ALBUM REVIEW OVER ADAM GREEN’S MINOR LOVE
Artist: Adam Green
Album: Minor Love
Label: Rough Trade Records
Total Length: 32 minutes, 35 seconds
Release Date: February 16, 2010
When reviewing any album, there are three questions a listener needs to know the answer to before having an informed opinion:
1. Are the concepts behind the music relevant?
2. Does the music contain depth and substance in its content? and
3. Is the style of the work impressive?
If we ask these three questions of Adam Green’s 2010 album, Minor Love , we can better understand the legacy of its artistry from our immediate perspective. Green poses many multi-conceptual themes, such as sisyphean drug usage and unrequited sex. The album is chalk-full of value judgments and ideas on his feeling about the human condition. On top of all of this substance, the album’s instrumentation (Green plays nearly each instrument on the album and recorded the album in near entire isolation) consists of his trusty guitar and the stylings of a well-produced, decade-in-the-making artist. Minor Love exists as his most succinct LP to date, with the fewest tracks (fourteen) and the shortest average song time: two minutes, twenty one seconds. Through his refusal to waste space with extended instrumental jams, he appeases today’s Twitter generation with its short attention span. As you’ll see further on in this review, Green shares many of current society’s ills and mental diseases.
Despite the album’s brevity, Green never cuts corners when it comes to his intricate lyricism. He skillfully uses an ekphrastic style to convey as much meaning (and double-meaning) as possible in his always-to-the-point lyrics. Consider Green’s poetic expertise as we review the rhyme scheme in the stanzas of “Cigarette Burns Forever”. Take note that every line ends with a two-syllable rhyme. Here’s the entire rhyme scheme for each of the five stanzas:
1. A / A / A / A
2. B / B / C / C
3. D / D / D / D
4. E / E / F / F
5. A /A / A / A
Notice Green’s aptitude for creating meaningful rhymes, better than most professional poets. Had you noticed that
a. rhymes that are consistently multisyllabic are difficult to achieve?
b. the entire first stanza rhymes with the entire last stanza?
c. with all four lines rhyming in stanzas one (1), three (3), and five (5); and with two halves of the lines rhyming together in stanzas two (2) and four (4), the rhyme scheme is quite symmetrical?
d. he displays the subject of the song through its rhyme pattern: Logically, an actual cigarette that could burn forever would have to start over at the end, just like how Green rhymes, “get her” [A] in the first stanza and the same rhyme, “bet-ter” [A] throughout the last?
Green is an auteur and knows exactly what he’s doing with his pen. He’s certainly well-versed in literary technique and the ideologies of twentieth-century philosophers. We’ll go over his poetic and ideological influences a bit further on. While we’re still on “Cigarette Burns Forever”, notice how he thoroughly covers the conceptual dilemmas of addiction to pleasure yet always finding incessant dissatisfaction:
“I fell into a life of leisure. I saw to a path of pleasure. Don’t it make it that much better, to find a cigarette that burns forever?”
The ending question is tongue-in-cheek speak for, “I’ll never be content in this life because no cigarettes actually burns forever.” I hope you’re a believer in the intellectual depth Green uses when discussing basic aspects of his daily life. Sometimes Green, the idiomatic motherfucker, means the exact opposite of what his words say definitionally.
As he has a good hold on the subjects of philosophy and poetry, it seems Green is a master of symbolism, too. Assuming the French’s view of the artist as auteur, we’ll say that Green really did make those oft-overlooked suggestions about the design of the album’s cover. Sure, the folks at Rough Trade Records probably made the final decision, though I bet a label so D.I.Y. gave Green a decent amount of control over his own product. Let’s analyze some of the symbolism he put on the album’s cover:
First, the photograph’s setting is New York, Green’s birthplace. The cover juxtaposes childish, bright pink handwriting over a vintage, black-and-white photograph of Adam. This recalls a consistently thematic lyric from 2008’s Sixes and Sevens, when he instructs artists to “make it old mixed with new” [“Be My Man”]. The scribbled handwriting on the bottom left displays Green’s often childish verse and emphasizes the fact that he writes the lyrics himself and doesn’t have his label use a type-font for the album cover. Green’s body position looks goofy, even humorous in the photograph, caught mid-dance. His body is overexposed and thus looks overly white. He mixes this with a very dark sepia background. This is all to show how he contrasts lightness and levity within a consistently darker subject material. The star popping out in the background of the skyline is obviously intentional, but why? I say it’s because this is the first album where Green honestly expresses his celebrité and what the expectations are for a star’s life with money and a wealth of substances. The theme of his celebrité is doubly represented by his body being so overexposed (now that he is more of a household name…get it?). The album’s drug motif is shown from the camera’s perspective, through the focus on blurring lights; diagonally-tilted angles (three total); and Green’s off-balance dancing. Lastly, if you’re wondering what fashion of sound he is going for in Minor Love, just check out his clothes on the front of the record: The boots and jeans are a throwback to his time spent in the anti-folk genre [albums: Friends of Mine, Garfield]; the suspenders and cane are in reference to his more recent days of croonier Broadway-type ballads [albums: Gemstones and Sixes & Sevens]. The leather jacket is part of the image found on Minor Love: a turn towards his new tight-knit and cohesive Rock and Roll sound, as a direct descendant in the bloodline of Buddy Holly after 50 years of evolving technology and America’s rapid decline of convention. His outfit, in its entirety, represents a comprehensive image both of Green’s previous and current styles.
On the subject of his previous musical styles, any Moldy Peaches’ fan should try the song “Oh Shucks,” employing the same shrill, grungy electric guitars and pounding drum kit as found in 2002’s Moldy Peaches 2000: Unreleased Cutz & Live Jams. I’ve discussed Green’s overarching career with a few friends who prefer The Moldy Peaches, and each of them said that this album was a turn back in the “right direction” (nearer to his Moldy Peaches origins), after nearly a decade of obscuring and over-polishing his former raw lo-fi energy. The lyrics in “Oh Shucks” are a return to Green’s simpler, less technical times when he was writing anti-songs with Kimya Dawson. The title line is “You’re a scumbag and I’m sad about that, oh shucks. That’s the way I like it--makes me want to shout…" Everyone knows Adam Green plays the novelty card exceptionally well, though its in instances such as this where the novelty is so thick that it coats the listener’s throat as they swallow, leaving a remembered taste and uncomfortable feeling for a decent while following consumption. Fortunately, Green spends most of Minor Love avoiding this pothole by offering his cheesiness in its best form: poignant camp.
Another literary card which Green overplays is his obsession with vulgarity. Pitchfork was apparently fed up with this theme in his previous five records. Their review on Minor Love begins with: “It's the end of an era: An Adam Green record without a single dick joke or crack-cocaine reference.” Sure, Pitchfork, this is technically true. The vulgar lines in this album aren’t about crack or the male phallus. To exemplify Green’s steady refusal to leave bodily humor alone, read the title line of track ten (10) “Castles and Tassels”, when Green sings, “Castles and tassels and flatulent assholes, I love you always.” Once again the snobs with happy-trigger over at Pitchfork jumped to this conclusion while disregarding its inaccurate implications. Some folks doubt that it’s possible, but doesn’t Green almost always use his brain to be vulgar in new, creative ways? His humor reminds me of Woody Allen—both communicate ideas deeply through both verbal slapstick and intellectual wordplay. Adam Green’s trashiness is still in tact, but if his suitors were to play one of his records for her parents, it should definitely be Minor Love, containing minimal vulgarity by the already-desensitized Green standard of what’s appropriate and what’s offensive.
Despite his trekking into the lyrical territories of novelty, camp, and vulgarity; Green’s lyrics are a thing of endless substance. He proves his philosophical chops on Minor Love in particular. I suppose its possible that Green happened upon these philosophies randomly, but one could easily make an undeniable argument that Green exudes postmodernity as well as any artist of his day. Many music critics claim Green’s postmodernity, but few give us reasons as to why. Let’s put Minor Love on the scales of the chief postmodernist, writer/composer Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), when he lists the six requirements for art to be considered postmodern in its nature. Green meets four of the requirements stated consistently throughout Minor Love, those being:
1. The album employs multiple interpretations;
2. The characters sang about are contextualized by moral detachment;
3. Green sings personally and from a point of constant self-reference; and
4. Minor Love frequently fulfills Adorno’s concept three-layered concept behind the Meta.
Firstly, on his ability to write through multiple interpretations—Green frequently speaks with a loose narrator’s tongue. Many of his metaphors go unannounced, and Green technically sings of literal objects while also discussing the many ideas represented by such physical things. This is exactly a way in which Green proficiently exemplifies T.S. Eliot’s proposal of the objective correlative—using the literal to speak figuratively. Eliot’s style was stuck in modernity, because he still believed in the absolute nature of being able to interpret intangibles physically. Green, in his postmodernity, instead uses Eliot’s tool in order to display multiple interpretations with a subjective and open-ended meaning. Here’s a lyrical example from the song “Buddy Bradley”:
“You were the flatulent one and I am the boy who has a gun. You ran into me with such force, now all I can be is Buddy Bradley.”
For posterity you just need to know that Buddy Bradley is an alcoholic slacker in a perilous pursuit of love, written into the 1990’s comic book HATE. Green conveys this character’s entire concept while singing out a story about having the wind knocked out of him by a woman and his own shortcomings that pop up thereafter by merely stating, “You ran into me with such force, now all I can be is Buddy Bradley.” However, directly before those two lines is a perfect example of when Green fulfills Eliot’s objective correlative. He does not intend for the statement “You were the flatulent one, and I am the boy who has a gun” to be interpreted literally. For example, 1) He obviously couldn’t possibly possess such a baritone voice, were he indeed a child. 2) Even though I’m willing to look the other way, it’s still technically illegal for children to possess firearms. And lastly, 3) If Adam Green’s ex-wife really was as flatulent as he says, he wouldn’t even have needed a gun to keep away her pursuers.
Anyway, its clear that this lyric uses two literal subjects: a boy and a gun, though its the multi-conceptual, definitional layeredness which the line is evoking that is necessary to view the world through the lens of postmodernity. In this lyric, Green is referring to any number of things beyond a gun—the gun could symbolize an ability to destroy her feelings; a foolhardy desire to act out; it could even be describing his own penis. This is the method by which Green purposefully allows for multiple interpretations of any number of his lyrical verses. Keep in mind: the more possible meanings that exist in a song, the more the lyrics are potentiated into something quite meaningful.
The second qualification of postmodernity that Green meets on Minor Love is an intentional detachment from morality. Try out this lyric from “Boss Inside” and try not to think of Green’s character as a sociopathic serial killer who can’t feel or cry, who contains murderous desires—“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.”
Don’t be confused by the point of view in these lines—given the context, he is singing about being in a dream-like state and talking to himself, agreeing to kill his alter-ego. Green is using a “he” in order to display a conversation he’s surely had with himself. Not to make Mr. Green feel even worse, but what’s more socially detached than speaking about yourself in third person? Once again, all fathers of the women Adam Green pursues should listen to these lyrics before letting their daughter out of the house. Sorry, but no one said postmodernism was actually popular or even socially acceptable to publicly display for the previous generation…
The third aspect of Adorno’s postmodernity found in Green’s Minor Love is the act of self-referencing. Green has mastered this technique, nearly always speaking from his own confessional standpoint. He obscures his truths as much as he reveals, though the desire to share his insides with the world is as overwhelmingly present as it always has been in his veteran career. As mentioned earlier, Minor Love is particularly honest compared to his past releases. He sings of dealing with fame and a short-lived marriage; he lists any number of substances he’s recently consumed; and he discusses wrestling with mental illnesses including schizophrenia and depression, to cut short a long list of that which he’s confessed on Minor Love. This style of writing is widely prevalent today, though this strong of a brand of Confessionalism didn’t exist until the middle of the twentieth century—but we’ll discuss more about Green’s poetic influences slightly later on.
The last qualification of postmodernity which Green meets on Minor Love is fulfilling the Meta. Remember Green’s skill in conveying multiple interpretations? He employs this technique all over Minor Love to sing in the Meta—in just two lines he can achieve Adorno’s three levels required for a piece of art to contain the Meta. He begins by speaking literally of simple objects (Level 1). The objects listed always have a possible loose interpretation that can include concepts outside of those exact objects (Level 2). In the next line, he’ll use this concept to discuss the state of universal humanity as it relates to the concept (Level 3). Thus, frequently throughout Minor Love, Green meets the requirements of achieving level three of three of Adorno’s philosophy on Meta-Art.
Let’s try an example from the song, “Give Them A Token,” when Green sings on needing to “give them a token to play.” In his own, cutesy superficial way, this line can easily be used to evoke images of a video game arcade (Level 1). More complexly though, Green is admitting to giving out a token song from the album for airplay, and against his will (Level 2). Keep in mind, “Give Them A Token” was the first single off of Minor Love. To complete the Meta, Green applies the idea of his own token song to discussing radio play in general, to the pursuit of not selling out, and to his life as a popular artist (Level 3). He triangulates the truth of the song by synthesizing double-meaning and extending it to a larger concept than either of the original double meanings could have originally implied.
While still on the subject of Adorno’s postmodernity, let’s discuss what Adam Green’s lyricism hath in common with two of Adorno’s recorded piano compositions. First, in Adorno’s “Three Short Piano Pieces” [1945], the piano exudes lightness; also, through the song’s offbeat nature, Adorno communicates surprise twists and endings to the listener. Green’s lyrics too are often humorously light and offbeat. Also, Green is even more so a master at skewing his audience’s expectations by leading them to expect one note and playing another.
Another Adorno song which instrumentally shares with Green’s lyrics is “Piano Piece” [1921]. Both Minor Love and “Piano Piece” display an obscured depression, mental anxiety, and the artist’s need for a cigarette. Both Green and Adorno are great acts to listen to while you become disheveled and grow out your facial hair.
As a testament to Green’s legendary artistry, it’s been pretty easy to relate his music to some of the twentieth-century’s top thinkers. This argument is great support of the fact that Green e has already carved out a relevant niche at the very beginning of the new millennium. More than filling a niche though, Green’s poetry stands on its own. To say that Green’s verse is poetic is quite the understatement. Minor Love shows influences from some of last century’s most forward-thinking poets, such as Stephen Crane, John Cage [composer/poet], John Berryman, and Robert Creeley.
We’ve already discussed Adam Green’s vulgarity and moral detachment. In the very beginning of the 20th century, Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was the first writer to master such a detached persona through his sociopathic word choice and heartless dealing with subject material. Crane must have pre-ascertained the trending of futuristic artists such as Green when opening those new doorways of language for the lost, creative souls who would follow him. Like Crane, Green too sings from the perspective of an objective speaker outside of his own character, feeling little for his self other than boredom and disdain. Green perfectly embodies Crane’s sociopathic lyricism over a century after it was first written.
To use a previous example of Green’s lack of sympathy and his abundance of social detachment, let’s re-read part of the lyric sheet for Minor Love’s “Boss Inside”, where Green openly sings about dreaming that he is a person outside of himself that kills the singer of the song: “He wanted me to kill him but I took his life instead. Ugly moments strung together…” once again, his fiancée’s parents won’t understand the wordplay and poetic value of such a line, and will only read murderous intentions. The truth though is that Green loves airing never-before-heard stories, even if that means exaggerating the truth of his capabilities in order to produce a shocking effect.
Green employs this tactic for reasons much more complex than mere shock value though, such as sharing about his problems to assist others, or absolving his sins through admittance. This isn’t to say that Green views this lifestyle choice as immoral. Remember that he has willfully ignored societally-shared morés. All of this is explained lyrically to further detail in the song “What Makes Him Act So Bad”, where he openly discusses censorship and the overwhelming drive “to act so bad.” He thoroughly comprehends some of the more complex reasons that he acts out. He also intentionally uses his sociopathic nature to the benefit of the amount of the material at his disposal; and also in the pursuit of wooing his young, often emotionally distraught audience with the promise of a more interesting life and comfort upon arrival.
Another writer in the lineage of Adam Green’s poetics is John Cage [1912-1992]. Cage wrote poems in nonsensical “English”, much further past the extent of Bob Dylan’s prose book Tarantula. Through his style of dreamy and overly subjective stories , Cage fulfills the terms of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy on the mandate of schizophrenia in 1972’s magnum opus, Anti-Oedipus. This philosophy states how insanity and multiple interpretations are more truthful than your everyday simple, learned knowledge. Mr. Green, too, meets this burden of schizophrenia head-on, when combining everyday subjects with nonsensical contexts to extrapolate greater truths about the subject material, with their meaning enhanced by abstraction. Green takes literal objects and abstracts them, synthesizing the two as he’s singing them, fulfilling his own Hegelian Dialectic in each of such lyrics. Remember the example we gave of this type of three-way triangulation of truth earlier about the song “Give Them A Token”.
The third poet to name, another twentieth-century master, is John Berryman (1914-1972). Berryman is widely known as the father of confessional poetry, beating Plath to the writing board by over ten years. Berryman was as schizophrenic as Cage’s poetry, and a dark-minded drinker with a death drive on overload. Adam Green’s musical persona shares many common interests with Berryman’s depraved mind. Green sings confessions of mental illness [on “Boss Inside”], of consuming endless substances [on “Cigarette Burns Forever”], desiring to die [on 2003’s “I Wanna Die”], and of feeling unlovable [as he sings on “Breaking Locks”, “I’ve been too awful to ever be thoughtful; to ever be nice”]. Berryman was the first poet to write personally on all of these depressive subjects, doing so half a century before Minor Love’s release date. On “Boss Inside”, Adam Green prepares the audience for his tale of depression by guitar-picking the depressing-ass key of A-Flat Minor (capo on the third fret). Within the lyrics, Green self-describes the song as “ugly moments, strewn together”. He tells a creative story of a suicidal dream we’ve mentioned twice already, while giving personal details. This is a greatly poetic current-day example of the genre Berryman created over half a century ago.
The latest dead poet I’ll compare Adam Green with is Robert Creeley (1926-2005). He fits Green’s style more so than the content within his songs. Creeley wrote pre-ekphrastic love poems using succinct punches and no wasted space. Green’s onslaught of action verbs and non-stop motion from one subject to the next executes Creeley’s framework for better poetry through more interesting, quicker production. The same applies to Green’s instrumentation throughout Modern Love: It’s brief, efficient, clean and clear. Another pillar of Creeley’s poetics is that he believed in skewing audience expectations (see 1956’s The Warning). Adam Green was perfecting the art of fucking with his audience even as a much younger band member with The Moldy Peaches. This just adds another one number to the multitude of poetic devices Adam Green employs on Minor Love.
Any literary critic should admit that Green is a perfect candidate for successor to any of these great poets of the last century. As a music critic, I say Minor Love is great support for such a bold statement on Green’s long-lasting legacy and historical relevancy. Did I mention yet that Adam Green’s great-grandmother was once engaged to Franz Kafka, before World War II? Mr. Green is finally meeting the unfulfilled intent of his great-grandmother: to have a culturally significant, literary patriarch as head of the family. I bet any of the poets or philosophers related above would be honored to include Adam Green in their artistic lineage.
SONGS MENTIONED ABOVE
Adam Green:
Off Minor Love
Track 02. Give Them A Token [mp3]
Track 06. What Makes Him Act So Bad [mp3]
Track 08. Cigarette Burns Forever [mp3]
Track 10. Castles and Tassels [mp3]
Off Friends of Mine:
10. I Wanna Die [mp3]
Off Sixes and Sevens:
13. Be My Man [mp3]
And lastly, before this article halves itself like the Titanic, an mp3 from the last centruy's beloved Theodor W. Adorno:
Theodor W. Adorno - Piano Piece [1921] [mp3]
