Saturday, October 4, 2008

Earlimart - Answers And Questions

(Suicide Squeeze, 2006)

Lush drama from these underdoggies. I’m kinda puzzled as to why there isn’t more lovin’ thrown Earlimart’s way; they’ve put together a solid catalog reminiscent of disbanded peers like the Delgados or a bleepsnbloops-free Grandaddy, but haven’t seemed to ever receive the attention those groups did. Oh well and oh shucks – they soldier onward. “Answers and Questions” came out in advance of album no. 5, Mentor Tormentor (where it also appears), and showed off the band’s continuing mastery of the dense, dreamy, mildly-psychedelic (are those mellotrons?) midtempo pop it jumped into on Everyone Down Here. Thanks to the meaty drums and churning guitars at the end, the song’s not too adulty, as these things can sometimes be, and thus it’s not too bad. Is outta sight, in fact. “Carruthers Boy,” which is on this single and this single only, focuses on vocal interplay and strips away most of the sonic layers of the A-side to show without distraction that Aaron Espinoza knows his way around a melody like a something knows its way around a whatsit. By which I mean: Yep!

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