Will it ever catch on?
When last I saw the Essex Green live, they were playing in the back room of a small bar in Milwaukee to a dozen listeners--a small number, but attentive and appreciative, especially the one overjoyed guy who kept screaming requests to the bewildered band. They let him up on stage at the end to play guitar, and he fiddled with it uncertainly, and Sasha finally smiled.
Today I listened to Cannibal Sea a couple of times while I was working. My trainee picked up the CD when she came by my desk and said, "Oh, is this one of your bands?" (Only a few days ago she assumed I knew the name of the Snoop Dogg song she was playing.) "I like the cover," she said, and then she began reading the names of the tracks aloud, slowly. "'This Isn't Farm Life'...'Snakes in the Grass'...'Rabbit'...'Sin City,' I like that. Are all these songs are about farm animals?" No. This isn't farm life. Fucking pay attention.
But will they ever catch on? Not with the Snoop Dogg fans.
The Essex Green announced their purpose with the song "Sixties" on their debut LP, Everything is Green (1999). "I'll see you in the Sixties," Chris Ziter sang; like the Buddhist ritual wherein monks attempt to reshape the world in a more perfect image by carefully arranging colored grains of sand into a vast mosaic (see the Werner Herzog film, "Wheel of Time"), the Greens are trying to recast popular music back into a decade more to their liking. That's right: we're being revised, grain by grain, by the band each time we put on the CD.
I listen to Cannibal Sea and I can't help but think that they're our Mamas and the Papas, our Byrds, our Moby Grape, and they'd be big, back when. But tastes are changing (see the Lollapalooza lineup this year), and anyway, the Green are still together, so it doesn't matter.
If you're looking for the new "Late Great Cassiopia," you can take up "Cardinal Points" happily, which gets your blood flowing the same way. If you thought The Long Goodbye seemed a little less lively here and there (and I'm not sure I'd agree), you'll certainly be pleased when you see there isn't a weak track on this album. And if you've just been missing Sasha Bell's voice, it rings clear over the instruments here, as penetrating and as lovely as ever, particularly when she takes over the vocals from Chris Ziter in the charming give and take of "Penny and Jack," or describes her dress from '74, "ripped in the arm from the girl before," in "Uniform." And Jeff Baron, whose guitar stampedes through these numbers, brings a Leonard Cohen quality to his vocals on "Rabbit."
But everything pulsates. Everything's sunny and full of life. (I knew I was in trouble when the notes I took while listening to the album were as inane as "sunny," "happy," "train ride through the Appalachians.") Hell, even "Sin City" turns out to be a song about Ohio. If you were a fan that dreaded the band going synth-pop, you've nothing to fear--there's nothing wrong with synths, and anyway they're dressings, not the muscles or the bones. We still have that electric guitar. We still have the flute! And they still have the ability to write a song like "Rue De Lis," that sounds like a lost Nashville classic from, well, the Sixties. No, it's not the Second Coming, but at forty minutes it still feels too short and you'll just start it up again at the end; they're remaking popular music as it ought to be, and though you're still more likely to catch them on a hipper DJ's college station rather than Lollapalooza, I hope that the next time they come to Wisconsin there are a few more in the know, making fools of themselves and screaming drunken requests at the startled shy people from Brooklyn.

Cannibal Sea is out Tuesday from Merge Records.

Cannibal Sea, by
The Essex Green

1. This Isn't Farmlife
2. Don't Know Why (You Stay)
3. Penny & Jack
4. Snakes in the Grass
5. Rue De Lis
6. Cardinal Points
7. Rabbit
8. Uniform
9. The Pride
10. Sin City
11. Elsinore
12. Slope Song
Total Running Time: 40:12

Listen to tracks at the Essex Green MySpace page, where you can also download a live version of "Mrs. Bean."

Tour Dates (more forthcoming)

04/05/2006 08:00 PM - Lagerhaus- Bremen, Germany
04/06/2006 08:00 PM - Musikzentrum- Hannover, Germany
04/07/2006 08:00 PM - E-werk- Erlangen, Germany
04/08/2006 08:00 PM - Karlstorbahnhof- Heidelburg, Germany
04/09/2006 08:00 PM - Kulturbunker Mulheim- Koln, Germany
04/10/2006 08:00 PM - Gleiss 22- Munster, Germany
04/12/2006 08:00 PM - 93 Ft East- London, England
04/28/2006 08:00 PM - Subterranean- Chicago, IL
04/29/2006 08:00 PM - Turf Club- St. Paul, MN
05/03/2006 08:00 PM - Towne Lounge- Portland, OR
05/04/2006 08:00 PM - The Dip- Redding, CA