review: Our Hearts Are Gold, Our Grass is Blue by Greenland is Melting

Our Hearts Are Gold, Our Grass is Blue
Greenland is Melting
Self-released, 2009

Don't know what to make of the folk-punk movement. The Avett Brothers are they folk-punk? What about Against Me!? But with Gainesville's Greenland is Melting, these songs could be punk, could be folk, but are great. Another thing--a good name is half the battle for listening, I don't care, if your name sucks, it says something about your aesthetic, you know like a book with a cool cover.

"No More Sorry Songs" is that heartbreaking, but catchy narrative song about locked up letters, and then Kyle or Will or Shaun or whoever the vocalist is, yells "This is life, this is life, this is life" and it is and we know it is, and "it's the form of a song that no one should ever hear" but we've heard it and we're better for it.





"The Kitchen Song" is self-deprecating, relaxed, no songs for the radio, but songs for the kitchens and basements of friends. Pull up a bucket, a bar stool, a plastic fold out chair and sit down and sit and sit. That feels good.

"Hotel Floors" brings the harmonica, the harmonica is under used. Everyone needs a harmonica. Everyone needs Woody Guthrie, too. The details, the details--"I changed my socks three times today," everything is wet, everything is pouring, I hate peeling off wet socks too. The details, the details.

There are more songs here for sure, but the details, the details makes Greenland is Melting a band to watch. Oh yeah...listen to "Blood on the Banjo" too--that's a good one.