The Essex Green, Cannibal Sea

Have no fear: in spite of the nautical-sounding title, The Essex Green’s latest release, Cannibal Sea, comes nowhere near the piratical obsessions of, say, The Decemberists or The Coral. The press materials try to paint Cannibal Sea as some kind of chronicle of the yearning of overstressed city folk to escape their concrete confines for the boundless reaches of the sea, but nope, I’m not buying. This album doesn’t set a course for the vasty deep, but instead soars at tree-level over the American heartland in the height of a hazy, warm-but-not-hot summer. These are indeed traveling songs, yes, but I get the feeling that they’re more landlocked than not — those depressed city-dwellers don’t want to climb on board a damn boat, they’re eager to stretch their legs, get out of the city, and just roam.

And for that, I have to say that this record is a marvel. Simply listening to “Cardinal Points,” with its driving beat, chunky synths, and paralleled doo-doo-doo-doo vocals, I feel this crazy urge to head for the garage and drive off to the rolling hills of Elsewhere, U.S.A. (and yes, this urge is rendered even weirder by the fact that it’s 12:20 AM as I type this). Cannibal Sea isn’t just a great traveling record, it practically begs to be played while cruising through green valleys and past waving fields of grain and peaceful cows munching grass by the roadside (those places do still exist, right?). This album’s the plaintive cry of three Brooklynites who’ve transplanted themselves from the significantly more rural environs of Vermont and Ohio and have finally realized they miss it back home — and as a child of the Texas Hill Country living amid the urban blight myself, heck, I can sure as hell get where they’re coming from.

On top of that, the songs on Sea are picture-perfect little pop gems that run just long enough to do what they need to do and get out without wearing out their collective welcome. The tracks come off like New Pornographers-esque compositions — particularly “Elsinore” and “Don’t Know Why (You Stay)” (God, I love that insistent, swooping chorus…) — stripped of all fat and too-smart wordplay and then grafted onto the best moments of Boy With the Arab Strap-era Belle and Sebastian (see “This Isn’t Farm Life” and “Slope Song,” for two). The result is magical, a collection of bucolic, Byrds-y, backwards-looking (but not backwards-sounding) pop songs with just the right touch of electric guitar, synths, and spit to make ’em really work.

All this, by the way, comes from a band whose members (Sasha Bell, Christopher Ziter, and Jeff Baron) have all done time in other psychedelic/poppy bands I’ve never really cared for like Ladybug Transistor and the Sixth Great Lake. I know those bands are indie-pop icons, sure, but for some reason, they just never did it for me. Going by this album, however, The Essex Green definitely does. Now, where did I put my car keys?