Bringing hair and flair to L.A.’s music scene
BIZ 3 PUBLICITY
Ben Esser, of Essex County in the United Kingdom, is the lead singer of the band Esser, which is currently on its first full U.S. tour. Esser will play today at El Rey Theatre, located in west Los Angeles.
By Alex Goodman
Sept. 29, 2009 11:21 p.m.
From the looks of Ben Esser, who hails from Essex County, a quaint part of the United Kingdom, southeast England must be another planet. It may be pretty standard for the area, but Esser is definitely not your standard pop star.
At least, not standard for this decade.
Esser appears to have been shot out of a stylistic cannon from the ’80s, rocking a plaid button-down short-sleeved shirt and rolled-up jeans in the video for “Headlock””“ his latest single released in June. Not to mention the hair, shaved on the sides with an oversized pompadour on top.
The same goes for the music, a cheeky, sample-heavy brand of electropop anchored by Esser’s heavily accented voice. “Headlock,” along with his eponymous band’s other two singles, focuses on the kind of girl problems that make you think someone’s been hurt recently, in a manner that’s both playful and bitter. Today, Esser will bring those tunes and others from the debut album, “Braveface,” to the El Rey Theatre, opening for Datarock. The hair will be there, too.
Despite all of the style, flamboyance and hair gel, Esser’s story has humble beginnings.
“It started with me just kind of playing songs at home in my bedroom,” Esser said. “I wrote songs in my bedroom, and a few people heard them. Then I met a guy with Transgressive Records and got a deal with them, and I got the band together and we started playing. And basically since then, we’ve been playing, we’ve been touring nonstop.”
Transgressive, which represents both Iron & Wine and the Shins in the U.K., supported Esser while they built a sizable following in their home country, eventually taking their high-energy live shows to arenas throughout England. Eventually Esser was picked up in the U.S. by Chocolate Industries, an American indie label that recognized a distinctiveness in the band similar to their other artists, such as the Cool Kids and Lady Sovereign.
“I think the label’s always innovative. If you look back at the history of Chocolate Industries, they’ve always done stuff that’s out of the ordinary,” Chocolate Industries’ Amer Sweis said. “Esser is something to be talked about.”
Now the band is in the midst of its first full-blown U.S. tour, building upon their performance at Lollapalooza in August. Even for a band now well-versed in the art of touring, taking the show across the pond is a new experience.
“Touring in the states is a little different because of the geography and the vastness of the country,” said Sean Tichenor, Esser’s bassist and tour manager and the only American in the group.
“It’s a lot of long drives ““ you can spend a month and a half in the United States and not hit every market. But from my perspective, it doesn’t feel a whole lot different. I’ve worked with bands from the U.S. and Great Britain and France and Norway and Germany, and at the end of the day it’s all about putting on a good show and making the tour happen.”
For Ben Esser, coming to the United States means a different approach to spreading his pop gospel.
“It’s bigger ““ everything in America’s bigger,” Esser said. “It’s like seeing whole different countries, it’s so different from one part of America to another. It’s just insane how many different places there are for your music to get out there ““ so many different TV stations, so many different radio stations, so many blogs. In the U.K., if you don’t get onto certain things, if they don’t play your record on Radio 1, then what other avenues have you got? But it feels like, in America, there are so many different places to get your music out.”
After the tour, the band will head back home for a few dates in Spain, and Esser will get to work on a second album. But the band will be back for the South by Southwest festival in March, and for Coachella in April, infusing that much more of the British pop ethic into the American mainstream.
“The band has a very British flavor,” Tichenor said. “That’s just who they are and where they come from, so there’s a real strong vein of that in the music, and in the style, and in the visual, so it definitely comes through. I don’t think it’s an affectation, I think it’s just how we are.”
Esser is no alien, though, as far as Tichenor can tell. In fact, the band’s not even all that much different from the American groups he’s worked with.
“In the sense of the camaraderie, it’s not a lot different,” Tichenor said. “I think it’s more different for other people when they’re talking to the band, and then I pop up. But really it doesn’t feel a whole lot different, other than that they use the word “˜mondo’ and call dinner “˜tea.'”
