Between this summer’s 20th anniversary of Adam Green’s momentous solo record Friends of Mine—among a new wave of nostalgia for the mid-’00s NYC indie-rock scene more broadly—and the one-two punch of last year’s That Fucking Feeling and his Moldy Peaches’ archival release Origin Story, the anti-folk icon has recently seen a much-deserved uptick in attention lately. Yet in addition to this critical reappraisal, and the achievement of a new generation of fans, Green will be getting a full album-length gesture of appreciation from his peers next month when Moping in Style: A Tribute to Adam Green drops on December 1 with contemporaries including Jenny Lewis, The Libertines, Ben Lee, and TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone covering the songwriter’s music, as well as new takes by a set of musicians clearly inspired by Green’s work such as Cut Worms, The Lemon Twigs, and Joanna Sternberg.
“It was a wild journey getting in touch with all these insanely amazing songwriters and seeing if they’d do a cover version,” Green shares of the project inspired by the folks at Capitane Records, who will release the comp alongside Org Music next month. “I’m really lucky to have these friends because they really delivered the goods.”
The latest goods we get to sample from the collection arrives today courtesy of Green’s longtime friend Ben Kweller, who transformed the sparse acoustic track “Her Father and Her” from Green’s 2002 self-titled solo debut into a somber, swelling piano ballad. “When Ben and I met back around 1999/2000, it was right away like we were family,” Green shares of the pair’s long-standing relationship. “His version [of ‘Her Father and Her’] is so intense and dynamic, it makes me excited, almost like he understands how the song works more than me. Ben’s arrangement transforms it into a murder ballad, [evoking] Nick Cave or Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way,’ even. When I listen to his version I feel as if I’m in a Kafkaesque metaverse, at a trial where my relationship with a mysterious lady is being scrutinized, and all of these portals to different dimensions are surrounding me.”
Adds musician friend Turner Cody, who helped assemble the comp and who covered “Hairy Women” for it: “With his unmistakably tender vocal chops Kweller conveys the nuance and feeling of the original track. The two have been close friends for many years, so we believe that Kweller has some hidden insight into [the lyrics]. Truthfully, we hear in this version a pitch-perfect homage, a decades-long friendship, and the respect of one songwriter to another.”
Check out the lyrics video for the cover below, and pre-order the record here.
