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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Part Grant McLennan, part Belle and Sebastian, and certainly part Ladybug Transistor--the incarnation that preceded this Brooklyn trio--Essex Green plays tunes that are at once deliriously bright and unabashedly laconic. They hail from Brooklyn, were once Ladybug Transistor, and are part of the Elephant 6 bloodline (that which spawned Olivia Tremor Control, Apples in Stereo, and Neutral Milk Hotel). And Essex Green loves, loves melody, snappy tunes with seemingly Scottish titles like "This Isn't Farmlife," and the lilting vocals, chiming guitars, and Fender Rhodes piano that so wonderfully serve A.C. Newman and the New Pornographers. That's the quixotic predicament with Essex Green: You've heard them before and yet haven't. You should. --Andrew Bartlett
Product Description
The third full-length from this Brooklyn collective features songs that draw on themes of travel, exploration, and the desire for a quiet niche amid the pressures of big city living. The characters show a yearning to break free from the boundaries of city life (the cannibal sea), to escape the darkness and fatigue and move on to a lighter-hearted setting surrounded by water, replete with the spray of the sea and the lilting of a boat. Listening to this is like opening a songbook of classic pop. The twelve songs incorporate country-rock traces of The Byrds, the Greenwich Village balladry of Fred Neill, and the acoustic pop harmonizing of The Mamas And The Papas. Add the pure pop perfection of The Monkees, and mix with more modern traces of The Shins, The Hidden Cameras, and Jens Lekman, and you have a recipe for a sound that's timeless without being purely retro. Their strongest and most cohesive album. Merge. 2006.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is the most listenable cd I have heard all year. Chris Ziter and Sasha Bell trade off vocals to excellent effect and even guita maestra Jeff Baron gets into the act on "Rabbit." This is the quintessential road trip album with travel and leave-taking as a major theme. I will be driving around with the top down listening to "Don't Know Why" all summer.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
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.
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Elmo
Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase
A true hidden gem, and easily one of my favorite albums of all time, from one of my favorite bands of all time. Cannibal Sea's tracks can be loosely sorted into three flavors- you'll find pop/rock (see: Don't Know Why), soulful folk pieces (see: Rue De Lis), and (perhaps The Essex Green's strongest suit), psychedelic rock lifted straight from the 60's (see: Cardinal Points). It's a similar blend that showed up on their previous album, The Long Goodbye, but don't think this CD is a paint-by-numbers affair. Each and every track is listenable, engaging, distinctive, and (above all else) lovable, permeated with a elegant grooviness that I have yet to find elsewhere.
If you like The Essex Green be sure to also check out The Ladybug Transistor, which share a love of 60's pastiche and the lovely vocal talents of Sasha Bell.
If you like The Essex Green be sure to also check out The Ladybug Transistor, which share a love of 60's pastiche and the lovely vocal talents of Sasha Bell.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Almost pop-perfection
The Essex Green is definitely a sweet and charming band. And the album "Cannibal Sea" is certainly one of the most listenable cd`s I`ve heard during the last year, be it inside or... Read more
Published on November 7, 2008 by Knut Einar Sundlisaeter
4.0 out of 5 stars
Uplifting yet chill
This is great background music to study by, to drive by, to chill by. Each song seems to breeze by with no rough edges to interrupt the good vibe. Read more
Published on November 21, 2007 by Russ
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful blend of psychedelia, pop, and folk
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. Read more
Published on July 29, 2007 by Robert Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars
this album is so good i can't come up with a title for it.
Great album, the band does a wonderful job w/ vocals, the vocals seems to me to be the focal point of their music, no instrument is any more present or projecting than the other. Read more
Published on February 19, 2007 by Samuel R. Turco
4.0 out of 5 stars
completely engaging CD -- really 4.5 stars
The alternating tracks of male and female vocals add a nice diversity to these beautifully played 1960's-esque tracks. Read more
Published on October 1, 2006 by techmannn
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very nice mix of new and old
Being an old folkie, folk rock lover I find this album very interesting. Vocals are excellent, with a hard edge that I like. Read more
Published on April 16, 2006 by Richard C. Lynch
