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Friends of Mine

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Adam Green's new record Friends of Mine was released a few weeks ago. Since I wanted to get the LP which wasn't available immediately at the local record store, I had to wait a bit longer, but finally picked up a copy.

Cover of the Friends of Mine record As you'd expect, the album's cover is a bit odd, coming along in unusual (but not unique, cf. British Sea Power) bright yellow with lo-fi / psychedelic writing and a pink strip of dingbats-style characters, including what looks like Adam's head and Symbol's ζ.

I've listened to the record a couple of times now, and – as with the previous one, it keeps growing on me. My first impression was a bit dismissive – along the lines of Holy crap, it's a bit mellow! – as it lacks most of the lo-fi charme the Garfield album had. But of course music isn't good because of poor recording skills. They are anything from not knowing better to a kind of statement to a way of making things more immediate, as can be seen in the Dogma films. It seems that the same degree of immediacy is hard to achieve in more refined productions.

Part of that 'polish' is a feat that I still consider overdone – songs are mostly accompanied by strings. I am not particularly fond of strings accompanying pop music as they cause aforementioned It's a bit mellow! reaction – probably because they tend to be found in really cheesy pieces and those annoying a-symphony-orchestra-records-songs-by -The Beatles- Elton John - The Police -or-Sting recordings.

As things tend to become better with repetition, I've grown used to those strings by now and they actually fit in well with the positive and charming atmosphere the songs communicate. 'Atmosphere' I say because while sounding nice enough to even make some of my flatmates enquire what the nice music is – the lyrics are up to the old standards, featuring more or less related topics and the odd rude thought.

Just because the music sounds cheerful, the lyrics don't need to be. In fact, the opening song, Bluebirds indulges in suicide while I wanna die has an equally morbid theme.

And we live on borrowed time
but this headshot's pretty good.
I've been scheming for too long
I was star-struck by your mouth

We fall in love by accident
a heavenly coincidence
No matter what you think is true
let me introduce you to some ...
friends of mine (:ohh friends of mine:)

And we break for passing cars
in the pistol ripping chase
I regret the drugs you lost
so I skipped our second date

We fall in love by accident
a heavenly coincidence
No matter what you think is true
let me introduce you to some ...
friends of mine (:ohh friends of mine:)

We fall in love by accident
a heavenly coincidence
No matter what you think is true
let me introduce you to ...
Can't figure out this place
Guess someone hates my guts
I handed in the sign
ohh, friends of mine.

Adam Green, Friends of Mine

As I quite like the lyrics, I'll put all the Adam Green related posts up here in a dedicated section and add the lyrics of the remaining songs to the best of my knowledge in the near future. Any comments are welcome.

More likes and dislikes: The record seems to polarise – in a cross-review of the freebie magazine Intro, the recored managed to score both 0 and 10 out of 10 twice. Either you love it or you hate it. A thing I don't like about the album is that some of the tracks fade out at the end. I still fail to see the point of that. A think I like that's not on the album is Adam's cover of the The Libertines' What a Waster (from the Babyshambles Sessions). If nobody's watching me, singing along to the songs may also become something I like.

July 23, 2003, 20:34

Tagged as adam green, music.

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