Review: Adam Green, Thekla

Adam Green can lighten the bleakest of days, lift the darkest of moods.  I can’t say I was feeling particularly low when he took to the stage at Thekla on Saturday night, but I felt nothing short of elation by the end of his set.  When Green’s crumpled, dishevelled self walked on stage, Tracy Emin-style, I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear.  You see, the anti-folk hero has that effect on his audience.

It was trademark Green from beginning to end. A poet, a storyteller; his verse weaves narratives with colour and characters, delivered in his natural baritone. Song after song performed with sheer unadulterated joy, the man beaming a great big goofy grin at his fans, his fans beaming right back.  I thought many times throughout the gig, what it must be like to be Adam Green on stage, witnessing all those happy faces…and it made me grin a goofy grin.  Ah, I get it.

The venue was by no means sold out, but the loyal fans that were there sang along to every word with Green hugging and high-fiving the ones at the front over and over again. He simply can’t help but share the bliss around.  Another trademark of Green’s live performance is his physical interpretation of his songs; busting out moves like a cross between Hong Kong Phooey and Tim Booth. This unselfconscious, childlike quality is infectious and utterly endearing.

So, to the music. Highlights of the set included old Moldy Peaches favourites Jessica and Who’s Got the Crack as well as material from his solo canon, Chubby Princess, Emily and Tropical Island. But his latest offering is genuinely stand-out.  Three years in the making, Aladdin was released at the end of April: a concept album filled with sweeping chords – 60s pop style – all Gainsbourg and Scott Walker with some Woody Allen intensity thrown in for good measure.  Fix My Blues, Never Lift a Finger and Interested in Music were all performed with zeal, although I did sometimes wonder whether Green should write the lyrics on his forearm!

The backing band should get a mention at this point too. French indie group, Coming Soon, are a collection of shaggy blokes clad in boaters, flares and frilly dress shirts, looking for all the world like Raw Sex meets ELO.  The rhythm section worked overtime holding everything together tightly in spite of Green’s chaotic style threatening to railroad the set at any moment.  They even managed an electrifying cover of Beat Happening’s Indian Summer, rousing the crowd to a near-frenzy.

I can’t remember the last time I witnessed an artist so in touch with his fans, so willing to connect with them, grab their hearts and touch them…And his fans love him through all his incarnations; long enduring adoration.  His shambolic style is one of the very things that makes him so appealing.  Ahead of a request (another Green trademark, all but extinct in today’s carefully choreographed live performance arenas), clearly apprehensive he won’t remember the lyrics, or the chords, or both…he shouts, “I’m gonna blow it, I’m gonna blow it, I’m gonna blow it…but it’ll be cool!” And it was.