Earlimart is a Census Designated Place in Tulare County, CA, but it is also the name of a Silver Lake band which has already released 6 albums since their early beginning in 1999.
Silver Lake has been a rich pool for music and artists in general for quite some time and many bands find their home there mostly because of the bohemian atmosphere and the numerous music venues and bars. Every year there is the Sunset Junction fair, a two day extravaganza of food, rides and of course music just in front of the Silver Lake Conservatory of Music run by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Beck was even living there in the late 80’s, he has since moved out but he still occasionally comes back for a ‘secret show’ at the echo, a small venue on Sunset boulevard.
The whole neighborhood is full of landmarks, the latest one being the Silversun liquor store that gave its name to the Silversun Pickups since the members of the band used to get beers from the store between rehearsals
. I can easily understand why so many bands want to live there, it seems to be a real music community, a source of inspiration and hopefully for many a launching pad to higher summits.
I saw Earlimart numerous times perform in l Silver Lake clubs, sometimes opening for other artists, sometimes playing in street fairs, and I inevitably associate them with the neighborhood, they belong there. Earlimart is Aaron Espinoza (singer/guitarist) and Ariana Murray (bassist/keyboardist/singer) with some other intermittent members. Aaron even owns a nearby studio, the Ship, where many local bands have recorded.
Their sound has evolved along the years, it is now more ethereal than it used to be but they have a range that prevents to categorize them by a single word. They have been compared to tons of bands which include the Pixies, Sonic Youth, X, Sparklehorse, Built to Spill, Grandaddy, and of course Elliott Smith who was friends with the members of the band. They opened for him several times and played with him at one of his last shows in LA. They even dedicated their fourth album ‘Treble and Tremble’ to Elliott, and with tracks like ‘Heaven adores you,’ or ‘It’s OK to think about ending,’ it is impossible to avoid him, his ghost is bleeding all over the tracks.
When I say their sound has evolved it is because there is a certain distance between the punkish ‘Burning the cow,’ the fast ‘lost at sea’ from their 2003 album ‘Everyone down here,’ and the comforting harmonies of ‘The Little Things’ or ‘Bloody Nose’ or the profound voices of ‘The World,’ or even the sing-a-long ‘Cold cold Heaven’ from their 2007 album ‘Mentor Tormentor.’
But after six albums, why aren’t they more well-known? Why has their fame barely gone much further than Los Angeles? Their songwriting is solid, poppier these days, the harmonies are beautifully melancholic with a heavy use of the keyboard, and their lyrics are about failed relationships, failures to communicate, frustrations, disappointments, lies and heartbreaks. The recipe for romantic dreamy pop songs.
Nevertheless, may be they try too much, may be they try to be too close to what they admire? Their last album ‘Hymn and her’ did not receive very good reviews and I honestly think it is a much weaker album than ‘Mentor Tormentor,’ with may be the exception of the lovely song ‘For the birds.’
It’s extremely difficult to have its own voice in this very crowded world of music and bands. May be they should have pursued their first original louder sound, since they may now be trapped into some kind of dead end, an imitation of themselves over and over again until they fade away, a diminishing impression of ghosts from the past.
I have read they have now teamed up with Jason Lytle and Aaron Burtch of the defunct Grandaddy to form a new band, Admiral Radley. Hopefully it will be a rebirth for both bands.