The Essex Green's debut album captures the sound and spirit of the psychedelic era with an uncanny accuracy which makes the rest of the Elephant 6 collective seem positively postmodern by comparison. It's hardly paint-by-numbers, however -- for all of its colorful guitar effects, orchestral spangles, and studio trickery, what's impressive about
Everything Is Green is the subtle mastery with which the band deploys these cues, soaring so far beyond their music's superficial similarities to psychedelia that the album seems less like a latter-day homage to the late '60s than an actual artifact of the times; songs like "Primrose" and the majestic "Mrs. Bean" are both wonderfully unique and instantly familiar, evoking not merely the sonic grandeur of pop's past but its limitless possibilities as well.