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.

01. Cannibal Ox — “A B-Boy’s Alpha”
First off, sorry for starting this mix with the line “My mother said, ‘You sucked my pussy when you came out / don’t ever talk back / I handed ya life and I’ll snatch it back.’” That’s downright confrontational, and frankly not at all appropriate for children. And it’s not even the most confrontational birthing image Cannibal Ox were capable of delivering on their first and thus far only studio record, a pretty remarkable set called The Cold Vein. Try this one on for size: “You were a stillborn baby / mother didn’t want you, but you were still born.” Daaaaaaaaamn. But anyway, this song—it’s basically a narrative of two kids growing up in the ghetto, surrounded at all times by death and loss, honing their skills, and eventually arriving on the scene as a fully formed artistic powerhouse. In some ways, it’s a striking lyrical accompaniment to the Neil Young song we’ll get to later on—just two kids trying to make it to adulthood without their brains getting splattered all over the pavement. (Ben)

02. Looper — “The Treehouse”
Looper is a little-known side act fronted by the bassist of Belle and Sebastian which got its start in the late 90s with a low-key and intensely earnest first album. The band is much the same today; that is, little-known. In order to maintain the journalistic integrity of this fine institution, I have to admit that this song does not remind me of my childhood, but it does succeed at invoking an image of a childhood. I was never much for climbing trees, personally. I was more interested in communicating with them. No, not aloud, I’m not crazy. Telepathically. (Jason)

03. Ous Mal — “Tähdet”
“Have you ever used the memory palace?” Bobby casually asked me this the other day. I haven’t. So, Ous Mal is Olli and Iiris, who are both younger than me (shock) [Editor’s note: patently impossible!] and make tunes that are virtually impossible to revisit. Boomkat calls it “highly enjoyable Scandinavian lo-fi melodicism,” I call it total Eerie, Indiana: the tracks seem to change each time I put on Viime Talvi. Employing sampling, field recording, collage, and live instrumentation (everything is done analog), the duo construct melodies that seem to escape listening, making you feel like nothing but those old memories you try to inhabit. In “Tähdet,” I feel like I’m caught in a time-trap; it sounds like young summers, like playthings, warm attics; it’s television snow, it’s dirty brown hair; it’s distant but oddly personal. It reminds me to take better care of my memories. (Joel)

04. Laila Kinnunen — “Tanssilaulu”
As you may know from my biography, my childhood was spent in the bear-infested wilds of Finland. This song represents the old Finnish classics we always used to hear while wrangling woodland creatures, shocking city folk with our crude and forward ways, and binging on lenkkimakkara. Kinnunen has the iconic Finnish voice—unadorned but playful, and easy on melody, and when I listen to this song without listening to the lyrics as I imagine most of you might, I imagine it to be both melancholy and mysterious, which are qualities that embody the music I heard as a child. Kinnunen, a superstar in her time, had a kind of wholesome sexiness that 60s pop everywhere must have had, but with a strange sense of timing and humor (for this last bit, you should also view the video for her interpretation of “Hernando’s Hideaway”). (Niina)

05. Neil Young — “Powderfinger”
Now, you might think I chose this song simply because it includes the words “mama,” “daddy,” and “brother.” But no! Well… kind of, yes. But really, I think this song is one of the best at capturing the exact moment when a boy transitions into manhood and leaves the frivolity of childhood behind (“daddy’s gone, my brother’s out hunting in the mountains / Big John’s been drinking since the river took Emmy-Lou / so the Powers That Be left me here to do the thinkin’ / and I just turned twenty-two / I was wonderin’ what to do”), even if this particular manchild dies in the transition (“raised my rifle to my eye / never stopped to wonder why / then I saw black / and my face splashed in the sky”). Internet scholars variously claim that this song is set in the turmoil of the American War of Independence, the American Civil War, or, most likely, Canada’s Red River Rebellion of 1869, but in the end it really doesn’t matter what the setting is. It’s all about the character. (Ben)

06. Bob Dylan — “Just Like a Woman”
After Ben carelessly left a bag of blow on his desk and I stole it and snorted it, I got to thinking. Childhood, as any good anthropologist will tell you, isn’t just a period in your development. It’s a stance, a set of relationships between you and the world. You can snuff it out, or you can try to smuggle it into adulthood, but I think most of the time we just amateurishly pave it over. By that definition Dylan’s hood classic is also a classic of childhood, of the way its wounds persist, suffocating you and those who would love you. This live cut, which switches the studio version’s cantina waltz for a lonely stumble home, seems fitting to the sentiment. (Mike)

07. Zookeeper — “I Live in the Mess You Are”
Babies populate Chris Simpson’s songs. They’re practically everywhere. Take “Delivery Room” from his Belle City Pop! ep (it’s about a delivery room and the babies in it). Or “I Was Born in Omaha” from his Start Here–days in The Gloria Record (also about dem babes, ‘cept here he’s being one). While “I Live in the Mess You Are” don’t got a baby in it, it’s totally about childhood. With an opening alarm clock ring, Simpson (figured as St. Francis) leads a drowsy, dow-eyed children’s chorus and ramshackle, anthropomorphic baby rhinoceros circus trope in a street parade through sunny-side-up wonderment. It’s some imaginative heartachery that would make a Windsor McCay dream look like a funeral. I don’t have to justify it; Simpson has always been one of my favs, and he’s always taking me back to those moony names and faces peeking in the past from my own growings-up. (Joel)

08. The Mo-dettes — “White Mice”
“White Mice” is a brilliant song from The Story So Far…, the Mo-dettes’ classic album. I have included 80s girlpunk on this list for two reasons: first, because I’m told my ma was in her heyday a bit of a punk rocker, and I believe this has gone on to genetically influence some of the choices in my life (some!) (I don’t include most!). And the second reason is that I often used to joyride in my first and only car, a baby blue 1990 Civic hatchback, blasting sweet-ass punk rock and remembering freedom. I consider sixteen to be pretty much a kid, so y’know. All talk about punk aside, this song itself is a lower-key exercise in mesmerization. It opens with a rolling drumbeat copied many times over, including on that jangle you might remember called “Young Folks” from a coupla years ago. The lyrics are hilarious—“don’t be stupid don’t be limp, / no girl likes to love a wimp”—and in general it has a singsong quality that I associate with songs I really loved as a kid. Also, the handclap parts are interactive, which all children enthusiastically respond to, so feel free to play this for your junior. (Niina)

09. Alsace Lorraine — “You Are Like Charles Lindbergh to Me”
I came of age right on the cusp of mp3s, but for a few years I would actually go to record stores and try and build up my laughably meager vinyl collection. I picked up Alsace Lorraine’s Through Small Windows because of the cover—some oddly shaped girl standing on a balcony, staring into the distance. I couldn’t tell you exactly why it appealed to me, but I brought it to the counter and the almost classically aloof record store clerk started jabbering about how much he liked it. For a couple of minutes I got to nod along like I knew who he was talking about, and was afforded a glimpse into some of the music dork socialization mechanisms that probably don’t matter as much with, uh, cool blogs like girlpants around. It turns out Alsace Lorraine was a great blind buy. Wispy twee pop in the vein of St. Etienne, but modest enough to feel like your personal little secret. This first track trades precisely in that kind of homegrown funcraft. It celebrates those goofy teenage relationships that are really like rebuilt childhood worlds unto themselves, made up of summers, inside jokes and odd totemic figures like Charles Lindbergh. You could probably draw a line from this to the xx’s VCR, and it’s a perennial theme that Alsace Lorraine just did right for me. (Mike)

10. God Help the Girl — “The Psychiatrist is In”
Imagine Dylan’s little girl in her second act. She gets her shit together, settles down and for some unknown reason is flashing her kind, smiling eyes at you. Oh, she’s quite sympathetic. She was a case when she was young too, and can help. Of course, the offer to ‘listen to your stories’ is at once more childishly sly and “adult” than most psychiatry is capable of. Those slightly swaying, decorous bongos, that honeyed voice; Dan Bejar once said “nothing does the body good like another body,” and that’s basically the therapy Catherine Ireton is proposing here. Sort of like the twee version of “fuck the pain away,” after it’s cooled into a sheepish kind of sad bastardism? I guess this is growing up. (Mike)

11. Nedelle — “Our Little Selves”
Nedelle could be seven (she has a song called “Tell Me a Story” that begins with a carefully-described puppy dog tongue, and it’s obvious that her rhyme schemes are lifted from Grover).  Or, she could (probably) be a regular adult who sings about the joys of being a kid. Her song “Our Little Selves,” on 2005’s From the Lion’s Mouth, makes this theme absolutely transparent, as she announces “sound the bell / our little selves are enough.” It’s a simple image, but it’s Nedelle ability to bring this simple image to life with fable and anecdote (storybookisms that really flourish in her latest record The Locksmith Cometh) that animates From the Lion’s Mouth. It’s an album that, for anyone with a sappy side, is drenched with tiny reminiscences. And what more is childhood than that ever-present, self-mythologizing nostalgia? Little, I say. (Joel)

12. Chad VanGaalen — “TMNT Mask”
Whenever I hear this song—which is probably just about getting stoned and sitting next to the river—I inevitably think of 13-year-old Jason Taylor, protagonist of David Mitchell’s excellent coming-of-age novel Black Swan Green. Jason is a melancholic kid of a certain sort—the kind who writes and publishes poetry at the age of 13, and who will later grow up to be an internationally acclaimed novelist. The kind who avoids the other kids his age and goes to sit by the lake in the quiet winter evening, skate around the frozen expanse, watch his ghostly shadow skating on the opposite side. VanGaalen’s music here evokes pretty much every bleep and bloop and horribly artificial drum machine beat of the book’s Thatcherian time period while marrying it to a distinctly aughties aesthetic. The song’s only concession to childhood as such is the mention of a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mask / sunken to the rocks, plastic face half-buried” in the riverbed, as melancholy an image as they come. (Ben)

13. Finally Punk — “5 Yr Old Angst”
This is a rather literal choice, as the song is a temper tantrum set to music, including childish angry growls and a refrain of “I wanna go outside!” that perfectly encapsulates the frustration of any person whose minute-to-minute activities are controlled by their parents. Beyond that, though, this is a band that seems to play just to make noise and doesn’t mind punctuating a song with a piercing shriek or two: the adult equivalent of a kid banging cymbals together and screaming words to a half-remembered song. It might say something that, as much as I appreciate the notion of obnoxious noise as a form of music, even I can only take this band in small doses. (Jason)

14. M.A. Numminen — “A Proposition Is…”
M.A. Numminen is a revered Finnish eccentric who makes up for his distinct lack of singing ability with his awesomely capacious randomness. His voice is a snarl at best, sometimes cracking, sometimes wandering off key, but it’s all in your face. And this song simultaneously discusses Wittgenstein and brings to mind the multiple albums that Numminen cut for children in the 1990s—awesome x2. Sure it’s all standard rock n’ roll riffs, wanky solos, and reckless piano mashing, but more than one childhood memory I have becomes in recollection accompanied by these very dulcet tones; here is hoping that you love Numminen, too. If not, then consider it an edification in philosophy. (Niina)

15. Ponytail — “7 Souls”
Ponytail is a frankly ridiculous band that does not perform in order to communicate a message or even to use real words. I like a lot of bands where the vocals are wielded like just another instrument rather than to add meaning through lyrics, but these guys take it to an extreme. So why did I pick this song? About a minute and twenty seconds into this track is exactly what getting out of school on the last day before summer vacation should sound like. (Jason)

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I will rise from the swamp where they dumped my private plane I’ll be clutching the life preserver in my teeth and I will find the highway and I will flag down a truck worry lines on my forehead blank stare underneath and when I come back to town I’m gonna cast my burden down a little worse for wear practically walking on air I will thank my ride and claw my way back inside to the guts of the building where my enemies hide in the dark like roaches and I will signal the camera crew and everyone will do what he’s been trained how to do sweat dripping from my face as my moment approaches click your heels count to three I’ll bet you never expected me a little worse for wear practically walking on air

I got off work just past 11 laid one finger to the breeze you can almost taste the action on nights like these trees were bending in the wind you were forty miles away and I was heading your direction I’ve been waiting all day I’ve been waiting all day moon over west covina was huge and white and I was like a patient on a table headed for the light lean toward the center divider feel the wind in my hair keep a light up in your window I’m gonna be right there I’m gonna be right there with a gleam in my eye and an almost airtight alibi down by the chemistry building I found a quiet place to park and I made my way down the street toward your place stepping lightly in the dark climbed the steps up to your doorway like a man prepared to jump beneath a train it’s real warm outside tonight maybe tomorrow it rains maybe tomorrow it rains inside your room we shut the window and we turned on a fan and we lay there in the darkness I can keep a secret if you can finishing one another’s sentences like a pair of identical twins your boyfriend is out of town until tuesday and nobody saw me come in nobody saw me come in with a gleam in my eye and an almost airtight alibi

and meanwhile downstairs I’m setting up shop a little too proud to let the matter drop and I can hear you up there isn’t it romantic you’re huffing and puffing, rearranging deck chairs on the titanic and I reach for a glass of cool water drawn from the rivers of babylon and meanwhile outside the stars have come out and the humid summer air pulls at the ring in my snout and you stand at your window, looking down and I spread wide my arms jump if you want to jump jump if you want to the water’s warm, I know I know because I’ve been swimming blindly along through the rivers of babylon

this is just to say hello and to let you know I think of you from time to time I know I never really knew you but somehow I miss you and wish that you’d stayed in my life making contact gets harder as the silence grows longer isn’t it only me who’d like us to see each other? how I would hate to be a bother the way we left it was you’d ring I’m under no illusion as to what I meant to you if you made an impression sometimes I still feel the bruise sometimes I still feel the bruise now and then I’ll stumble on what I’ve misplaced but never lost an ache I first felt long ago for you’ve appeared and disappeared throughout these past few years I’d be surprised if you now showed making contact gets harder as the silence grows longer why would you think of me? when you were not the one in love when you were not the dreamer when you were just the dream I’m under no illusion as to what I meant to you but you made an impression sometimes I still feel the bruise sometimes I still feel the bruise

when it came time to wait for you I took the bus to malibu found a cafe by the ocean watched the sky for signs and a rainbow in the west wrapped its coils around the earth like a serpent I felt like I was going to suffocate but I knew this was not the day you would find me come my way but I waited all the same watched the water through the window and a rainbow in the west held its head beneath the waves and grew dimmer nothing anyone could do I suppose