When people think of West Coast indie, it's the Pacific Northwest-- Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and lables like Sub Pop and Up!-- that first come to mind. The more characteristic melancholic folk-rock sound, derived from Los Angeles' notoriously bipolar 1970s singer-songwriters and best exemplified recently by Silver Lake's late, lamented Elliott Smith, is often overlooked in many circles, with only Rilo Kiley and Silversun Pickups carrying the aesthetic to the mainstream.
Or maybe that's not so much the case, and that West Coast indie sound has merely been transformed into the simpering soap opera soundtrack likes of Snow Patrol and John Mayer. It's easy to see how the mopey and melodic formula of people like Jeff Buckley and eels can be twisted into lite-listening melodrama. Fortunately, there are still bands like Earlimart, quietly chugging away in Los Angeles and preserving the West Coast sound with a spirit that's more than just curatorial, as Mentor Tormentor elegantly shows.
Earlimart have taken their time getting to this point, progressing from their origins as a raucous band with a song called "Leprechauns Can Really Fuck You Up" to the lush, romantic polish of a song like "Answers & Questions". The transition is so complete on their fifth record, Mentor Tormentor, that the more upbeat tracks, like "Everybody Knows Everybody", come off more awkward than the chamberish piano-and-string compositions that dominate this record. Pared down to the core duo of Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray, Earlimart's focus is now on creating the rainy-day pop that is so strangely ubiquitous for Los Angeles bands, and it's a style shift that suits them, filling as it does a lately neglected niche.
When the band leads with the piano, good things happen. "Happy Alone" starts off like a cover of "The Great Gig in the Sky", but with rich vocals from Murray and Beatlesesque guitar punctuations, it ends up sounding more like Jon Brion's collaborations with Aimee Mann-- classic rock touchpoints reshuffled into a brooding but contagious atmosphere. It's a shame that track is Murray's only lead vocal on the record aside from the sparse "The World", but her harmonies adds a shimmering glow to Espinoza's voice on tracks such as "Nevermind the Phonecalls" and "Bloody Nose", producing a soothing soft-rock effect from the studio gloss.
There's a certain skill to skirting the dangerous territory between lush production and the elevator music adult-alternative of other West Coast sound pilferers, but Earlimart does it gracefully with the ladled-on cinematic strings of "Don't Think About Me" or the old-fashioned Rhodes and guitar build of "Gonna Break Into Your Heart". The uniformly melancholy mood of the record, cut as it is with Espinoza's fragile voice at the center, may account for the record seeming over-long; three years in the making, it feels about five songs too long, with one epic too many ("Just Because") and the hokey singalong closer "Cold Cold Heaven".
That density probably also explains the relative absence of West-Coast indie from the latest chart infiltration; when done properly, it's a bit bleak for the radio, a little heavy for a montage sequence. But Earlimart soldiers on, importing an overcast attitude to the relentlessly sunny environs of Southern California, as their singer-songwriter forefathers have been doing since the 70s. Mainstream success has a way of wearing down regional sounds, but Earlimart appear to be volunteering themselves to preserve the local breed until the fickle genre spotlight focuses elsewhere.
