Los Angeles-based Earlimart's last album, Everyone Down Here, was made a unique affair by frontman Aaron Espinoza's quaint impulses, his artisan's fussiness over detail, and the record's texture. The resulting wistful, buzzy rock effortlessly absorbed the past 20 or so years of sonic gadgetry (synths, loops, filters, tuneless noise as a legitimate arrangement option), and accommodated them all within a sturdy folk-flecked framework. And if it sounded like countless other records by countless other bands, there always remained a colorless, odorless component of intelligent craftsmanship.
The same holds true for Treble & Tremble. It's starting to piss me off. Writing about Earlimart in the context of the current indie landscape is like explaining why Grey Goose is a better spirit than Popov: It comes down to the feeling you have after you've finished them.
The opener, "Hold on Slow Down"-- a ballad of floating wispy, hollowed-out vocals over basic but grand Lennon-esque piano chords-- is a bit of a sequel to "The Movies", the standout track on Everyone Down Here. It's a good, honest gambit, especially since Espinoza is not a great singer-- as he appears well aware. The album's title is a serviceable description of Espinoza's vocal style. He has a standard indie rock head voice, which he treats as a producer's auto-challenge: Treble and Tremble showcases a full array of old-school remedies, from inventive mic'ing and overdubbing to brutal filters and bullhorn distortion a la Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. If Espinoza sang any better than he does, he'd probably be bored in the studio.
"First Instant Last Report" finds Earlimart at their most accessible and fun, which is also, paradoxically, their weakest. It's these upbeat strummy songs, with their PB&J; pairing of guitar crunch and keys, that betray the band's recent mentorship by Grandaddy (whom Earlimart are otherwise poised to outgrow). Once again, the best tracks are the darker ones. "Heaven Adores You" begins in stupor and ends in catharsis: Toward its end, a gorgeous string riff careens from nowhere to snap everything into place like a tiny deus ex machina. And the rococo lead guitar on "Broke the Furniture" raises the reasonable question: Why aren't more indie guitarists ripping off George Harrison? (Oh, right: They can't.)
Espinoza is neither a bad lyricist nor an ambitious one, dealing primarily in complete neutralities (e.g. "I lost my way/ In trying to find/ Somewhere else to stay"). Yet there's an intriguing abundance of professional self-reflection on display here. Like the album's name, most song titles also refer to music, songwriting, and-- crucially-- recording. There's "The Hidden Track" (which the band proudly places third in the LP's running order), "A Bell and a Whistle", "Sounds", and "Unintentional Tape Manipulations"-- all traditional verse/chorus/verse songs. Elsewhere are references to songs being out of key-- "808 Crickets", which likely refers to the drum machine rather than, say, an insect count, quotes a device from Earlimart's recent tour: The band used a constant cricket-noise background loop at its concerts, conjuring up an odd, hushed environment.
A dime-store Freud analysis of Espinoza's preoccupations will tell you the same thing the album itself is desperate to relate: Earlimart like music, so they make music about music. In a genre beset by extra-musical agendas-- and in an all-in-the-context age of churning trend cycles and ironic revivals-- this is an approach that could catch us off guard and perplexed. But that sure as hell isn't Earlimart's fault.
