ADAM GREEN
Gemstones
Rough Trade
· So maybe the joke's wearing a little bit thin.
I've always had a soft spot for Adam Green. A New York City underdog thrust into the spotlight as one-half of the Moldy Peaches, who, instead of carrying down the same messy neo-folk path as his ex-cohort Kimya Dawson, went for pure studio sheen with last year's hilariously brilliant Friends of Mine.
Buoyed by vibrant strings, that album pictured Green in a form-fitting pure-white leisure suit, crooning into a Bob Barker microphone (y'know, those really long metal ones with the tiny round heads). The songs of Gemstones, however, notch up the attempted comedy and leave most of the charm (not to mention tunes) at home.
"Emily" is one hell of a single. It’s the perfect offspring of Jonathan Richman and Green's, hero Bruce Springsteen (check his brilliant seven-inch cover of "Born To Run," if you can find it), and Gemstones grabs mondo bonus points for rhyming Dostoyevsky with The Strokes' Fab Moretti. Still, when an album of two-minute songs feels plodding, you know there's a problem.
I haven't laughed quite so hard as I did upon my first listen to the chorus of "Choke On A Cock," where he sings, "I would dance on NBC/ and say George Bush shook hands with me/ and then I'd go and choke on a cock." But for the most part, Gemstones is too funny for its own good.
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