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04-19 Anthony Green back in Avalon
07-18 New Anthony Green Song/Album
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From Joyce’s Dublin to Springsteen’s Asbury Park,
environments have always had a massive influence
on writers and musicians’ creative output. Suchis
also the case withsinger/songwriterAnthony
Green’s debut solo release Avalon. Recorded last
March over aneight-day period with Green and
somefriends at his fiancé’s parents’ house in the
sleepy beach town of Avalon, New Jersey, the
album spans Green’s adolescence and adulthood
andshowshim at both his most visceral and
vulnerable. “We had a short timeline [to record this
album] and that’s the way I used to w ...read more
From Joyce’s Dublin to Springsteen’s Asbury Park,
environments have always had a massive influence
on writers and musicians’ creative output. Suchis
also the case withsinger/songwriterAnthony
Green’s debut solo release Avalon. Recorded last
March over aneight-day period with Green and
somefriends at his fiancé’s parents’ house in the
sleepy beach town of Avalon, New Jersey, the
album spans Green’s adolescence and adulthood
andshowshim 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’donly 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
songsfor 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
anaccomplished 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
ToReach 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
manyof 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
CircaSurvive, ultimately hedecided that in order to
fullyrealize his artistic vision he would have to
tackle these tracks on his own—a decision that was
dueto 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
dowith 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
Iwanted 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,
makingthis 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
anacoustic guitar (although songs like“Drugdealer”
are beautiful representations of just that). In fact,
from the lush, Cure-inspired pop of “Babygirl” tothe
electronically driven ballad “Springtime Out The
Van Window” andthe harmonica and
keyboardaugmented “Slowing Down,” the
inventivearrangements 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
restof 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 songon
this album is related to somethingthat he’s
experienced personally over the past ten years,
adding that instead of cloaking his message
inmetaphor and symbolism these songs contain
some of the most direct lyrics he’swritten to date.
“‘She Loves Me So’ is about exactly what you
thinkyou 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
intoyour 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’sfunnyto 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
constantlywriting 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
mefeel 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 embraceit.”
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 itwasrecorded in
scantly over a week on Seven Mile Island, Avalon
truly took decades to unfold. « hide |
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