No wonder they’re sad. Wikipedia tells us that about 38.1% of families in Earlimart, California live below the poverty line. Of course, Earlimart the band are from Los Angeles. So, maybe they just took the name because they thought it sounded cool.

Each month, eMusic’s genre experts bring you guided tours through the best of the site’s catalogue. This month’s column aren’t all up quite yet – but most of them are, and they should hopefully provide some nice Labor Day weekend reading, if you’re so inclined.

Super quick new arrivals post…

I was reminded today, while listening to Thomas Brinkmann’s Soul Center records, just how much I love Moodymann. Unconventional, uncompromising and unbelievably awesome, Kenny Dixon, Jr. is probably my favorite producer from Detroit.

New albums from Aesop Rock, Angels of Light, Wiley and Kathryn Williams (among others). To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, “Let’s spit on our hands and get to work.”

Super. Furry. Animal.
Slow Monday? Not a chance. We’ve got new music from Super Furry Animals, Swayzak, and more…

In 2005 Edwyn Collins, one of my all-time favorite songwriters, suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. For a while it was unclear whether Collins would even be able to walk and speak again, let alone record any more music. I followed his progress via his son’s MySpace updates, each of them simultaneously encouraging and heartbreaking. [...]

I’m generally pretty averse to singer-songwriters; there’s only so much acoustic guitar I can take, and I try to restrict my weekly intake of sorrow and longing to the hefty spate of emo bands I guiltily enjoy. The one huge exception to this rule is Mark Heard.

Jan Jelinek has made a career out of taking microscopic bits of sounds, looping them, and then transforming them into widescreen epics of sound. Hey, everyone has to make a living somehow.

Most narratives of European disco in the ’70s tend to start and end with Giorgio Moroder. That’s just silly.

Well folks, shortly I’m taking off on vacation through Labor Day, and so Joe and Todd will be holding down the fort here. But before I leave, I want to drop a few special treats for everyone: four songs written and performed by my 16-year-old brother’s band, Tazer.

For those out of love. For those pining and pawing at shadows and not-promised futures. For those lonely. Forlorn. Bereft. For those recently broken up. For those about to. For those who look inside themselves and find only gaps, abscesses and absences. For all of you — and there are more than we could ever [...]

No Age are an LA fuzz-rock duo specializing in concise little weirdly skewed pop-rock songs, the kind where you can hear the germs of the broader pop experience but it’s so mutated it’s way too easy to miss. And that’s kind of the goal. Reference points abound: most notably Husker Du, especially songs like “Girl [...]

This fall looks to be a monster in terms of big indie releases, and below is a preview of some of the better ones that should make their way onto eMusic. Read on, and start salivating!

Tons of new arrivals today, so let’s not waste too much time with above-the-cut chit-chat…

Lots and lots of great stuff came in over the weekend. Here are just some of the highlights…

Photo by Cinemafia
Hey everyone. So this has been an annoying 17 Dots week, as every single day the site has gone down for some significant period, including almost all of Wednesday and Thursday. We’ve been looking into the cause. Joe thought, as he always does, that maybe the “webnet was possessed” (he is an amateur [...]

An album seemingly tailor-made for me, The Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer, released by Smithsonian Folkways, collects four modern classical by way of science-fiction pieces by Dartmouth professor Jon Appleton, Swedish electronic pioneer Lars-Gunnar Bodin, computer music composer Russell Pinkston (I like his piece best) and William Brunson (about whom I find bupkiss) recorded in the early [...]

A few weeks ago, I fell in love with Lisa Germano’s Lullaby for Liquid Pig. A perfect album for late nights, brooding and a little bit of drink, I can’t think of a much better thing to put on during the dog days of summer.
eMusic contributor Paul Moody seems to have the same idea — [...]

I have been listening to a lot of Hybrid and Way Out West lately, and I decided to indulge in one of my favorite eMusic activities: following the rabbit down the hole. Here are a few great discoveries I made along the way…