Earlimart
[#] Treble and Tremble (2004)
Turns out, the end was just the beginning for them.
Reviewed July 29, 2023
There's this moment in a band's discography, often very early on, where they go from hobbyists piecing together disjointed songs to writing capital-A Albums. That's when the strange-but-neat experiments peter out and the concepts start to creep in, and Treble and Tremble is that album for Earlimart. It'd be far too easy to define this album in the context of the death of a certain well-liked whispery singer-songwriter who sounded a bit like this, but that's just more mawkish music journo bullshit. What this really is the sound of is a guy who's starting to get confident in his songs, with the sonics from Everyone Down Here intact, but more singularly focused, crafted as opposed to assembled.
You're still getting everything Everyone Down Here was good at—the simple little indie pop piano ballads (see the intro "Hold On Slow Down"), driving clean guitar ("The Hidden Track"), barking through a fuzzbox ("Sounds", "Unintentional Tape Manipulations")—but it's all built with a specific mood in mind now, namely the feeling of pushing through loss with music. It's quality stuff, and "Heaven Adores You" (which gave its name to the Elliott Smith documentary) and "It's Okay to Think About Ending" (which was featured on House M.D.) proved there was some commercial viability there too. Earlimart's later album trajectory was set on this one, and given how well it works, who can blame them?
| Essential: | "First Instant/Last Report", "All They Ever Do is Talk", "Heaven Adores You" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "The Hidden Track" |
| Non-Essential: | "Broke the Furniture" |
| Rating: |  |