There once was a Them, and now there’s Hymn and Her.

Them was Earlimart. Now Earlimart is Hymn and Her. A creature that crawled from a silver lake with songs about love and loss and sometimes the sea or movies. There were several Thems, including Hymn and Her, in Earlimart. Upon the release of last years big, sprawling Mentor Tormentor, (an album that bears a title that reflects its difficult birth)  there were no Thems. Just Hymn and Her."

Hymn (who receives mail as Aaron Espinoza) and Her (who files taxes as Ariana Murray) recorded Hymn and Her. It’s pretty. Very pretty, with whispered harmonies, riffs that comfort rather than shake, and keys that feel like a short fall onto a soft mattress.

I’ve been charged with the task of discussing their new album Hymn and Her with Hymn and Her in Austin during this year’s SXSW.

Ways Hymn and Her are similar . . .

Hymn: He’s from California. “Fresno famous” if you believe his t-shirt. Compared to K-Fed, we believe it. Compared to Cher, we’re not so sure. He’s a Los Angeles transplant, with a thing for putting some storm clouds over dreamy California pop. He sings in a pretty whisper that curls around Her’s voice like wisps of smoke.

Her: She’s from RESEDA, CA, with a thing for putting some storm clouds over dreamy California pop. She sings in a pretty whisper that curls around Hymn’s voice like wisps of smoke.

Hymn: He believes Hymn and Her was full of “happy accidents.” The two set a four-week deadline to make a record. “Gas is expensive,” he says. “So instead of touring, we stayed home and made a record.” They brought each other songs and worked on them. They broke for the holidays. More songs surfaced. His was “Cigarettes and Kerosene.” “I think we proved it doesn’t have to be so hard all the time,” he says. “There are still heavy moments. It’s still an Earlimart record. There’s personal stuff in there. But you don’t need the world to end just to make a record.”

Her: She seems to agree. The phrase “happy accidents” slips out again. She came back from the holidays with “Time for Yourself”, a haunting hymnlike thing.

Despite the aforementioned similarities, they might work well together because of differences. Her brings up the fact that many of his songs have titles that refer to God or Heaven or some higher plane. She’s less interested in putting God in her titles. She’s not sure why he does.

Ways Hymn and Her are different:

Hymn: He’s worked with fake people, been accused of stealing money from a loony widow and popped pills with a wild-eyed actor who appeared in a movie based on a TV show.

Her: If she’s done these things, she’s not inclined to share.**

Hymn: For a time he was on speed dial for the late, great identity known as J.T. LeRoy. He sometimes played bass in the real band that the real J.T. sang in while the fake J.T. sat in the audience under a visor. There was once an after party. He sat on a bed next to the real J.T. and Courtney Love. “All of the sudden Courtney freaks out,” he says. “She goes, ‘Who’s this motherbleeper***?!?’ She was talking about me. She says, ‘He just bleeping stole $5,000 out of my purse. My (deleted to avoid libel) is gonna kill me. J.T., kick this bleeping bleephole out of here.’”

He pauses. “I was kinda scared. She looked real, um, . . . tough.”

Her: She’s never been accused of stealing from Courtney Love. But sometimes she wishes he’d tone down the funky bassline on her unthinkably hooky ode to solitude, “Happy Alone,” which appeared on Mentor.

Hymn: Perez Hilton and Carson Daly were sitting at a table in Austin. He knew the latter, not the former. Informed of the blog kingpin’s clout, he walked up, introduced himself and planted a kiss on the rainbow-haired Hilton.

Her: She’s likely heard of the former, couldn’t be less interested in the latter. Maybe not interested in the former either. And she’d never dare do such thing.

Her departs.

Hymn: “Do you like it?”

Yes.

Hymn: “How’d you listen to it?”

Horizontal. With headphones, where all the little parts bubble to the surface, though never distracting the course of the song. They’ve gotten good at this, Hymn and Her. They work well with deadlines.

Hymn: “That was the deal. We made it quick. Quick and dirty.”

Back to the dirty thing again.

Hymn: “How many beers is this album? About five?”

That depends on the time of day.

Hymn: “Four? Is it a four-beer record?”

Five.

Hymn: “Damn,” he says, beaming. “We made a five-beer record.”

** She has not done these things.
*** She didn’t say “motherbleeper,” “bleephole” or “bleeping.”