GREEN, ADAM
FRIENDS OF MINE - 20TH ANNIVERSARY COL. SINGLE LP (CAPITANE RECORDS)
Cargo exclusive ltd. Transparent Magenta Single Vinyl (300 copies), original album w/ credits + new liner notes for each song! On June 9th 2023 Capitane Records will re-issue Adam Green's Friends of Mine in recognition of the album's 20th anniversary.
For fans of Green and his band The Moldy Peaches, it may be hard to believe that it's been twenty years since those days of the early 2000s when the indie rock world was set ablaze by a new generation of artists, performers, and songwriters.
Within what felt like only a few months, bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Libertines, and The Moldy Peaches, provided indie music audiences with fresh iterations and interpretations of the rock and roll canon, with influences that included both standard bearers like The Velvet Underground, Television, The Stones, The Doors, The Stooges, Leonard Cohen, The Modern Lovers, and Bob Dylan, and also more recent artists like Beck, Daniel Johnston, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Will Oldham, Pavement, and The Silver Jews.
The results varied between straight up rock and roll and punk with a songwriting, folk-inspired, consciousness.
Gone were the ripped-up jeans and flannels of yore. Tight trousers and leather jackets ruled the day.
It was on the heels of the success of his band The Moldy Peaches (who signed along with The Strokes to Rough Trade Records in 2001 and subsequently toured with them) that Adam Green wrote and recorded Friends of Mine, the seminal album that would define a new direction in his career.
Diverging from the home-recorded, 8 track-analog framework of his previous albums, Green adopted what then seemed like a distinctly hi-fidelity sound, complete with a full band, crooning vocals, and a string section (with arraignments by Jane Scarpantoni).
Friends of Mine drew on the work of Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker, and Frank Sinatra, while its lyrical content felt as if derived from symbolist poetry and the surrealism of Brecht and Dylan.
The result was something altogether new, a record that could feel both touchingly sad and also sardonic, satirical, louche, and even laugh-out-loud funny.
Songs like "Jessica" would become anthems to a new generation of young indie rock fans both in the United States and Europe.
The 2023 20th anniversary edition of Friends of Mine is a window into an essential part of our recent past as well as a testament to an artist who has stood the test of time.
And Adam Green is still at it, not softened a bit, still funny, crazy and sleazy as he was 20 years ago.