Adam Green & Devendra Banhart Pay The Toll
Capitane Records is excited to announce the release of Moping in Style: A Tribute to Adam Green. This sweeping double album features Regina Spektor, Father John Misty, Devendra Banhart, The Libertines, Jenny Lewis, Sean Ono Lennon, Frankie Cosmos, The Lemonheads and many other familiar names whose contributions are a testament to Adam Green’s position as a fixture of Indie Rock over the last two decades.
Known and loved as a generational talent, Devendra Banhart lends his eerie and subtle musicality to this rendition of a song from Green's 2006 album Jacket Full of Danger. Whereas the original track evoked the classic 70s rock balladeering of Springsteen and Steely Dan, Banhart's version is intimate in the way that only he can be. His unique voice is the like a stone skipping on the surface of a lake, its haunting echo like a song sung in deep dark cave. Longtime freinds, Green and Banhart go way back to the early days of 2000s indie-rock, and both have careers in the visual arts as well as music. Banhart's inclusion on Moping in Style was inevitable, and his version of "Pay the Toll" is one of its standout tracks.
A Tribute to Adam Green: "Pay the Toll" is a classic example of Adam Green's versatile lyricism. It paints a mysterious and bizarre mental picture of youthful indulgeness and sensual urban depravity, yet also seems to touch on notes of humor as it translates all this through a kind of Sinatra-meets-Springsteen veneer. How many drugs does it take to find something to do? Everybody, it takes two. There you have it!
Widely known as one half of the songwriting duo that is The Moldy Peaches, Adam Green has had a singular influence on his generation of musicians and artists since the early 2000s. From the advent of the early aughts when bands like the Strokes, The Libertines, and The White Stripes began to write the new chapter of indie culture, Adam played an essential role in helping losing on a Tuesday filled with purposeful disaster? or Bartholemew, bring me a fork? From his early songs up through his most recent, fans of Adam Green have reveled in the kaleidoscopic landscape of language he paints. He opens doors of possible meanings with his lyrical imagination and manages to be absurdist without being absurd and louche without being overtly provocative. He threads the very delicate artistic needles of tenderness and humor, kitsch and high art, rock and roll and torch song.
