A few hours spent with the Essex Green’s back catalog, and you get to wondering if they weren’t born a couple generations too late. A number of indie bands may be an exercise in “spot-the-influence,” but with the Green it’s often hard to make up your mind exactly which 60s band they’re aiming for. For example, is the intro of “Snakes in the Grass” more Paul Revere and the Raiders (think “Indian Reservation”) or Monkees (think “Last Train to Clarksville”)?

Essex Green don’t offer too much clarity to these kinds of questions, but at the 9:30 on Monday night, you could tell that in the 2 albums since their first LP and EP, they’ve embraced a wider variety of classic styles. When we first dug into their music, they were cooing “everything is green” – more mantra than lyric – over light-as-air flute and gently picked acoustic guitar. Last night, they were beefing up the arrangements, playing more like a conventional classicist pop-rock group than a bunch of traveling psych minstrels.

Thankfully, there are still shades of their old selves in their new repertoire. “Rue du Lis,” from their latest and best release Cannibal Sea, placed bedroom harmonies in the context of a country-shuffle. One of the finer tunes of the entire night, “Don’t Know Why (You Stay)” walks a fine line between the pop rush of The Cars and the Mamas-and-Papas-on-speed angle The Magic Numbers are currently working.