Local band Earlimart was opening for Grandaddy at the Henry Fonda theater on Monday night, and although the public loved them they knew it was not their night but Grandaddy’s. ‘We are gonna be out of here soon, because we all know why we are here’, said (aproximatively) Aaron Espinoza towards the end of their short set, ‘here to see Grandaddy!’
It was totally logical for them to open for the band from Modesto, as Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray have also formed this Admiral Radley side project with Grandaddy’s own Jason Lytle, so to speak, we were between friends. And the public was sending the same vibe, with many ‘I love you’ and other forms of affection. Fans were missing Earlimart too, as they hadn’t played for four years and their last album was released in 2008.
The band seems to make a come back, with a new album ‘System Preferences’ to be released digitally in September and physically on October, but they didn’t preview much from this new effort, just a new song ‘97 Heart Attack’ focusing on Espinoza’ s usual h11ushed vocals responding to Murray’s over a stomping rhythm, quite familiar for the duo. They were actually four on stage, and played some really old favorites, such as their 2003 semi-hit ‘Burning the Cow’ and its catchy punk energy, or ‘We Drink on the Job’, a song with an anxious beat for which they precisely got some help from Grandaddy,… ‘this band has meant so much to us, without them we would not be here’, said Espinoza, continuing the love fest.
Earlimart has always known how to alternate fast numbers with simple ballads, and we got some of these of course, as Ariana played another favorite on piano, ‘Happy Alone’, a melancholic-foot-tapping tune with this so-rewarding recurrent chord progression.
They were in a totally happy mood, joking between the songs, despite the heartbroken and dark nature of the lyrics of their songs, one of them being the intense and ascending ‘Heaven Adores You’ that Aaron Espinoza wrote after Elliott Smith’s death, but I should say that the entire 2004 ‘Treble and Tremble’ album was a tribute to him. They closed their short set with a slow piano ballad that I didn’t recognize, may be a new song?
Everyone was missing their bird/cricket chirping between the songs, and after their Admiral Radley adventure, Earlimart seem to be back to their old stuff of floating eerie ballads and supercharged rocking numbers.