My Merge Day Four: I Stare At Maps All Day, A Charade In The Sunset…

One of the few indulgences that my friends and I like to treat ourselves to every once in awhile is the old boy’s road trip to a nearby city/town in the hopes of taking in some live music and drinking silly amounts of beer. It’s one of those male bonding things; the likes of which don’t happen quite as often as they did, say, 10 years ago yet which we do still manage to find time for here and there. One of our favorite, overnight destinations is Kalamazoo, MI where we’ll hit up the Bells Brewery for beer, dinner and perhaps a bit of tomfoolery before heading across the street to the Kraftbrau Brewery for even more beer and whatever act we’ve driven all those miles to see.

Such is what Joel, Brian, Shane and I were up to when we made the trek over to Kalamazoo on a snowy, Friday night in February 2007 to see Camera Obscura wow the hipster Western Michigan and Kalamazoo College crowd. And while Camera Obscura were the main draw, I imagine more than a few people in the audience walked away equally, if not more, impressed with the Essex Green, whose cute boy-girl harmonies and jangly strummed guitar chords probably wipes them off the “cool” map immediately. However, since I’m old enough to not care about such things, I found them simply charming and thought those harmonies were just as good as anything Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra ever did.

Their 2006 album, Cannibal Sea, is smart and catchy indie-pop, the type Merge Records has effortlessly churned out all these years. It still has a regular home on our CD player. I remember the four of us listening to the album over and over on the way back to Chicago the morning after the show; all the while driving through a blinding snowstorm and simultaneously praying that Brian could make out some semblance of a road. Yes, I can remember all of this yet still have trouble with certain people’s birthdays and other notable dates.

Essex Green – “Penny & Jack” (mp3)

(from the Merge CD, Cannibal Sea, 2006)

P.S. Sadly, it’s been brought to my attention that Kraftbrau is no longer situated right across the street from Bell’s, a bummer as the convenience factor in terms of proximity was a plus.