Reviews

Earlimart

Mentor Tormentor

Review Date: 2008-01-19

As an Earlimart-virgin you're going to have to bear with me if I end up dropping played out references here. I mean I heard of Earlimart a few years back now, but I never really gave them a listen, or at least a conscious one at that. Mentor Tormentor is full of background-noise-indie songs that I could have certainly heard while scouring the clearance section of Urban Outfitters with my girlfriend (don't act like you don't think that stuff is mad expensive), or at some house party. And that's certainly not a dis or anything. Now that I have had proper exposure (that one's for you, Jenny) to an Earlimart album, I can see how their harmonious blend mimics certain other indie musicians and is so smooth and un-obtrusive that, without any real attribution, I could easily just file it in my long-term under indie: generic. 

Almost predominant in the mix is the subtle cosmic rays behind some of Grandaddy's best stuff (and I think what gave the Fantastic Four their powers?). This creates a real fertile bed for the band to lay down their West Coast indie. 

The other obvious convergence with Earlimart is with Elliott Smith, whose style will almost certainly be lived on through bands from Seattle to L.A. for a long time coming. Almost all of the indie bands from the West/MidWestern States seem to have a little bit of Elliott in them. 

But kudos to Earlimart for not playing it out in the same old fashion necessarily. It's kind of like if Elliott stuck around to take one of those Virgin Galactic trips to space and wrote an album while in zero-gravity. Or if Elliott managed to have a kid with David Bowie (not really David Bowie himself, but like, the IDEA of David Bowie) and that child came out as a piece of music. 

Mentor Tormentor is an easy, spacey and album, but it still maintains a lot of groove. I mean, it probably won't get me up and moving this white ass across the floor, but it's certainly got some good hand-on-knee/toe-tapping potential. 

One complaint comes from the track ‘Everybody knows Everybody', a fast paced (compared to the rest of the album) rocking track about being the focus of attention in a rumour mill. The song's sudden burst of energy and not-so-fresh-laundry sounding guitars ruins the mood in a worse way then when your girlfriends cat jumps on the bed at a REAL inappropriate time (know what I mean? Yeah, you do) and the kitty's cuteness all of a sudden negates all the lust in the room (except for you, of course). 

Since that last paragraph was pretty gender-specific, for all you ladies out there, substitute the cat anecdote with like, I don't know, whatever your boyfriend does to spoil the mood, sports or something. 

Where does Mentor Tormentor fit in YOUR life though? It boasts a real relaxed, lush, and near-atmospheric flow that makes it great for lazy days spent cleaning your flat, but also maintains a real charming upbeat-ness that demands a little more attention than being drowned out by the vacuum. It is probably an almost perfect album for the latter hours of a party when everyone's ears are bleeding and they're burnt out but are still far from passing out, except for the few dudes who did pass out after the first couple beers. There are ALWAYS those kinds of dudes.

Score: 8

- Michael Bulko