Colleen Green came on stage with a very detached attitude, she played a few songs off her new album just by herself, with a guitar and a drum machine playing a few programmed beats. Then, looking totally cool and still detached, she hang out with her fans,… ‘It’s the first time I see her without shades’ tweeted one of them. I am new to the Colleen Green world and went to see her in-store at Amoeba on Tuesday night, but she already has a strong following and has released three albums on Hardly Art. Her first release was entitled ‘Milo Goes to Crompton’, had a song called ‘I Wanna be Degraded’ and she called this new album ‘I Want to Grow Up’, so you may see a trend right there, the girl is visibly very inspired by The Descendents and the Ramones, although her style hasn’t much to do with these punk bands’ (she sounds like Juliana Hatfield – Ed).
At Amoeba, she sang her hook-filled tunes with a soft and dreamy voice, strongly contrasting with a loud and almost sludgy punk guitar, and she could be a sort of Best Coast with a harsher side, or a female-version of Weezer with simpler songs. The songs she played seemed indeed quite simple, a sort of series of girl’s diary entries, some high school or mid-college existential rumination about growing up (of course) sung over an aggressive punk bass guitar. Tall and thin, with a very juvenile look (she is 30) she may have played just five songs, but she left a strong impression with very minimal stage antics or crowd interaction, kneeling down to program her drum machine each time, while cleaning her throat. Who is Colleen Green? I asked myself.
According to the LA Weekly, the Massachusetts-transplant has played more than 200 shows in 2013 after the release of her second LP ‘Sock It to Me’ and her heroes include Blink-182, Sublime, The Descendents and Dinosaur Jr, whereas Pitchfork describes her last effort as ‘weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze’.. I get the sugary glaze because of her sweet vocals and hot pink cover art, but weed? She is a stoner (and her real name is Green!) but she is currently kicking her habit, ‘It’s not good for you. It’s a chemical, and it affects your central nervous system,’ she explained to the Weekly. ‘I’m pretty sure I threw it [her medical marijuana card] away in an attempt to quit smoking.’… ‘This record’s a culmination of things I’ve been thinking about for the past five years,’ she also said. ‘It’s about disease, health and being able to move on from things that are devastating in your life.’ She has been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, an incurable autoimmune disease that causes muscle weakness and fatigue.
But there was no sign of this fatigue at Amoeba, although her set was certainly short, her guitar said ‘happy birfday Jeff’ and she sung her songs with the most unpretentious attitude, ‘I like being away from all the hip shit,’ she also said to the LA Weekly and I can totally see this. ‘Will I find a love that lasts as long as my life or will I die before ever becoming a wife? And I’m wondering if I’m even the marrying kind. How can I give you my life when I know you’re just gonna die?’ she sings in ‘Deeper Than Love ‘, one of the tracks of her album that you can stream on Noisey, and from what I could understand, there was certainly nothing sugary in any of her lines.