New CDs: Earlimart and Los Lonely Boys

Earlimart "Hymn and Her" (Majordomo)

* * * 1/2

The kind of emotion-drenched indie-pop that fills "Hymn and Her" is nothing new for Earlimart -- the group delivered a fine album of confessional lyrics and inventive, engaging music last year with "Mentor Tormentor," a major step in its steady rise toward the top tier of L.A. bands.





Releasing another full-length effort less than a year later is unusual, but the accelerated pace might account for the infusion of freshness that makes "Hymn and Her" so arresting.

The music crackles and trembles with a restless bravado that might have been muted with more time and deliberation, and in the process Earlimart brings its intimate conversations out of the confession booth and into the cathedral itself, where they expand to fill the vast space.

The group, now down to the duo of Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray, returns to its trusted tools -- rich melody, a tone of taut urgency, clapping percussion, a strong sense of atmosphere and space, weird little things squirming in the far corners -- but on this sixth album everything seems enhanced, raised to a new level.

"Face Down in the Right Town" embodies the album's spirit of freedom and surprise. It's a gently throbbing caress with something faintly sinister in its touch, and it rolls along and thickens with accumulating layers of piano and swirling voices.

But instead of fading when you'd expect after four minutes, it suddenly introduces a melancholy trumpet line -- a sound and a daring that recall a free-flying Los Angeles band of another generation, Love.

Such touches animate the entire album and create a sonic terrain for the lyrics' allusive landscape of longing and anomie.

"Hanging by a string you lose the feeling in your feet," Espinoza sings in the hushed "Great Heron Gates"; the title references one of the Los Angeles River parks near their Silver Lake base.

He sings most of the songs in a deadpan but determined voice that's usually cloaked with a ghostly aura. Murray steps out for two ballads whose luminosity balances his dry urgency, but you can't just stop at the surface. In "Before It Gets Better," her comforting tone serves a discomfiting warning: "It's a deathtrap, it's a bloodbath, and it's gonna get worse before it gets better."

Mentors, collaborators and peers such as Elliott Smith, Grandaddy and Eels linger in the fiber of "Hymn and Her," but Espinoza and Murray (who headline at Spaceland on July 18) are clearly charting a course of their own now, heading for a place of saturated emotion and sanctified spirit.

--Richard Cromelin



Los Lonely Boys "Forgiven" (Epic)

* *

In 2004, this Texas trio broke out of the no-name roadhouse circuit when its song "Heaven" captured the hearts of a few million tailgate partyers. Since then, Los Lonely Boys -- guitarist Henry Garza, bassist JoJo Garza and drummer Ringo Garza, sons of a musician father who once hired the brothers to sing backup vocals -- have established themselves as one of America's most dependable live acts; no summer music festival is complete without their laid-back blend of blues-rock riffs, soul-pop melodies and Tex-Mex trimmings.

In an attempt to capture the Garzas' onstage energy on "Forgiven," their third album, producer Steve Jordan opted out of the traditional studio setup and instead recorded the band playing live on a soundstage in Austin, Texas.

The gambit was a wise one: Material-wise, Los Lonely Boys probably won't ever come up with anything as memorable as "Heaven," so better to accentuate their uncommon chemistry than their lack of hooks. (Better still to stack the deck with covers of classic-rock evergreens like "I'm a Man," by the Spencer Davis Group.)

The ho-hum tunes on "Forgiven" won't flip your wig, but the playing -- particularly in the three cuts featuring Dr. John on the keys -- oozes bone-deep feeling throughout.

--Mikael Wood