Adam Green Tackles Divorce, Heartache on 'Minor Love'

On his forthcoming sixth solo album, 'Minor Love,' due out Feb. 16, Adam Green swaps the genre-hopping eclecticism of past efforts for a more focused sound: deadpan Lou Reed-style '70s rock. The consistency makes for good listening, but as Green points out, it came at a price.

"There was an underlying theme of romantic dysfunction I had this year," Green tells Spinner. "I was getting divorced and I wasn't really living anywhere, so there was an underlying consistent feeling of disappointment in everything that I did."

While far from a bum-out record, 'Minor Love' has its moments of implied sadness. Amid his usual smart, elliptical turns of phrase and nonchalant baritone vocals, the singer-songwriter and former Moldy Peaches member hints at the recent hardships in his life.

Green says he's not afraid to bare his soul and write in a more forthright style -- he simply doesn't want to go too far and find himself in emo territory, a point of no return.

"There's sort of a line between engineering a song like it's a piece of artwork you're trying to make, versus making it a vomitus confessional," he says. "I'm just employing the same techniques anyone would use in meeting new friend or something. There's an element of withholding information, but it's not malicious. It's almost like maybe you can compare it to seducing somebody."

In Green's estimation, 'Minor Love' is more emotionally direct than some of his earlier albums. He's built a rapport with his audience and even if he feels as though he's been "eating a s--- sandwich since the Moldy Peaches broke up," struggling to differentiate himself from that beloved indie-folk duo, he feels a connection with his fans.

"I don't feel I'm concealing that much information at this point," Green says. "I think when I was really young, I kind of used to do it more, because that's just, for better or worse, an appropriate place to start out with people, to have them hear your music without a lot of preconceived ideas about who you are."

"Now people who are listening to my music, if they want, have a large basis or a large base of ideas, that they could use as a reference for what they think I'm doing, from the Moldy Peaches to whatever else," he adds. "But I'll probably spend the rest of my life just clarifying that, whatever mess I made at the beginning."