| A friend of mine: Adam Green |
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| "When I was on tour with Pete Doherty last year he covered one of my songs. It was amazing how many of the audience were singing along!” |
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It would be easy for me to lump Adam Green into the same comfy pigeon hole as The Strokes – I probably wouldn’t be the first to do so. However, any associations between Mr Green and Julian Casablancas et al are entirely logistical. Yes, they are both products of the late nineties New York scene. Yes, they were both signed up by London’s Rough Trade Records when they set out to capture some of that scene. And yes, they both built considerable fan bases in the UK, and across Europe, while still only starting out in their home country. Musically, however, Green is from an entirely different pigeon hole, several rows down, over there, on the left hand side. Green’s music may sit in the vicinity of indie, but it is far too folk-infused to be compared to any of his contemporaries in that genre. Those who know about these things draw comparisons with Leonard Cohen, and I can’t do any better than that.
“I didn’t go to proper school until I was 12 because my parents taught me at home,” Adam says, explaining his indie-folk leanings. “Immediately my new friends started introducing me the indie rock that was big back then – Nirvana and all that stuff. I absorbed it all pretty quickly and, to be honest, except for a few stand outs, I wasn’t impressed. Then I started working at a record store with these people who were really knowledgeable about music. I’d go around the store and say, ‘what does this sound like, what’s this about’. That turned me onto other kinds of music, Donovan, Steve Hillage, psychedelia and trad folk.”
Green’s part time job at that record store clearly shaped his musical style of the future. But even more important than that, it was where he met one Kimya Dawson. Despite being eight years older than the young Green, he and Kimya quickly hit it off – building a friendship around their music. “We couldn’t really hang our like normal people because of the age difference, so we kinda communicated by writing songs together”. It was those collaborations that were to become the Moldy Peaches.
“I started busking on the subways, and came across this café that had an open mic night. There were loads of other musicians and songwriters there and it was really cool, so I got Kimya to go down with me. It was there that the Moldy Peaches came together.”
The Moldy Peaches, and their eponymously titled long player, was one of the great indie albums of the new millennium and they continue to win new fans even now. So much so, those aware of the band mainly through the music press are normally surprised to hear that the band only ever recorded that one album. “Moldy Peaches was never meant to be a proper band,” Adam explains, “it was never a career. It was something we did for fun – it was never meant to become a big thing. And, to be honest, at the time it didn’t become a big thing. Moldy Peaches is much bigger now than back then – we never made any money from it, and I don’t suppose we sold many records. So when people say ‘why did you give all that up’ – well – there wasn’t much to give up!”
“In fact it always surprises me now the number of people who know Moldy Peaches stuff. When I was on tour with Pete Doherty last year he covered one of my songs. It was amazing how many of the audience were singing along!”
Adam has been much more prolific as a solo artist, with three albums in as many years, the eponymous debut, 2003’s ‘Friends Of Mine’ and new album ‘Gemstones’. It is through those albums that Adam’s style and voice have become really distinct and through which, with those folk roots always present, he has become a master musical story teller.
The new album was written while Adam toured last year and he reckons this really aided the end product. “I wrote ‘Friend Of Mine’ at home, I wrote the new album on tour - it is written for playing live. Writing new songs on tour was great. It meant I could play them with a full band again and again, which gave me a real awareness of rhythm. This album is much more complicated rhythmically, because I could say to the band ‘try it this way, what happens if we do this or that’. It gave a number of the songs some interesting twists and turns which wouldn’t have been there if I’d written this album at home”.
Fingers crossed the new album, aided by the continuing popularity of the Moldy Peaches, will help Adam reach a bigger audience in 2005. Some ground work was done to that effect through extensive touring last year in the UK and elsewhere.
Over here, of course, that touring included support sets with the band of Libertine-in-exile Pete Doherty, Babyshambles. How did Adam find working with a man whose high profile in Britain is down to his famous drug addiction rather than his musical abilities? “I’ve known Pete for years – and he’s been really kind to me. His tour was a bizarre experience – there were a lot of drugs about the place, a lot of very spaced out people – but everyone was really nice. And it was nice to be asked on his tour, and it was cool when he covered some of my songs.”
When Adam returns to the UK this Spring it will be for some headline shows, so the Babyshambles madness will be missing. But nonetheless, with his own unique musical style, and an album as strong as ‘Gemstones’, they are sure to be great shows. But don’t take my word for it, preview some tracks here and make up your own mind. Assuming you’re suitably impressed, I’ll see you there.
Some Adam Green plugging:
Adam Green's 'Gemstones' was released on 24 Jan 2005 on Rough Trade.
chris@unlimitedmedia.co.uk - published jan 2005
