When I walk into Effi Briest guitarist Sara Shaw's apartment to
the sight of five of the seven band members sitting semi-circle
on couches and chairs - lounging, looking bored, waiting for the
last two to show, mulling over the particulars of their show the
next night - I quickly find out they aren't British. Their
hypnotic, twelve-minute compositions careen towards a smoky
basement in 1970s London, with all the ecstatic escapism, the
residue of psychedelia, and the rawness of punk that implies,
but they're from Brooklyn. That's as far as that goes. Effi
Briest boasts no myth of origin to hypothesize how the seven met
(not a seance, not even a vegan barbecue); they don't like to
talk about The Beginning. Shaw quickly nods off any need to
explain: "It was Corinne [Jones'] idea. There were twelve people
at first, then that whittled down to the essential, when
Elizabeth [Hart] and Rebecca [Squires] and Nicky [Mao] joined.
It wasn't really the band until they all formed."  What I
initially interpret as a hesitanc