Disco de The Essex Green: “Cannibal Sea”

This is just a flat out irresistible album! And I have Amazon to think for it. I had never heard of Essex Green until it popped up in my Recommended for You page on Amazon. I did some research, discovered that they specialize in Chamber Pop and decided to give the album a listen. I generally ignore the Amazon recommendations since most of them are for things I already have or things I would never want, but in this case I was utterly pleased.

Since I knew nothing about the band, I did some reading on the Internet. Several of the members appear to be in more than one band together, including Ladybug Transistor, another band I plan on checking out. Musically it is pop, but sometimes it sounds more like folk, sometimes like paisley rock. "Don't Know Why (You Stay)" reminds me a lot of the power pop of The Primitives. But regardless of how you classify these songs, they are just great. There honestly isn't a bad cut on the disc and several are absolutely outstanding. The band features two lead singers, Christopher Ziter and Sasha Bell. Though one is male and one female, their voices have many of the same qualities, blessed with a wonderfully woody, nasal tone. While Ziter is a very fine vocalist, I just adore Sasha Bell's voice. She imbues every line she sings with a lackadaisical nonchalance that I find utterly seductive. Though the vocals stand out throughout the album, the playing is also first rate and infectious.

But what really makes this a fine album is the great set of songs. Like most CDs, the best songs tend to be crowded near the beginning of the disc. Back in the days of LPs you got a very different spacing of strong songs. Most albums tended to start off with a great song and then put another as the final track of the A-Side. The idea was to make you really want to flip the record over. The B-Side of the album would then start off with another strong song with the final cut usually being something longer, perhaps even epic in quality. "Desolation Row" from Dylan's HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED is a classic example, as is "Into the Mystic" from Van Morrison's MOONDANCE, which was possibly the most brilliantly conceived final cut on any album, with the album ending shortly after Van sings, "It's too late to stop now." But with in the CD era almost all of the great songs of any album are crowded into the first half of the disc. On CDs of albums released before 1985 the great songs are more evenly dispersed, hinting at where the A-Side ended and the B-Side began. There are exceptions, but it holds true of perhaps 85% of all discs. This one is no exception. While the last half of songs are great, especially "Elsinore," the first several songs are all extraordinary, beginning with "This is Not Farmlife," proceeding to the aforementioned "Don't Know Why (You Stay)," which is IMO the best cut on the album, and on to "Penny and Jack" and "Snakes in the Grass." If you get a hold of this album and find nothing in those four songs to love, give up on it. It isn't your piece of cake. But if you are like me, those four songs will leave you reeling and the rest of the album will keep you that way.

This album was released in 2006 so it is probably too early to be looking for the Essex Green's next release. They released two albums before, but hopefully something happened in the production of this album that took them musically to a new level. If you love great pop rock, you should definitely pick this one up.