Adam Green
Gemstones

THE REVIEW

One tries to “elevate” themselves, refuses to listen to tracks less than twenty minutes long that aren’t explicitly avant-garde, spending entire nights sincerely dedicated to the most extreme, most challenging krautrock and then... and then you happen to stumble upon this Adam Green and these “Gems.” I candidly confess, I've listened to this thirty-minute album at least a good hundred times in less than a month since I discovered it. Adam Green is a goofball, a little more than twenty-year-old who, thanks to his father or some uncle as it always happens, listened to the right music as a kid, maybe got a little guitar as a gift at thirteen, and the guy started having fun.

From the first to the last track, the echoes, or rather I would call them blatant references, are numerous; the first, title track, recalls genius, lightheartedness, and unpredictability à la They Might Be Giants, “He’s The Brat” brings to mind the most fun and carefree Ray Davies (Kinks) for me, “Over The Sunrise” instead reveals what seems, at least in this album, to be his most pronounced influence: the great Jim Morrison of the short pearls of “Strange Days” or the blues (“Crackhouse Blues”). But that's not all, he is a top-notch songwriter who has listened to the greatest of the genre, starting with the great Leonard Cohen, and has been able to draw on the best melodic qualities (not the poetic ones!!), and yet in “Carolina” he unleashes a chorus reminiscent of the Strokes (his great friends) and in the engaging “Emily” an irresistible Fifties-style rock'n'roll not to mention the country that characterizes several tracks.

What's missing? Oh yes, the lyrics... For these, I'll limit myself, as with the greats, to quoting a line from “Carolina”: “California presidente / Cogi mucho estoy cansado / Dostoevsky, Fab Moretti / Antiseptic, complimentary / There's her hand now on the cock sock / Filled with white tears from the thrift store”.