Earlimart is a small town near Bakersfield, California as well as the name of one of 2003's hottest bands. Earlimart is fronted by Aaron Espinoza, (whom has worked behind the scenes with Grandaddy, Breeders, Elliott Smith, and Folk Implosion at his recording studio "The Ship,") with his trusty bandmates Arianna Murray, Davey Latter as well as enlisted help of Brian Thornell, Mark Wooten, Jim Fairchild, Jason Lytle, Solon Bixler, Christopher Crooner, Brian Aubert, Patrick Park.
The finely packaged release marks Ealimart's second album, which quickly followed their EP "The Avenues." Oddly enough, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy co-produced "Everyone Down Here," which completely drowns out the new Granddaddy album "Sumday," but generously left his producing mark craft on this fine album.
"Everyone Down Here," opens with "Were so Happy" (We left the piano in the truck), which starts with an intricate bouncing drum beat woven together with tight distorted guitars and crisp vocals sung by Aaron. The track is highly polished and reminiscent of a combination of sounds of San Francisco¹s Swell and Portland's Dandy Warhols. The campy jangle of "Well Drink on the Job," is a upbeat track blending the cool tones of Neil Young and the brash sound of indie icons The Pixies.
Imagine (all the people), if you will, Granddaddy covering John Lennon, and we have a precise berings on the mood of the haunting and peaceful piano laden "The Movies." The quick post-punk "Lost at Sea," explodes with a 1-2-3, lets go attitude then gently lands in dreamland, all in just over a minute¹s time.
Track five remains untitled with a 30 second drum machine beat interlude into an upbeat jangle of Dandy's-esque "Burning the Cow" where Espinoza takes on some campy vocals similar to Courtney Taylor of the Warhols.
"Everyone Down Here," starts to wind down in tempo bringing us a great set of moody songs as the mellow "Hospital" takes flight with tick-tock drumming against jangly guitars as Epirenza¹a optimistically sings "Tell my friends I'll see them soon, fun summer drinks, I'm in the Hospital"
"Lazy Feet 23" is a folky jam inspired by the King of Serenades, Elliott Smith. The song starts with strummed guitars and Espinoza's dreamy vocals, then blossoms into a haunted jam as building drums and keys, quickly fill the empty space, creating a beautiful canvas where electric guitars sparkle and chime throughout the climatic ending.
The eerie "Big Ol' Black" has a haunted Love and Rockets kind of vibe with some cool lead guitar work, gliding about the spooky track as Espinoza sings about killing crawling bugs inside of us.
"Dreaming of . . ." starts with the gentle guitar strums and piano notes which sparsely fill the space as a swinging drum beat fills the mix, rocking back and forth on this dreamy paradise in search of love.
Untilled track number two otherwise know as eleven, is a spacey journey into the unconscious with samples and a disjointed beat, ran through a Kaoss pad, as the album finally comes to close with the Beautiful Lullaby "Night, Nite," where Espinoza serenades to sleep with his soft lyrics ending in a whistle, whistle, whistle.
Earlimart aims to please with "Everyone Down Here," which is beautifully packaged and comes with an impressive fold out lyric sheet to sing along with, as well as the pre-encoded version of the entire album in high quality MP3 format to send out to all your loved ones. Buy it!, and start spreading the news!
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