Disco de The Essex Green: “Everything Is Green”

"Everything Is Green" is about as ambitious a musical project as you will find in popular music. The Essex Green surpasses any of their Elephant 6 musical peers, on the basis of their sheer audacity and innocent quirkiness. This CD has been out for nearly five years and I hope it finds a larger audience. The "Big Green Tree" with it's plea to be anonymous "like a big green tree" is an ingenenous childlike ode to exsistential angst. The Essex Green has it all: a psychedelic Vox organ, child-like Cowsill vocals, weird shifts in tempo, fuzzbox guitars and hallucenogenic orange sushine lyrics. A few ambient Herb Alpert style mariachi horn arrangements are thrown in for good measure.

The comparison to the sixties group the Zombies, does not do justice to the Essex Green. The scope of the "Everything Is Green's" musical ambition far exceeds that of the Zombie's "Odessey and Oracle" classic. This is a mix of sunny psychedelic pop, jazz, rhumba, and celtic sounds that compares favorably to perhaps the Incredible String Band's "10,000 Spirits or Layers of the Onion", another eccentric sixties masterpiece from the sixties that split musical genres and had big ideas.

Eventually "Everything Is Green" will be seen as the visionary statement it is, and it will be appreciated as a forgotten pyschedelic classic, like Love's incredible "Forever Changes" and the previously mentioned Incredible String Band Album. The Essex Green released "The Long Goodbye" this year (2003) and it is a more polished Essex Green shifting from the psychedelic flourishes of "Everything Is Green" and experimenting more bucolic folk rock approach, but their vision remains intact. "Everything Is Green" still remains a favorite for it's magical charm and far flung ambition.

The Essex Green, although they don't measure up to the standards of the E6-east giants (The Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel), are better than many of their labelmates, such as The Apples in Stereo, Elf Power, and Beulah. This album consists mostly of songs that are fun but not amazing, although a few songs--"Sun", "Mrs. Bean", "Primrose" and "Tinker"--stand out as excellent.

By the way, I don't really buy the comparisons to the Zombies, except for the beginning of "Big Green Tree" (which is pretty much lifted from "She's Not There")...

There's nothing you can really fault in Essex Green's "Everything Is Green," which is seemingly the celebration of a garden. They combine complex, rippling music with childlike innocence, giving the whole album a sort of folky, semi-psychedelic flavor. It's fun, but not fantastic.

It opens with a playful keyboard tune, opening up to a lush pop tune in "Primrose," before shifting to the organ-augmented pop grandeur of songs like "Playground," "Saturday" and the lush "Sun," which sounds like the most sinister song Polyphonic Spree never made, with that chorus-like opener and ominous vocals: "But when the sun goes out/when the sun goes out/it's gonna get real cold/it's gonna get real dark/we're gonna have a lot of candles..."

But there are changes in pace like the rat-a-tat rhythm of "Big Green Tree, which has a weirdly dark undercurrent. "Grass" is especially odd, with distorted vocals and slow, eerie organ -- it sounds almost ghostly, and it's a welcome break from the 60s-style pop. "Saturday" sounds like upbeat minstrel music from a Renaissance Faire.

Essex Green is one of those bands who fall into the second row of Elephant 6 bands -- most of them are pretty good, but not very well-known compared to Neutral Milk Hotel and Apples in Stereo. Essex Green lay it on a little thick with the peace-love-flowers vibe, but keep it from being cloying by mixing in a few dark spots.

Hammond organ is one of the most important instruments here, adding a regal touch to the folky pop tunes. But there are other instruments, including a harmonica in the final song, sitar in "Sixties" and a flute in "Mrs. Bean." Percussion never comes too far to the front, and the bass only really gets to blossom once. But the guitar gets to take the front in songs like the bouncy "Saturday."

As far as songwriting goes, it's very simple and sometimes TOO simple, but somehow that's not a problem. And the tone is basically that of "Sixties," a reminiscent little ditty that asks, "You pick the place, darling, I'll pick the date/I'll see you there, don't be late/somewhere thru the gold of early autumn breeze/meet me in the sixties." Lots of plants, sunny reminiscences and childlike sweetness.

The folky, sweet sound of Essex Green is pretty well done in "Everything is Green," which is good but never great. A fun little bit of 60s-influenced pop, which is certainly worth listening to.

I highly recommend EG's two more recent albums -- Cannibal Sea and The Long Goodbye are excellent -- but this CD exposes all the shortcomings of a band that's just getting started. Annoying melodies, immature songwriting and murky production values have relegated this CD to my dustbin. On second thought, I do need another coaster for my coffee table....