Minor Love

VINYL FORMAT. 'After a decade with a smirk all but tattooed onto his face, Adam Green finally seems ready to be heartbroken. Minor Love is his most lo-fi, stripped-down record made since his 2003 solo debut Garfield and, fittingly, it may also be his most melancholic. Gone are his jaunty novelties and glossy production - the last album's trumpets and swooning strings replaced with cheap Casio keyboards - and even the croon that threatened to turn him into the Scott Walker of the Upper West Side has been drastically toned down. What's left is a man who sounds as endearingly awkward and vulnerable as the pose he's pulling on the record's front cover. Although a more consciously mature-sounding record - as if to insist "I don't need a gospel choir to prove I mean it anymore" - Green has hardly let his serious side get the better of him, with his wisecracks, wisdom and non-sequiturs remaining thankfully in tact. The chorus of soulfully hushed opener "Breaking Locks" insists "I've been too awful to ever be thoughtful", while "Give Them a Token" - a vintage Green number if there ever was one - sa(va)gely claims that "minor love can be shorn like a scarf."' - Alex Wisgard / The Line of Best Fit