Colleen Green – I Want To Grow Up
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As a female young adult, I feel as though the music of Colleen Green should really appeal to me, but her last album, Sock It To Me, didn’t sink in too deep, and left me feeling a bit weary as to the nature of her girl garage rock. I Want To Grow Up is another trip down the road of maturation and growing up, as the title would suggest, but this time around Green’s tunes themselves have matured a bit and we’re able to rock along with her navigation of youth and adulthood with the greater coherence of pop hooks.
“I’m sick of being immature, I want to be responsible” is one of the first lines on this album, giving you a snapshot of the general theme this album: wanting to transcend ones current state and be something else, but not quite achieving that goal instantly and the frustrations that arise out of this dilemma. This theme makes for an interesting subject matter for Green to craft some great garage rock gems to delight. Look no further than “Grind My Teeth,” or “TV” to give you fuzzy guitars and pop hooks. “Grind My Teeth,” is one of the more complex tracks you’ll hear from this artist, and it’s definitely one of my personal highlights off the album. This song goes several different directions, first beginning with a rapid pace, leaning more towards the stripped simplicity of punk song, then transitions to a slower grunge mode, when the buzz saw guitar takes center stage and allows for some sweet synth to solo for a bit. Before you know it the track is back to its hyper fast original state,
The lyrics, while they aren’t the deepest, acknowledge their own shallow-ness and play with this idea, especially on songs like “Things That Are Bad For Me (Part I).” Here, Green’s rhymes are simple and easy, sometimes elongating a word or syllable so that the rhyme will work out; there’s no apology or inhibition, Green just goes with it, and her honest naïveté goes a long way.
I Want To Grow Up feels light years away from Green’s last record and the tunes on here reach further than just noisy girl rock. While Green sticks to her guns lyrically, the music now provides an appropriate catchy- grunge pop setting for them to play in. Something has clicked for Colleen Green on this album, and perhaps something in her life has clicked as well, now that she’s realized she can do whatever she wants. Right on.