Adam Green 'Sixes & Sevens' album

There’s a reason that you should listen to this album with an open mind. There’s a reason you should set aside everything you might know about the person who made it and pretend you have no idea who he is. Adam Green might just surprise you with this record. He’s been making music since he was 14 years old, beginning as co-founder of The Moldy Peaches, whose music can most recently be heard on the soundtrack for the hit film Juno. With each recorded output over the years, Adam’s music has progressed and grown. Maybe the progression was small at times, and maybe the change was not always noticeable by the new listener, but the evolution on his upcoming fifth album, Sixes & Sevens is very significant.

Sixes & Sevens takes influence from a variety of sources...Nashville honky-tonk, bagels, Don Cherry, a gospel choir, Bonnie & Clyde, Sly & The Family Stone, Exile On Main Street, Dr. John, chinese food, Los Angeles/palm trees and more. It’s the sound of an artist taking in the things around him for inspiration.

Before the recording of this album began, Adam took a trip to Nashville for another project he was working on, and during that time he was hanging out in honky-tonks, and spending time with some old-school musicians and producers – letting their history soak into him and influence his ideas for his own record.

Maybe it was that countrified laid-back time that allowed Adam’s singing voice on this record to be much more chilled and delicate. Sixes & Sevens has a mellow charm all its own. "It's kind of inviting I think," says Adam, "I wanted to make an album that you could play in a car and drive across country, and it would be like a road trip album."

One of the standout features on the record is a choir of gospel singers, recruited by Green from a church in Brooklyn. "You never know if something suits you 'til you try it," says Green, "and once they started singing with me, I definitely felt like this was the way to go. I'd sent them demos of the songs, and when they got to the studio, they were really surprised that I wasn't an old guy!" he laughs. The song “Morning After Midnight” is destined to be a new classic, and the sweet gospel sounds on it are truly magical. You will be thinking Al Green, but will be surprised to know it’s all original Adam.

Another big influence on Green's widening the scope was his listening to records by the innovative jazz musician Don Cherry, notably the soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. "He uses such a diverse body of instruments. And so I started doing stuff like, finding pan flute players for ‘You Get So Lucky’. I wouldn't even have thought of it if it wasn't for Don Cherry. To me he's this pioneer of mixing instruments together from all over the globe into something that sounds natural and right."

Sixes & Sevens features long-term cohorts Steven Mertens (bassist in the Moldy Peaches), keyboardist Nathan Brown, and drummer Parker Kindred - as well as a revolving cast of musicians who'd drop by for the day to record specific parts. It was recorded and engineered by long-time producer Dan Myers.

To achieve the sweet and soulful sound that rings through Sixes & Sevens, Adam enlisted the talents of legendary arranger David Campbell, the man behind hundreds of amazing records including artists as diverse as Green Day, Beck, Leonard Cohen, Cat Power, and Kelly Clarkson; Campbell even played viola on Marvin Gaye's “Let's Get It On”. "He is thoughtful, a bold arranger and also a good listener," says Adam, "he really understood what I wanted. He flew over from California and found all these great musicians and just sat there in a room and conducted them with his wand.”

Despite the laid-back sounds, Adam says “there is an aspect to the record that's very thought-out and produced and methodical, but there is also this drunken aspect, that's sort of free.” What that leaves us with is a wonderful sounding record that Adam Green thought about and took his time recording, but it sounds like the kind of record someone also made without worrying about it too much, and just enjoying the process. It’s a new side of Adam Green, one that encompasses all that he loves about what he does, and one that proves that he deserves credit as being one of the most talented songwriters of this day.

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Adam Green - Sixes & Sevens