April 5, 2004

Adam Green : London ICA

...as empty and shallow as a friendship that lasts for a day...

If you took a leaf out of Adam Green's book, you'd be the most fickle music fan on the planet. "Bluebirds are so natural I want to buy them for my friends" he croons tonight, in front of an enthralled audience, some of whom are clutching clay offerings of the winged creatures. "Bluebirds are so dismal and I want to trade mine in". Oh Adam. Do you like the damn birds or don't you?

That, basically, is the essence of Adam Green. A young Johnny Borrell look-alike from New York who gained recognition with anti-folk, pro-weird fancy dress band Moldy Peaches, he trades on contradiction and controversy. He even has a song called 'Mozzerrella Swastikas'. Take also 'No Legs', which tonight Adam actually insists the venue is darkened for, just so that we will really listen to the words. As if the lines "there's no wrong way to fuck a girl with no legs/Just tell her you love her as she's crawling away"

Still, any fool can cause controversy by simultaneously being misogynist and offensive towards paraplegics. Luckily, the antidote to all this lies in 'Jessica Simpson'. So insightful is Adam about all-American celebrity fraudulence that he constructs a song inventing her future life, which incorporates a fake death and a brief fictional spell as a waitress, during which he orders from her. And it's beautiful. Jesus.

Adam Green is at once the best song-poet since Leonard Cohen and the most disappointing thing since women realised Rufus Wainwright is gay. Tonight we get the feeling that the contrary little bastard does it on purpose, with his cabaret-style singing and ironic shuffly dancing and without even picking up a guitar until the last song - and he doesn't even play his version of 'What A Waster'. Verging on beatnik genius, yet barely touching a soul, tonight's show is as empty and shallow as a friendship that lasts for a day. Fickle like Adam, we don't like it. Everyone else loves it.

Cat Goodwin