Review Summary: I never know just when and where to stop
8 of 8 thought this review was well writtenWe have a delightful word for plants in the English language called “greenery”. There’s no other colour that gets to be a blanket-term for any entire group of organisms. Can you imagine? I mean, I guess an “orangery” could be the fruitier cousin of the modern winery but even that’s pushing it. Unlike other colours, green gets to represent every shrub, leaf and delicious bowl of broccoli soup we encounter. It doesn’t stop there though: what about “going green”, having a “green thumb” and the
Parti vert du Canada? It’s kind of a natural, albeit cliche, choice to have
Green be the woodsy, folksy, strip-down-to-your-skivvies and buy-a grass-skirt-by-the-campfire EP with all this flowery environmentalist tripe clinging to the very mention of the colour. But can you blame The Dear Hunter? Can you really get upset at the inclusion to include harmonicas, mandolins, steel guitars and an army of strings? No, you really can’t. Especially when they pull off being “green” so maddeningly well.
And it makes you wonder why it took them so long to invest in a mandolin.
Green doesn’t choose a pace or tempo to plod along at nor does it have one uniform sound but it’s all loosely tied around that same earthy vibe. The psychedelic ‘Crow and Cackle’ is just a few genetic differences from being The Decemberists’ ‘Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)’ with its lethargic 6/4 plod and its lazy slide guitar parts, ‘Things That Hide Away’ is simply a grown-up version of
Act II’s ‘Black Sandy Beaches’ and upbeat ‘The Canopy’ may just be the band’s most heartfelt and genuinely untroubled-sounding song. But once again, it’s Crescenzo’s transparency as a writer with emotions we never knew he had that helps
Green succeed. He asks the same simple question we all ask with “
why do we live, why do we die? Maybe we’re just never meant to know” and while he might ask “why?” a time too many, there’s something in that sincerity of his that makes it hard not to empathise. And empathise we do when he heartbrokenly bleats “
you’re only just saying what I wanted you to say” on ‘Crow and Cackle’. With Crescenzo’s multi-faceted concept story outside of the picture, he once again gets an opportunity to write from the heart and there’s something perfect about the organic, ziploc-bag-o-dirt appeal of
Green that gives it such a heartfelt aura. And while
Blue brings Crescenzo to an emotional climax,
Green is, in more than one punny way, a down-to-earth Casey we’ve never yet met.
Oh, and lest we forget: ‘The Inheritance’ is probably Crescenzo's sexiest vocal performance ever.
