Everyone knows how much this band means to me (a little too much, maybe), so it´s a pleasure for me to find that their latest Let It Sway will be released on August 17th via Polyvinyl. In line with talking about travel, this record took the guys across the US to record with Chris Walla and to find several other ladies to write songs about. I just received my digital copy a few days ago, and I’m loving every second of it — they’ve found a way to synthesize virtually every influence on this one, and it serves for some moments of eerie promnesia (tell me you don’t hear Pinkerton on “Phantomwise,” or Nothing Feels Good in the closing bars of “Stuart Gets Lost”) and, better still, new insta-classics that’ll soon become inextricably bond to memories of my late summer months.

You can check out more from SSLYBY at their page on Polyvinyl. I also recommend heading over to iamwarmandpowerful.com for alternate takes, live performances, demos and other miscellany. As a former Tape Club member myself (Phil sent me the last SSLYBY pin!), I’m very, very pleased to find all these nice things available in one place.

And as you can tell, we’re on a summer hiatus here at Girlpants. I hope you’re well, and that you’re doing something somewhere that means just that.

• “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” by Primitive Radio Gods.
• “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve.
• “Tha Crossroads,” Bone Thugs N Harmony.
• “Doo Wop (That Thing),” Lauryn Hill. (I’m pretty sure this song brought about the 1960s influx of the noughts — Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Pipettes, I’m looking at you.)

But here’s a great cover of the song that inspired this brief but (I hope) sweet post.  It’s by Finnish band Cats on Fire. Here’s to wishing that you like it as much as I do. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m sure there are some other songs from that era that have come up, lately, as the 90s are in style again (side note: why??), but I’m going to cap it off at that.

But I digress.  Below are some links that effectively update us on a portion of the fascinating matter that is music in the summer. 

• John Darnielle performs 2009’s The Life of the World to Come in its entirety, and you can view the video at Pitchfork if you act quick-like etc.
• If you live in New York, you should plan to attend Northside Festival.  This year’s tremendous lineup includes Wavves, Au Revoir Simone, Titus Andronicus, Liars, and about 928347 times more.
• Everyone ever has already done an “anticipated summer releases” list, so I’m not gonna rehash. But heyo, Arcade Fire! They’ve put up the track listing for their highly anticipated new album Suburbs, and with this track listing have surfaced also some tracks for listening. Below is a radio rip of “Ready to Start,” gorgeous and slow-building. You can also listen to “Month of May” here.
  Arcade Fire — “Ready to Start” 
   
• Indie Rock Café has a good post on recent summer releases that are easy to miss in the uproar over heavy hitters. Personal highlight for me is the Lou Barlow song “Losercore,” but the post also covers Cary Ann Hearst, Apollo, the Vita Ruins, and Communist Daughter.
• Also, you should know that you can stream the Lou Barlow EP = Sentridoh III at Merge’s website. “Gravitate/One Machine” is so good. It’s hot outside plus a thousand humidity today and this song is making me want to box someone.
• And finally. Does anyone inspire as much crit lately as Lady Gaga? I know this might be old news (and the publication title may be a tad hyperbolic) but I follow this all-Gaga journal with fascination; some recent pieces posted discuss hysteria, commodity feminism, the Gaga/Illuminati connection, and Gaga as Kate Bush response. (Another topic of note might be Gaga as George Bush response, but that’s not an article I’m going to write this summer.)

Girls Names came at a good time for me: I’m digging the mini-album format for short trips and easy-listening (I tend to do albums proper justice even when in casual listening mode). In fact, their Self-Titled ep is so listenable it’s beating out Surf City for my most-listened-to-ep-in-recent-memory slot. Other write-ups have compared the guys to jangle progenitors Beat Happening and Black Tambourine, although these Girls have a distinct The Good Earth–era Feelies feel. That distinction is really arbitrary, so here’s “Graveyard,” my fav track from the ep.

Girls Names — “Graveyard”

If you have palpitations from possible horrors, don’t worry, it’s not creepy or anything; I think the graveyard being described is more Princess Bubblegum’s Candy Mausoleum (outside the Candy Foyer) than Pet Cemetery II. I love that zigzagging opening, and really really dig the changing rhythm throughout (it goes from shuffling feet to outright beat right quick). Even the vocals sound merry and sweet, not like those decaying corpse sounds we’re all well familiar with.

Check out their blog (hey, it’s updated much more frequently than ours!) for progress on their upcoming full-length. The ep is still available from Boomkat if you’re interested in ordering it.

I was forewarned about the cultural journey I would soon embark upon (fried hard roe, white pidgeons, cervesa with real cerevisiae) but not about its various sounds. I write now from the centre of El Arenal (they have wifi), where the music is probably that new Jacob Dylan album they have for sale at the counter. What surprises me most about the country is a real struggle between preserving the authentic and building the new; in terms of infrastructure and transportation, this world is about thirty futures from my Estados Unidos. They have a working metro system in every city, cheap bike rentals, and trains that serve freshly-squeezed OJ and show Love Happens in a cheap dub. But they also have history — immense cathedrals, rich museums, festivals, restaurants that don’t serve Frosties, etc.etc. Accordingly, their music is caught in a strange limbo between old and new, with some incongruities that add up to sometimes jarring, sometimes pleasurable song/site correspondences.

Here’s a breakdown of the songs I’ve heard over here. Note that these are not merely the songs I recognize, rather, they are the ONLY songs I’ve heard. Forget the bells of La Giralda (I have), here’s the real music of Spain.

1. Mariah Carey — “Fantasy”

This is a real treat for me, seriously; not only is it Mariah’s best single, it’s one of my favorite songs of all time (ask Mike we’ve argued about this). When this is playing in the cafeteria of the Prado, well, I know that something’s come true for me.

2. Smashing Pumpkins – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”

Okay, here’s another one that was playing in a weird place (gift shop in Reina Sofia), but I think it kinda works. I just walked in from seeing Guernica, and the opening line “the world is a vampire” seemed just and very real.

3. Smashing Pumpkins — “Disarm”

Less acceptable and/or pleasurable, this one was in a Cafe & Te, which was my fault for being there I guess. I had a piece of toast. Bad breakfast conversation.

4. Theme to The Neverending Story

Kabob King in Grenada. Pushing doner kebap into my face. Wistful.

5–7. Every Coldplay single from X&Y

The time I’m thinking of involves shopping for a hoodie (Madrid was cold) and going into a place called “Wazzup.” Here “Speed of Sound” is low in the background. Actually, I’m also thinking of a small pub playing this too. And Dunkin’ Coffee (a “bakeplace,” so I’m told). And the three straight months of hearing this song 37 to 44 times a day on the in-store video loop at work (yes I counted). I like the song I think, but I can’t separate it from it’s cyclic rotation between a trailer for “Be Cool” and GOW ad spots.

8. Russian Red — “They Don’t Believe”

As seen on BTV once or twice, eating white melon and some toast. Russian Red had an album two years ago that did okay in the states. She’s still quite popular in Spain. I hope she releases something new this year, I think two years is the appropriate waiting time. I’m including the video because it’s practically necessary. This is just about the only song here that I felt comfortable acknowledging in public as a song I like, which says a bit about my problems.

9. Ke$ha — “Blah Blah Blah”

The second song I’m okay with acknowledging that I like it because it’s kinda post-ironic (and pre-lapsarian) in a sense. This was playing on a TV in front of El Corte Ingles, the Spain-equivalent of Macy’s, or Bloomingdales, or Piggly-Wiggly. It was also on BTV like twenty times in an hour.

10. The Cranberries — “Dreaming My Dreams”

Staying with primo Saul and su novia Lily, eating nice cheese and playing New Super Mario Bros. I think it couldn’t get any better, and I know it only will.

11. Willy DeVille — “Hey Joe”

Whistled by our host atop Montserrat. I think he said “Willy DeJoel,” trying to make a nice tie-in with my name (Joel).

12. The Tallest Man on Earth — “King of Spain”

Perhaps this is cheating, but I listened to this on every plane, every train, every car, during every sleepless night. Our soundtrack was a single song.

xoxo, J

I took in my surroundings in a split second. I was in the Girlpants office; in fact, at my desk, though I did not remember arriving there. I was surrounded by dark, faceless, half-transparent men, who were stumbling backwards, taken by surprise by my sudden activity. My colleagues were each slumped over their desks, surrounded by more of the bizarre shadow men. Their incorporeal hands were plunged into the skulls of my new friends, feeding off of their mental energy. I was immediately filled with an indescribable rage. I had never asked to be a blogger, but I was here now. And no shadowmen were going to take that away from me.

I drew my katana.

The rest was a blur. I did not mark the number of minutes that passed as I battled, nor the number of strokes of my mighty blade. Awareness of my surroundings returned to me gradually as I crouched, panting, the last smokey remnants of shadow just now fading away. My colleagues were coming to all around me, their words slurring as they asked me what had happened, why I had not brought them their morning coffee and cheese danishes. I sheathed my sword, shook Joel’s weakened grasp from my sleeve, and sat down in front of my computer.

I had to find something. I had to hear something as powerful and relentless as the rage that, even now that the danger had gone, still filled my spleen to the bursting point.

The Pack a.d. — “Deer”

Perhaps the demons might have seen my awful metaphor about how much I enjoy drum kicks and crashes and envisioned some place in Dante’s hell where I would be forced to listen to a song that consists of virtually nothing else. If so, this would be that song. However, it would not work, because this song has been my favorite from this album since the first time I played the whole thing through. That the lyrics would appeal quite readily to anyone in high school who likes to consider themselves “weird” is only another part of its charm.

The Pack a.d. — “Crazy”

This track was released as a single for the album and it’s a little more representative of the band, which I would describe as a bluesish band trying to sound more punkish, though I really hate trying to slot bands into specific genres like that. It’s a fun little song with a catchy chorus that comes to a satisfyingly noisy conclusion which, as our more loyal readers may be aware, is about all I ask from any song.

We Kill Computers is The Pack a.d.‘s latest album, released last month and now available through Mint Records. The combination of bluesy vocals and noisy guitars and drums grew on me very quickly, and the album overall has a strong sense of, dare I say it, simple rock’n’roll fun. In particular, “Big Anvil” has a classic rock scream near the end that I love listening to. If you feel a strong dose of noise and energy is just what you need to defeat your own faceless soul-sucking demons, I heartily recommend this album!

Mas y Mas, hailing from nearby NoVA, were a perfect soundtrack to this scene. They’re at once fidgety and disaffected, smart enough to know that the best of kind of fun, maybe the only kind, is the stupid kind. On this point check out the (um) pointedly titled “You Can’t Play Without Ice.” It kind of reminds me of the first time I heard the Thermals, all lo-fi and pissed off at posers, but these guys are a lot funnier about it, partly cause I can’t really tell if they’re joking or not. There’s a savant tunefulness too, even though Vinny often tries to hide it behind his Mike-Skinner–as-snotty-American-kid impression.

And the lyrics are golden, as anyone unfortunate enough to follow my Twittrrr barrage will know. On “Sunday School Hymn,” they tackle that freshest of topics—fucking religion, dude—and somehow manage to land it unposed. “Now who here’s had his grandma pass away and wonders why she is still sleeping, and who here’s read a little Walt Whitman and wonders why he is so happy?” Maybe because I’ve wondered both those things, maybe cause there’s some real melancholy in his arch schoolboy recitation, but it’s the most moving thing I’ve heard since Joel got drunk and read some of his poetry at the last gpants staff meeting.

Mas y Mas — “You Can’t Play Without Ice”

Mas y Mas — “Sunday School Hymn”

Mas y Mas are magnanimously giving away their album, Proud Sponsors of Pepsi, here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Along with the opener, “Oh Comely,” Mangum played “A Baby for Pree,” “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” “Two-Headed Boy Part II,” and “Engine,” then quietly exited — along with 30% of the audience.

It is with interest that I’ve been following this weird week (month) of bizarre endorsements – does it not seem like everyone is shilling for someone these days? Some are artistic collaborations, some are out-of-genre forays, some are fundraisers, and some are straight-up curious wtf moments (like when Bob Dylan teamed up with Victoria’s Secret). Here are a few of my favorites genre mixups and lateral pop culture moves of the past week.

• Iggy Pop and the Stooges played Ray-Ban’s rerelease party for the Aviator glasses. More on this here. While I’m sure it was cool to see Iggy Pop perform live, I can’t help but cringe when Google predicts that I’m going to type in “Iggy Pop Raw Power” and I have to disappoint it by typing in “Iggy Pop Ray Ban” instead. Yes, this is about me, girlpants.
• Beck, Vampire Weekend and others are on the soundtrack for the new Twilight venture. The savvily indie track listing was revealed on MySpace (who uses MySpace still?) and you can see it here. Obviously this means that Vampire Weekend will now and forever become a mall goth band, moody and dark save their colorful, colorful hair.
• Janelle Monae and Of Montreal, together at last. By collaborating, they’ve created what my iTunes had already tried to create by rapidly shuffling back and forth between the Idlewild soundtrack and Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? back in 2006 (seriously this was a problem). Luckily the song itself is way more rocking; listen to it here at Some Kind of Awesome. It’s actually pretty Of Montreal-heavy for being on Janelle Monae’s upcoming album, The ArchAndroid (with its Baduesque cover), out on May 18th.
• Nina Persson of the Cardigans and A Camp has teamed up with Swedish designer HOPE to reveal a limited-edition collection that will become available in August. I think this is lovely because I have always been a bit of a Nina Persson fan, and because A Camp is really good (watch the ABBA-parodying video here for proof), and because at the release party, the fashion collection was ingeniously paired with avant-garde snacks, etching HOPE forever into my brain by creating a food memory.
• Richard McGraw, whom we’ve discussed here on Girlpants before, has released the mp3 of his reworking of Leonard Cohen’s punch-in-the-eye classic “Chelsea Hotel #2”. It is not a cover, but a re-imagining of the emotional crux of the song into something set in McGraw’s hometown of Newburgh, NY. Listen to “Balmville Motel” here.
   

Well, soon anyway. There’s a precociousness to them that could stand to mellow a bit. Consider the backstory, in which childhood friends Sam Lee and Alex Kaplow go to France for a summer, work on an organic farm, and mix down the album on their Macbooks. C’mon dudes. Jason and Ben once tried a similar thing in Lake Worth, working at the YMCA and recording onto a minidisc. It kind of sounded like Lightning Bolt.

Like this neatly-wrapped slice of summer resume building, their debut album Real Life Color has a sense of diligent overachievement. They less evoke their various influences than splice them together in a way that can seem simulacrum-ly. My favorite song of theirs, “Monster,” is a well-researched composite of indie dorm-room bangers. I hear Ezra Koenig fronting the Postal Service covering Arcade Fire, basically. But despite some lyrical missteps (“a silver spoon to feed me lies”? really?) it’s a frighteningly good approximation, and these considerations are more or less forgotten in the fun of listening to it. Especially live, where Kaplow bounces like a pinball across the stage, brushing the hair out his eyes and crowing into the mic like a bantam rooster.

And that’s the thing. It strikes me that they’re enjoying themselves, processing their influences in a way that doesn’t feel particularly calculated. And if they’re this good this early, well fuck. How good will they be after life throws them a few sucker punches and broken hearts? Sam will be graduating from Yale in mere weeks, after all. I can’t help but think of another pair of New England collegiate breakouts, who happened to be headlining the same festival. They started out doing something pretty distinctive and then unexpectedly segued into an album of genre exercises. It seems like Magic Man just might be on the opposite trajectory.

Magic Man’s album Real Life Color is available for free, in all of its glory, here.