I Want To Grow Up, l'ultimo disco di Colleen Green è uscito da qualche mese, ed è probabile che abbiate ormai familiarità con il suo rock asciutto e quella voce sottile come il suo profilo. Sono uscite un sacco di recensioni in giro, e praticamente tutto positive:
While the Ramones taught us all that we only need a few chords to make an endless number of perfect pop songs, most bands that have followed that model to the letter don’t have the ear for hooks, structure, or wordplay that their heroes did. Green does. [Pitchfork]
She’s all about simplicity. You could call her brand of guitar pop “minimalist” - but that would be way too contrived. The whole album is pretty much Green, a guitar, some bass and a drum machine – with the occasional synth thrown in. She’s a one-woman Bikini Kill/Garbage cross-breed. [The Line Of Best Fit]
This time out, she ups the pop side of the equation and some of the songs sound like '90s radio hits. Things That Are Bad for Me, Pt. 1 and Some People are like Juliana Hatfield and Blake Babies tracks, respectively, and the should-be hit single Wild One walks the same '70s power pop walk, with the same finger-snapping strut, that Ex Hex displayed on their 2014 album Rips. [AllMusic]
La cantautrice americana ci aveva abituato al suo stile diretto, quasi a due dimensioni, chitarra e drum machine (vedi anche qui Deeper Than Love oppure Whatever I Want), ma i momenti che preferisco in questo nuovo lavoro sono quelli in cui la musica cerca altre strade, più strutturate e consistenti, soprattutto grazie al contributo di Jake Orrall dei Jeff The Brotherhood, alla chitarra, e Casey Weissbuch dei Diarrhea Planet, alla batteria.
In qualche modo, il cambio di suono rispecchia quello di cui Colleen Green vuole parlare in questo disco: quel momento in cui ti rendi conto che devi prendere delle decisioni, e sei stanco di stare a immaginare come sarà la tua vita da adulto, soprattutto perché, beh è questa la tua vita da adulto. Quella in cui ti rendi conto di avere troppe dipendenze (Things That Are Bad For Me), di cedere ancora a troppe debolezze, e di avere qualche difficoltà più del dovuto nella tua vita sociale. Come fa tutta questa gente intorno a funzionare? E come faccio, io, a cambiare? C'è tutta un'ansia che filtra da queste "canzoncine" e che non la abbandona mai, nemmeno quando sostiene di "poter fare tutto quello che vuole", perché in fondo essere grandi dovrebbe essere questo. Oppure no?
Per essere una che passa come poco loquace ("How do some people talk so much? [...] I can't hold a conversation / I can't even pay attention"), Colleen Green ha rilasciato una quantità di interviste per promuovere il disco, e alcune mi ispirano un sacco di simpatia:
Yeah, I’m 30 years old, I’m an adult, I have my own thoughts, I do stuff, get over it, whatever… but it’s still really scary. [Stereogum]
It all started with the title. I had been thinking about a Descendents tattoo a lot—the ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’ with the baby logo. A lot of my friends have that and a lot of people in general in the world have that. I just remember thinking, ‘That could be a cool tattoo to get …’ but going back and forth and thinking about that concept. Like getting a mantra tattooed on your body forever? It’s like… but you are gonna grow up. Maybe I don’t want that tattoo cuz I do wanna grow up. [L.A. Record]
"This record's a culmination of things I've been thinking about for the past five years," Green says. "It's about disease, health and being able to move on from things that are devastating in your life." In 2009, Green was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, an incurable autoimmune disease that causes muscle weakness and fatigue. "It was an awakening," she says. "I realized how fragile our lives are."[L.A. Weekly]
When I wrote the last record, I was in a relationship, and this time I'm not. I was sort of hopeful about love at that point, but still cynical and kind of depressed about it. And now I am still depressed about love, but I also know that it doesn't matter, and that I shouldn't put too much importance on meeting someone because I am confident in what I'm doing, and that should be my thing. But I'm kind of a hopeless romantic. It would be really nice to meet someone and be totally in love and that would be it. But I just don't know if that can happen nowadays with the internet. [...] Actually, this guy that I've been kind of seeing, one of the main reasons I liked him—I mean, he's cool and everything, but one of the things I liked about him was that he didn't have an iPhone. Because I don't have an iPhone and everyone has an iPhone, which they're always looking at and doing nothing on. So I was like, nice, we're in this together. And then he fucking got an iPhone! [The Stranger]
Colleen Green sarà in concerto domani all'ottava edizione dell'Handmade Festival! Ci si vede a banco!
(mp3) Colleen Green - Pay Attention
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