The Essex Green

I caught up with the members of The Essex Green – Chris Ziter (Guitar/Vocals), Sasha Bell (Keyboard/Vocals), Jeff Baron (Lead Guitar) – outside Holocene before their show with Irving and Parks & Recreation. The New York City-based band was on tour for their new release Cannibal Sea.

Cannibal Sea sees The Essex Green in fine form, finding a cohesiveness and assurance that wasn’t present on their sophomore LP The Long Goodbye. Bucolic may be the best word to describe Cannibal Sea as a whole, because even in their more rock-oriented moments, the band never conveys great excitement or anxiety, but rather exudes the peaceful detachment of a band of Buddhist monks. Despite this utter confidence, Cannibal Sea differs little from The Long Goodbye, the elements that made that album successful – tight songwriting, precise arrangements and elegant performances – are once again employed with aplomb. The most immediate tracks, such as “Don’t Know Why (You Stay)” and “Cardinal Points,” are some of the least psychedelic and most jumpy, electric, and straight-ahead rock songs in their catalog.

Unfortunately, the crowd that greeted them at Holocene was thin (while most of the them were underweight urban hipsters who spent all their food money on clothes at Buffalo Exchange), what I mean is that the show was ill-attended. And I say “unfortunate” because Cannibal Sea is the best release from The Essex Green and arguably one of the most brilliantly executed albums in 2006 thus far.

 

Let’s start off by talking about the side projects of The Essex Green, because there happens to be a great many. Sasha what inspired you to go on and record an album under the moniker Finishing School?

Sasha: Well at the time I had a written a huge number of songs in a very short period of time, and so there were plenty of songs to go around and there seemed to be a batch of songs that worked really well together so I thought it would just be fun to put it out under a different name.

So the name Finishing School just sort of sprung to mind?

Yeah, it literally just sprang to mind. Nothing I had been thinking about for ages. So yeah, it was more of a spontaneous concept.

This question is for Jeff: Jeff, do you ever think your sister will play on an Essex Green record? Because she used to play for Ladybug Transistor with you.

Jeff: Probably not. She plays bass, and guitar and she’s in a band right now. But she doesn’t live in New York, and she was really more involved in the Ladybug. But who knows?

Sasha: They’re going to do a Carpenters style album soon.

Chris: The new Magic Numbers.

I would have thought they’d go for a Donny and Marie record. Jeff, are you a little bit rock and roll or a little bit country?

Jeff: [Laughs.] A little bit psychedelic?

Okay, so there are a number of origins and side projects of The Essex Green, but it feels like, especially with the release of Cannibal Sea, that The Essex Green is no longer another side project, but that it is instead everyone’s main focus right now.

Jeff: It always kind of was. A lot of people say it’s a side project of this and that but we started playing a long time ago, and it just took us awhile to be in one city. It came out of Guppyboy, and then Sixth Great Lake came about so we could all play with the other members of Guppyboy. So that’s more of an ongoing recording project, you know. But this is, what you’re sensing, what you’re feeling, was always there. It’s just now sort of seeing itself to fruition.

I’d like someone to speak to the existence of the Basement Tapes, Vol. 1-2. I’ve never seen them in CD stores, so are they in print? We’re they ever?

Jeff: I’d like to answer that. It’s on Wikipedia.

Really, because I found it on the Elephant 6 website.

Jeff: They were not supposed to be a release.

They’re just demos right?

Jeff: They aren’t even demos. It’s just four-track stuff that we had done, sometimes it’s just rambling thoughts that Mike Barrett (previous Essex Green bassist) had compiled, because he documented everything we ever did. He would always, at the end of the year, find all the four-track tapes in the basement and put out a tape for us to listen to. He’d name all the songs and call them something. And then he started selling it on the Internet. I had never heard it, but then I heard these scraps of me just trying to write a song in there. We didn’t even want people to here it, but I mean we have so many old songs like that that it would be great to edit them and pick the ones that we want to put out and then publish it as a real Basement Tapes effort. The ones that he was trying to sell weren’t really meant to be.

So why was Mike documenting everything to begin with?

Jeff: Because that was his nature.

Chris: He was the archivist of the band. He basically owned a lot of the equipment and he would put it all together every once and awhile just to let everyone know that these songs were out there. You know, because there were always different songwriters. It’s not like there is one particular songwriter. So he would get all this material together, and make a cover and make a case, and give it as like Christmas gifts or something. And he’d name it and make artwork for it ?”

Sasha: He was like the mad scientist.

Jeff: And now because of the Internet everyone can get it. It’s basically like him going into our rooms and taking our diaries and photocopying them and saying, “Here, this is what Jeff was thinking all year long.” Finding a picture of me, without a shirt on in the bathroom, and copying it.

So now I know why you don’t want those tapes around.

Sasha: [Laughs.] Do you want to tell him about the Grandmother story?

Jeff: Oh, no, don’t Sasha.

What’s the Grandmother Story?

Sasha: Well, Chris found this picture of Jeff naked, wrapped up in a towel, after a shower, posing in very curious positions in one of our hotel rooms. So Chris posted it so that you saw it if you clicked on some obscure point on our web page. Meanwhile, Jeff’s grandmother ?”

Chris: Nobody in the band knew about it.

Sasha: So she has this huge old Internet contraption where she gets the Internet off of her TV. So it’s this huge screen. So she’s going through her grandson’s website and she finds the photo. Of all people … and then she calls Jeff ?”

Jeff: But Mike had nothing to do with that one.

Chris: It really sparked the whole American Apparel add campaign.

Sasha: [Laughs.] It really did.

From your position on the stage what does a typical Essex Green audience look like?

Chris: Well, [at a show in Seattle] our audience looked like a seven year old child, with a green mohawk, wearing iPod ear buds. Yeah, he was getting down to The Essex Green.

Jeff: I think he was five actually.

Chris: Oh, sorry, so he was five then. I think his name was Dakota.

Have you ever played any shows North or South Dakota?

Chris: Nope.

So you just crossed the Midwest but didn’t stop.

Sasha: Yeah.

Chris: Well, this is only our fifth show for this album, so we are still early in the tour. We started in the middle of the country, then went west, now we’re heading down to Texas and then back to the east coast. So, we’re still in the beginning of it, but what does are audience look like? I think it’s a mix. It depends on which show we’re at, you know. But typically we get a lot of older folks.

Sasha: I think it’s weird because we just played an all ages show, and I expected more college kids ?”

Or high school kids.

Sasha: But at a Mates of State show you know, that whole genre has a type of kid that we just don’t get. That’s not our audience. But it’s just a little more eclectic and a little older.

Jeff: Our audience likes to stay at home.

Sasha: [Laughs.] Babysitters are expensive.

Jeff: In Europe it was cool because we’d get these guys coming up to us and being like “You remind me of Moody Blues.” And then their kids like it to. But I don’t think there is anybody our age coming out to the shows.

Let’s talk about the album for a second, because that’s really why you’re here. I think Cannibal Sea is the best effort to date because there’s more of a tangible soul, and the album has stronger continuity. Is there anything you did differently in terms of recording or writing?

Chris: The amount of space between records is a decent amount of space, about three years. And it’s been such a growing process in terms of the first and second record having a lot of changes – we lost a member. So coming into The Long Goodbye [Merge; 2003] was a lot of rediscovering what the band was going to be. And that lineup and thinking has been the same between The Long Goodbye and Cannibal Sea, so we’ve been able to hone what we did well on Long Goodbye, and do it much better and with more focus on Cannibal Sea.

Even though you guys have only been in five shows so far, do you think you’ve “broken any records yet?”

Jeff: [Laughs.] We have Wi-Fi in the van.

Sasha: [Laughing.] We did break a record. We earned the most we’ve ever earned at a live show.

Chris: Yeah. $4 million. It was great.

Sasha: Very tiring.

So, sticking with the Wi-Fi comment, I’m curious what you guys listen to on the road?

Jeff: We all have a bunch of iPods.

So you guys rotate day by day?

Jeff: Sometimes we make play lists.

What was the last song you were listening to on the way into Portland?

Jeff: Hmm …

Sasha: Buck Owens?

Chris: No … that was on the way down. I think I just turned on the radio. We play a little bit of David Cross ever once and awhile .

Sasha: We don’t even need him anymore because we just quote him back and forth.

Besides quoting David Cross, what else do you do to relax on the road?

Sasha: Julia and I do yoga.

In the van?

Jeff: No, there’s not enough ventilation in the van for that.

[Laughs.] What about you two [Christopher and Jeff], what do you do to relax?

J: I eat lemons. It’s got lots of Vitamin C in it. It’s good for you.

Chris: Today we played around and passed out up in Mt. Tabor park. It’s beautiful up there.

So as a final question: You mentioned the $4 million, so how do you guys reconcile popularity and mainstream culture with this underground pop-aesthetic that you’ve cultivated? In the future what are Essex Green’s intentions for success?

Jeff: To get more people at the shows. To feel like we’re more appreciated. To take it to the next level, like The Aislers Set. I go to their shows and I see them with a packed audience and I think a lot of those people would like our shows.

Chris: We got a taste of that when we went to Sweden, because we’ve consistently done really well over there, and it sort of opened our eyes in terms of what we could see out of an audience. To do that at every show would be amazing.

Sasha: Yeah, even in Seattle. I felt under-attended. So I agree with Jeff, a large audience would be super gratifying and we spend so much time, and huge chunks of our lives recording and making music that it’s nice to get that kind of payoff on the other end. But I think there is large portion of it that is a mystery, because I often can’t tell why bands are popular and why they’re not. Other than my personal tastes, in terms of discerning popularity I find it baffling.