|
02-16 Anthony Green Covers Bjork
01-11 Stream New Anthony Green
11-16 Anthony Green album+tour info
07-07 New Anthony Green Song
» Edit Band Information
» Edit Albums
» Add a Review
» Add an Album
» Add MP3
» Add News | Anthony Green
Indie |
From Joyce’s Dublin to Springsteen’s Asbury Park, environments have always had a massive influence on writers and musicians’ creative output. Such
is also the case withsinger/songwriterAnthony Green’s debut solo release Avalon. Recorded last March over aneight-day period with Green and some
friends at his fiancé’s parents’ house in the sleepy beach town of Avalon, New Jersey, the album spans Green’s adolescence and adulthood andshows
him at both his most visceral and vulnerable. “We had a short timeline [to record this album] and that’s the way I used to work back in the ...read more
From Joyce’s Dublin to Springsteen’s Asbury Park, environments have always had a massive influence on writers and musicians’ creative output. Such
is also the case withsinger/songwriterAnthony Green’s debut solo release Avalon. Recorded last March over aneight-day period with Green and some
friends at his fiancé’s parents’ house in the sleepy beach town of Avalon, New Jersey, the album spans Green’s adolescence and adulthood andshows
him at both his most visceral and vulnerable. “We had a short timeline [to record this album] and that’s the way I used to work back in the day; you’d
only have three days in thestudio so you had to plan out everything and then just go for it,” Green explains. “I’ve been wanting to record these songs
for the past two years and this was the perfect time and placeto make it happen..
Although the 26-year-old Green is best known as the lead singer for the Philadelphia-based progressive punk act Circa Survive, he’s also an
accomplished instrumentalist in his own rightand has been penning the songs that would eventually become Avalon consistently for the past decade.
“Some of these songs are brand new, but most of them are really old,” Greenexplains. “For one ofthe versions of ‘Dear Child (I’ve Been Dying To
Reach You)’ that’s on this record, I wrote the lyrics for it four or five years ago and the music even years before that,” he elaborates,adding that many
of these songs were composed while he was still a junior in high school. Although Green initially intended many of these songs to be used in Circa
Survive, ultimately hedecided that in order to fullyrealize his artistic vision he would have to tackle these tracks on his own—a decision that was due
to communicative issues as muchas they were musical.
“I think at the time that I was writing a lot of these songs I wasn’t necessarily able to articulate to [Circa Survive] all the stuff musically I wanted to do
with them,” Green explains. “Idon’t know chords; I don’t know scales; I can’t talk to anybody about time signatures, so I couldn’t really explain how I
wanted these to sound without doing something ridiculous likehumming something out that doesn’t make sense to anyone except myself,” he adds.
The logistics surrounding the writing and recording process of Avalon allowed Green to present hissongs exactly the way he envisioned them, making
this album the first true glimpse into the inner workings of Green’s psyche.
However despite the fact this is a “solo” album, that doesn’t mean that these songs are all composed of Green plaintively singing and strumming an
acoustic guitar (although songs like“Drugdealer” are beautiful representations of just that). In fact, from the lush, Cure-inspired pop of “Babygirl” to
the electronically driven ballad “Springtime Out The Van Window” andthe harmonica and keyboardaugmented “Slowing Down,” the inventive
arrangements on these tracks perfectly complement Green’s distinctive vocal stylings.Then, there’s “Dear Child (I’ve Been Dying To Reach You),”
which was the recorded on the West Coast with producer John Feldmann — and, although it has a completely differentproduction value than the rest
of the disc, effortlessly fits into the context of the album and is a perfect example of the artistic scope inherent on Avalon.
Although he prefers to allow his lyrics to be open to interpretation instead of laying out exactly what they’re about, Green will admit that every song
on this album is related to somethingthat he’s experienced personally over the past ten years, adding that instead of cloaking his message in
metaphor and symbolism these songs contain some of the most direct lyrics he’swritten to date. “‘She Loves Me So’ is about exactly what you think
you feel about love and I wrote ‘Devil’s Song’ after a conversation I had with Saves The Day’s Chris Conley about howmuch of your soul you put into
your music,” Green says about two of his favorite tracks. “I think everyone is always trying to look for what the meaning of everything is and what’s
funnyto me about these songs is that they’re all so obvious..
While one might assume that after spending most of the year touring, he’d want to spend some time off relaxing, Green is adamant about constantly
writing songs and making themavailable for his fans whether it’s in the form of Avalon or via demos he circulates on the Internet. “I’m always busy,
I’ll be busy all my life; that’s just the way I like it,” he explains with alaugh. “I never liked working hard until I found something that didn’t make me
feel like an alien to what I was doing; I think with music and art I belong there and I’m a native so I don’tmind doing it all the time. In fact, I embrace
it.” Hopefully you’ll also embrace Avalon as a labor of love that Green has crafted as much for his fans as he has himself, because although itwas
recorded in scantly over a week on Seven Mile Island, Avalon truly took decades to unfold. « hide |
Similar Bands: Circa Survive, Saosin, City and Colour, Audience Of One
Contributors: iGuter, drasticaction74, The What, morrissey, Big Coop 27, elephantREVOLUTION, elephantREVOLUTION, iFghtffyrdmns, Gyromania, The What,
|
