drums. Since so much of her initial charm was based around the cheesy D.I.Y.

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After making her name with a string of home-recorded releases — boasting excellent titles like Milo Goes to Compton — Los Angeles songwriter Colleen Green takes her wispy, lovelorn vignettes into a real studio on I Want to Grow Up. She kisses off her twenties with fuzz-pop guitars and breathy sighs in the Nineties mode of Juliana Hatfield or the Muffs. The boy she yearns for is a "Wild One," but when she grabs hold of him, she finds she can't "Pay Attention." So she'd rather spend her nights with "TV." Her best shot is the punked-up "Grind My Teeth" — it turns out the only one of these boys worth her time is the one who stresses her out all night.

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Is growing up just a trivial bit of maths or all about maturing? That’s the – ahem - age-old question that pop-punk cool-girl Colleen Green attempts to tackle with a scrum of fuzz guitar riffs and distorted vocals on her third album. There is certainly some basic development in the sense that the Californian now has a full backing band, allowing for hooks meatier than a pirate devouring a rack of ribs. Take ‘TV’ – it’s not only got some seriously fat guitar riffs, but also makes use of the live drums not found on Green’s other material – or ‘Grind My Teeth’, with its Deap Vally level of fuck-off attitude.

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You know about the big releases each week, but what about those smaller albums which may have passed underneath your radar. Don’t miss out on the smaller, lesser-known gems which might become some of your favourites. We’ve rounded up seven of the best new album releases from this week: discover ….

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