It's a relaxing evening at Chop Suey,
Earlimart has draped Christmas lights on their gear, and we sip our gin and tonic as midnight approaches. Aaron Espinoza thanks the crowd at
Chop Suey several times, though "crowd" may be stretching it--as usual at an Earlimart show in Seattle, a ragtag band of resistance fighters has showed. They sway in semi-darkness, drowning in a rumbling drone, to gently sung, lush pop that promises "it's a deathtrap, it's a bloodbath" and "it's gonna get worse before it gets better." This is an appropriate sentiment, if you
live somewhere between Fresno and Bakersfield. The new album,
Hymn and Her, sounds like a sequel to
Mentor Tormentor, with two songs sung by Ariana Murray in the mix. If there's nothing as soaring and blue-angelic as "Answers and Questions" (
YouTube) or as bouncily alienated as "Happy Alone," there's the needling assurance "God Loves You the Best," and empty reassurance of "Face Down in the Right Town," complete with defeated trumpet. We've been catching up on the new
Battlestar Galactica, and it occurs to us that this is the perfect soundtrack to that scene where Apollo is drifting in space in an ejection seat, his ship destroyed, watching the fireworks of an exploding baseship with the last of his oxygen hissing from his suit.
