Buddy Bradley Got a Record Deal
The easiest shorthand for Adam Green is Buddy Bradley—the protagonist of Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, that specific variety of American loser who’s self-aware enough to know he’s failing, articulate enough to describe it precisely, and too comfortable in the failure to ever do anything about it. Green has been playing that character in song form since the Moldy Peaches dissolved: melodies that are genuinely pretty, lyrics you’re not entirely sure about, the whole thing landing somewhere between heartbreaking and ridiculous in a way that makes the ambiguity the point. He’ll sing something devastating about a girl and you’ll laugh, and you won’t know whether the laugh is a defense mechanism or the actual subject. Probably both. Bagge’s Bradley works the same way—a man narrating his own mediocrity with just enough wit that you root for him anyway, knowing full well he’ll blow it. Green has been blowing it beautifully for years.