ADAM GREEN Jacket Full Of Danger (Rough Trade)
I first heard former Moldy Peach Adam Green supporting The Strokes earlier this year, and his whimsical, laid-back songs were more entertaining than the main feature that night. On this, his fifth solo album, he’s part Beck circa “Sea Change” (albeit somewhat cheerier) and part Bowery Sinatra, producing gently subversive two-minute pop songs that have a pronounced 60s influence and a narcotic obsession – not for nothing is one song baldly titled “Drugs”.
Perhaps it’s the crooning that leads to another song being called “Nat King Cole”, although given that it sounds like “Peggy Sue” waiting for the man perhaps not. “C-Birds” carries a creepy, almost Hitchcockian sense of unease, and although not billed as such the utterly charming “Cast A Shadow” is the same Beat Happening song once covered by Yo La Tengo. Only “White Women” breaks the spell, it being hard to tell whether its lumbering dinosaur view of interpersonal relations is meant to be a Led Zeppelin parody or not. Otherwise, “Jacket Full Of Danger” is a surprisingly sophisticated twinkly-eyed delight.