[review 2006: the best of the year]

For a while there, at the beginning of the year, it looked like everyone had forgotten how to have fun. It seemed like every album I picked up would feel oddly restrained, composed—a bit sterile, to be blunt. This was a bad sign: every year, music critics take one of two stances when looking back on the Year In Music: either it’s “this was the worst year for music ever,” or “I know it looks like the worst year for music ever, but…” Things came to a head one day in April, when I picked up a stack of albums in the hopes that I’d find something out of the 2006 crop to like. Out of four albums, three fell disappointingly by the wayside. For the first time, I was genuinely concerned that I’d stumbled into the worst year for music ever. I thought of packing it in, shuttering the website and dropping my CD addiction cold turkey. I thought that maybe I was too old and too cynical to listen to music any more. I thought of cashing in pension cheques and taking up lawn bowling, resigned to a fate of yelling at kids to turn that racket down and get off my lawn.

I would’ve done it, too, if not for the fourth album I bought that fateful day in April, the album I didn’t even know existed until I saw it on the shelf, the album I almost didn’t buy, the album that quite literally saved 2006 for me: the Essex Green’s Cannibal Sea. The opening strains of “This Isn’t Farmlife” hit like the sun splitting the overcast sky in two, Sasha Bell’s gorgeous voice singlehandedly breathing life into the drab, concrete grey landscape that was my universe of music circa mid-2006. Maybe the emergence of spring had something to do with it too, I don’t know, but Cannibal Sea was my soundtrack for a solid month.

Previous Essex Green output stuck fairly closely to the fey 60s pop template that fit nicely into the Elephant Six universe; in fact, you may recognize Bell and Jeff Baron from Ladybug Transistor, which is nominally the parent band to the Essex Green’s side project. Both bands were marked by a double dose of effete charm and refined pop sensibilities, but their chamber pop oeuvre was an acquired taste—the most successful Ladybug Transistor album, The Albemarle Sound, could be described as charmingly unhurried if you were the generous sort, or precious and quaint if you weren’t. Not so with Cannibal Sea, a far more upbeat album that might faintly recall folky 60s pop but never crosses over into precious territory.

Though Cannibal Sea is apparently not much different from their previous album, The Long Goodbye, the Essex Green have evolved substantially from their early recordings. The renewed sense of energy and vigour is especially evident in the first half of the album, a freight train of pop momentum from “This Isn’t Farmlife” all the way through to “Cardinal Points.” With a definite decrease in the flute quotient and a corresponding increase in rawk guitars, Cannibal Sea sounds meatier than the Essex Green I used to know. And then there’s the matter of Sasha Bell, whose vocal performances are a compelling mix of schoolgirl innocence and sly confidence. Her warm, friendly presence on the album is an absolute joy.

But those are just two especially great elements in what is an outstanding listen overall. As a pop album seemingly custom-made for springtime, Cannibal Sea is absolutely perfect. And though I can’t enjoy glorious bike rides with the strains of “Rue De Lis” or “Uniform” in the cold of winter, Cannibal Sea still stands up surprisingly well six months later. Yes, it’s “just” an indie pop album, and it’s not doing anything particularly innovative. But the Essex Green have recorded an album worthy of enthusiastic approval—the first genuinely lovable album I heard this year, and still one of the best.