Adam Green

b. 28 May 1981, Mount Kisco, New York, USA. Green began exorcising his songs onto four-track tape at the age of 12, eventually forming anti-folk favourites the Moldy Peaches (with, allegedly, one-time baby-sitter Kimya Dawson), for whom he would regularly appear on stage dressed in a Robin Hood costume. Although unreleased until 2002, Green's self-titled debut album (aka Garfield, in a version released with extra tracks) was actually recorded prior to the Moldy Peaches first album. The album took its emotional resonance from mildly abstract (and often amusing) songs that picked over the detritus of a childhood that Green has said was less than idyllic. This sense of loss for childhood was accentuated by songs that seemed to scan like nursery rhymes. Green's first "proper" studio album, Friends Of Mine, backed Green's curious outsider songs with succinct, lush string arrangements orchestrated by cellist Jane Scarpantoni, a sometime collaborator of Lou Reed. Although aligned with anti-folk musicians, Green took overt inspiration from artists such as Frank Sinatra and Chet Baker. Oddly, the album included a paean to over emotive American singer Jessica Simpson which asked: "Jessica Simpson/Where has your love gone?/It's not in your music, no" ("Jessica").