“You coulda been an A, but you’d rather be a D”—in perfectly irreverent form, Colleen Green continues her streak of confronting painful truths on the opener of her new self-titled. Though the admission is harsh, there’s comfort in hearing it said out loud. Hearing Colleen Green is like hearing from your best friend, or maybe overhearing your best friend as they call out someone you were never fond of. Last spring the LA pop artist released her third full-length, I Want to Grow Up, which saw her sound at its cleanest as she dealt honestly with the pervasive anxieties of early adulthood. The forthcoming Colleen Green is this year’s final entry in an Infinity Cat cassette series curated for the past two years by friend and collaborator Casey Weissbuch. Co-produced by Green and Unkle Funkle (of The Memories and White Fang), it resurrects the gritty guitar and drum machine setup of her earlier records to match the maturity she’s cultivated since her debut LP in 2011.
Green’s an obvious Ramones fan—lest we forget, her debut LP featured the saucy single “I Wanna Be Degraded”—and she refers to the new tape as “Ramones-core”. That descriptor immediately avails itself in the magnetic hooks and choppy chord progressions that bloom in all six songs. But the record is self-titled, and it’s apparent that Green means for this one to be fully her own, her nod to the Ramones remaining but a nod. Between her cooled-off vocal harmonies and the bright crush of the guitars, she’s exceptionally good at delivering the most devastating doses of realism in the sunniest of packages. Everything’s let loose, no feeling bottled up or untended to—on this record summertime’s a bore and going to the disco is a stressful ordeal—but there’s still a sweetness in the melodies, and it’s hard to resist a bit of foot-tapping. She sings about heartbreak and jealousy like anyone else would sing about trip to the beach: the lines “Sun, sun / fucking up my love now” harbor just the slightest hint of aggression under the veil of a tempered voice. Through to the end the EP is high-powered, with breakout twinned guitar solos, percussion that’s huge and punchy, and even the flash of some synths on “Between The Lines”. You can stream it in full below.
Colleen Green will be out May 13 from Infinity Cat Recordings on a metallic gold cassette.
