Colleen Green’s third full-length (and first album recorded in an actual recording studio) is titled I Want to Grow Up, which is no coincidence. Well, that is if you equate a glossier sound and trying to kick coffee and weed as growing up.
Green’s first two records — 2012’s Milo Goes to Compton and 2013’s Sock It To Me — were recorded entirely on her own in her beloved Los Angeles; hazy, lo-fi efforts of a perpetually sunglasses-clad woman with a drum machine, guitar and a serious Ramones fetish (check “I Wanna Be Degraded” from Milo).
For I Want to Grow Up, Green hooked up with friends Jake Orrall (JEFF The Brotherhood) and Casey Weissbuch (Diarrhea Planet) in a Nashville, Tenn., studio to crank out 10 songs with titles like “TV” and “Pay Attention,” deceptively simple tunes that recall a cross between early Donnas and the bummed-out laments of Juliana Hatfield.
The most curious — and biggest departure — of the new songs is “Deeper Than Love,” a throbbing, atmospheric gem about “emotions taking control” that sidelines Green’s signature rudimentary guitar riffing for a Le Tigre-esque keyboard-and-rhythm-driven sexiness that’s as addicting as it is beguiling.
Yet the very next track, “Things That Are Bad for Me (Part 1),” returns to Green’s more straightforward tendencies — simple guitar strumming and lyrical turns to which any 15-year-old could relate. Green, who just turned 30, says the record is even more personal than her previous efforts.
“There are a lot of moments in the lyrics where I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can say this, I don’t know if I want a bunch of people to be knowing that I had this thought,’ ” she said in a recent interview with Stereogum. “Then on the other hand, it’s like, ‘I should just say it, because I think people appreciate that honesty.’ And also, I always appreciate in music when I hear someone saying something in lyrics when I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ve thought about that before but you never hear it out loud.’ ”
COLLEEN GREEN plays Woodward Theater on Sunday. Tickets/more info here .