I was going to post this earlier, but I didn’t manage to fit it in before the month of cover songs in May. I haven’t been buying many records as of late for various reasons. An important one is that I just don’t know what the kids like these days; I’m in my early 20s and I’m already out of touch, but that’s another story for another time. Anyways, nowadays my record purchases come in bunches. The last big bunch came two months ago, when I picked up a bunch of albums in the record store and then came home to discover more in the mail. The album I liked most, though, was the album I picked up on a whim. The Rainer Maria album is middling and vaguely awkward; the new Built To Spill is boring when it should be anthemic; there ain’t much wrong with the new Magneta Lane but that doesn’t make it great, either. But thanks to some conveniently prominent placement at Sunrise (which could have been a pay-for-placement issue, if the record industry is anything like the book or grocery industry) I noticed that the Essex Green had a new album.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the Essex Green; they made nice little songs, but for whatever reason I could never quite make the jump from appreciating their charms from afar to embracing them wholeheartedly. Maybe it was because I’d bought a Ladybug Transistor album and found it charming but not exciting. The 60s throwback motif is great if you’re a garage band or a Motown revivalist, less so if you’re a fey pop band (this is your cue, fans of Camera Obscura, early Belle and Sebastian, Ladybug Transistor, etc., etc., etc.). But I bought the album anyways, maybe because I was already ambivalent about the rest of my purchases and thought, hey, what’s one more possible failure?

But Cannibal Sea is far from a failure and far from fey. Much has changed since I last heard the Essex Green, around the time of their debut album in 1999. They sound more upbeat, more confident, more assured, more everything—no longer the quaint little sister of Elephant Six, but one of the best indie pop bands in business today. Sasha Bell in particular has really come into her own, and is possibly the best thing about this album. So here’s the opener to Cannibal Sea, a song I imagine will end up being one of my favourites of the year.