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EZTV: Easy To Love

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EZTV explores record-geek rock both old and new

“The stuff we’re interested in now is kind of the threads of music that didn’t get picked up,” says Shane O’Connell, bass player for EZTV. “Emitt Rhodes was obviously following a certain kind of Paul McCartney thread, and I feel like that lineage kind of stopped with him. Bands like that, where they picked something up but never really caught on, is the stuff we’re interested in.”

Although O’Connell’s comments make it sound like EZTV is some sort of archival project, that’s not the case. Yes, the trio of O’Connell, guitarist/principal songwriter Ezra Tenenbaum and drummer Michael Stasiak are self-proclaimed “record geeks and recording geeks” who tend to mention cult artists such as Lee Hazlewood, Bert Jansch and Tucker Zimmerman as points of reference. And High In Place, the trio’s excellent second album, is full of the kind of ringing 12-string guitars, gentle melodies and gauzy harmonies that will appeal to fans of vintage power pop (and to Jenny Lewis and Real Estate’s Martin Courtney, both of whom appear on the record). But the album sounds timeless rather than time-bound, classic rather than classicist.

“I’m sort of someone who gets into a couple albums really hard and am maybe not too adventurous,” says Tenenbaum. “I was listening to this Chris Cohen record that Captured Tracks put out and really liking it. And I was showing Michael some of the songs I was writing, and he said, ‘Oh, this sounds like Big Star or Teenage Fanclub.’ I was like, ‘Really? It does?’ So it was almost by accident. Checking out these things and discovering, ‘Wow, maybe this is more in the subconscious than I think.’”

“There’s definitely records out there that are Record Collector Rock,” says Stasiak, who worked at Other Music, the beloved but recently shuttered East Village record store. “I don’t think we’re one of those bands. I feel we dabble as much as we can within a certain set of precepts. A good, great pop song, you can do it in any style. When you boil it to its essence, it’s just some chords, a rhythm and a lyrical melody. If that’s good, if that’s solid, people will just like it.”

—Steve Klinge