Search - The Essex Green :: Everything is Green

This is it,

11/17/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"this album is seriously one of the best cds i've heard all year. they sound kinda like the zombies, if they were more influenced by british folk. it's a perfect album, and i don't hesitate in saying this."

Zombies-Like Folk/Pop From The Elephant 6 Stable

Pop Kulcher | San Carlos, CA USA | 11/23/1999

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Pop Kulcher Review: The Essex Green's full-length debut is pleasant and charming, but firmly part of the Elephant 6 second string (below headliners like Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, and Neutral Milk Hotel). While those bands favor a more Beatles/Beach Boys-styled approach, the most obvious influence here is the Zombies, whose folky, pre-psychedelic flavor (including the chirpy organs and occasional harmonies) pervades the entire album. Much better production values than other bands in the Elephant 6 second string (like Elf Power and Of Montreal), though the instrumentation is still kept on the minimal side. It's all pretty enough, and fans of late 60's folk-pop bands like the Zombies and the Turtles (and, to a lesser extent, the Jefferson Airpline and even [ugh!] Donovan) will find it to be a nice discovery. But, as is the case with Of Montreal and some of the other more esoteric bands in the stable, it's hard to simply ignore the fact that the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols ever existed and accept this sort of naive retro-pop without occasionally cringing."

A Psychedelic Journey Into Another Green World

Gavin B. | St. Louis MO | 12/30/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

""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."