New Earlimart

I've been a bit stretched, as far as listening to stuff lately, because of a print deadline for Blurt and a really long Dusted assignment (all three reissued Cleaners from Venus discs)...which is kind of a weird situation, because, in order to fix it, you kind of have to sit there and listen to music and can't do much else. So to outsiders it looks like you're doing nothing at all, and to be honest, it kind of feels that way, too...it's the kind of time when it would be good to have a big pile of not very demanding real-job works to do, but I don't at the moment.

So anyway, in between cramming for various rush poorly or unpaid jobs, I have listened a couple of times (well once before and I'm listening to it now) to Earlimart's new album System Preference, which is out September 18th on the band's own The Ship records. I've always liked Earlimart, though I think the one time I interviewed him, we had some tense words about how much he (Aaron Spinoza) sounded like Elliott Smith...I'm not really sure how that happened, because I like Elliott Smith and it would be nice if more bands sounded like him.

In any case, System Preferences really doesn't sound like Elliott Smith in all kinds of ways but most particularly the strong female presence of Ariana Murray, who also used to be in Panty Lions, the criminally under-appreciated slacker pop duo whose So Dang Rad from 2002 was one of the number one reasons I didn't mind reviewing no-name records ever again after I got that one.

So, wow, I'm rambling, aren't I? Here's the single from the new Earlimart.


And if you want to check out my borderline uncomfortable interview with Espinoza (from eight years ago), here it is.