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I Always Believed in Futures: Our Gpants April Mixpost

Joel — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:34:53 +0000

The future is hard to talk about. This is what one of my colleagues (hint: Ben) confided to me the other day. Originally I took it as an excuse for missing the mixpost deadline, but now I read it as a peremptory confession, one that I’m afraid I have to make to you right now: you’ll find little of a future in this mix. What you will find are present anxieties, dystopic murder-worlds, prevalent sadnesses, and some nice britpop.

The future here represented is a project of the present to present itself, or at the very least, five adults trying to make sense of the thing; you’ll find common binarisms of imagined reality and realized imagination, of utter annihilation and circumspect peace, precaution and willful abandon. Most of these songs evoke feelings about the future, and the majority of them describe crappy futures no one wants to live in (Jason has a knack for identifying these narratives). A select few capture what it would feel like to live in a time beyond comprehension (these are my songs). Niina took everything to heart and went into the future to figure out what we’d be listening to 246,342 years from now. Mike contemplated a quick shower.

All in all, it’s a clumsy, pessimistic, and ultimately typical gpants mix. Enjoy.

01. Laura Nyro, LaBelle — “O-o-h Child (Live)”

This was the most universally resonant song about “the future” that I could think of. Sure enough, originally recorded by the Five Stairsteps in the 1970s, it’s been covered dozens of times. What does everyone hear in it? Songwriter Laura Nyro’s stripped down take gets at its essence well, I think, especially those first three arresting, elegiac notes. Yea the chorus takes flight, and why not? We all want the future to be something better. But it’s the opening, titular sigh which gives that sentiment such a rich shading. It hints that maybe the future never comes, that it’s just an idea to make the present bearable. (Mike)

02. Blur — “End of a Century”

Ok, so this one was obv. one of the defining achievements of britpop, distilling Blur’s pervasive 90s ennui into a lament for the non-event of moving into a new century. They were, of course, looking forward to the inconceivably futuristic 21st Century, in which we spacemen are now deeply ensconced. Were they right to sigh boredly at the changeover? Well, aside from politically, I’d say that the new century has indeed been “nothing special.” I consider this one to be a cautionary treatise on investing too much in a promising future. (Ben)

03. Arcade Fire — “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”

This song is cheesy as hell, but I really do love its mood and imagery. If one were to take this song literally, I guess you’d assume that some nuclear winter filled the streets with ice and snow, and some disease or radiation poisoning somehow wiped out the memories and language of the survivors. Romantic, huh? Now there is just the purity of love to bring color to the world, or some crap like that. But of course the imagery is a metaphor for the all-consuming bliss of a newly discovered love, and the tendency of a new couple to want nothing from the world but each other. It sounds a little too sentimental, but you know, it really does feel like that sometimes. (Jason)

04. School of Seven Bells — “Wired for Light”

I’ve been reading this comic lately called King City. It’s a serialized version of a hip book that came out some time last decade. Why am I bringing this up? Well, King City takes place in a weird future place in which cats can be injected with chemicals to make them do stuff like pick locks, turn into periscopes, and look I’ve got no words to really set down here this is largely a song that makes me think of polyspatial laser fortresses and the Flash Gordon movie theme. (Joel)

05. Owen Pallett — “Flare Gun”

Heartland is Pallett’s first album after resigning the Final Fantasy moniker; however, the gesture of using his actual name is false, because this is actually more a narrative album than ever before. Where some future terrors are tiny future terrors, this is an bombastic, vast jingle for eminent domain; backed up by flutey bits that remind me of a Sufjan Stevens level of wackiness, the narrator incites the “good men of valorous heart” to “consider a new start and sail today for the Heartland.” Indeed, the future of the Heartland is a sparkling one, if the speaker is to be believed. But is he? (Niina)

06. Pulp — “Help the Aged”

One of the best tracks on This Is Hardcore, an album positively riddled with them, this song gently reminds “the youth” that “the aged” were once just like them. I’m not gonna lie. Despite its crooning, anthemic facade, this song scares the shit out of me. I try not to think much about death, or about turning into a decrepit husk of my former self before dying, but it’s coming for me. It’s coming for you. It’s coming for all of us. Fuck. (Ben)

07. The Mountain Goats — “Quetzalcoatl Is Born”

This is the most personally resonant song about “the future” that I could think of. What my identification with the birth of a Mesoamerican feathered-serpent deity suggests I’m not really sure–maybe ask Joel, who conducts unaccredited psychoanalysis sessions in our extra office on the weekends. But yea, there was a pretty difficult period in my life where I was waiting, as John D. says in another song, for the future to arrive. And there wasn’t all that much to do but wait, really. It was truly and deeply purgatorial; I’d listen to this song over and over again, trying to detect any signs of life in me, any crackling or snapping corn. I wanted the universe to toss me into a fire so I’d come out purified and reborn. And that’s what I love about this song: its oddly inscrutable portrait of transformation. No one around, just some rustling fields, a strange gathering, and without a lot of fanfare you’re ready to start again. (Mike)

08. Jimmy Eat World — “Big Cars”

It’s an unreleased track! It’s rare! They’re not that bad! Look, I never thought I’d be in this position, putting Jimmy Eat World on a mix past the age of eleven, but we’re here now and we need to discuss this. “Big Cars” comes from the fabled Mark Trombino (think Clarity, pre-Dreamworks) sessions of Futures, their hotly-anticipated and (for many) largely disappointing follow-up to Bleed American. For me, Futures was a pretty good album: it’s the last “listenable” Jimmy, and in many ways the culmination of a lot of emotive themes they’d been riding on since Teenage Fanclub gave them a woody. When I got my hands on these demos (essentially a whole new album of material), well, I got a woody too. If we’re to treat the Trombino cuts as an alterna–Futures, then this track is its big opener: crunchy guitars, call-and-answer vocals, buildup to explosive chorus. It also plays real nice with our “futures” theme: “If there’s something wrong / you just press delete,” Adkins laments after discovering the backspace button in this elegantly-composed analogy of technologization to impermanence. Then comes the part where the song title becomes obvious: “Family can sleep well tonight, / we’re a long, long way / ‘til all the good names / for your big cars / will be used” See? Mazda Cosmo Sport? Anybody? (Joel) [editor’s note: HAHA THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR PUTTIN ME IN CHARGE OF A MIX YOU CRANKY FOOLS]

09. New Order — “Dream Attack”

I like to figure out what songs are about. I’m pretty good at it. Here is what this song is about. In the grim future, global war rages. A monolithic dystopian government discovers that our protagonist, an ordinary family man, has a weak latent psychic ability that can be amplified into a weaponized form. He is now the key to a devastating surprise attack that will destroy the enemy forever. His loving wife begs him not to unleash this holocaust. But he must do his duty to his country. On the morning of the attack, he wakes up and looks out the window. It’s just like any other day. He goes down to breakfast. His wife’s eyes silently beg him not to go through with it. He has no choice. Rather than face her and his own uncertainty, he leaves, abandoning his untouched breakfast. He knows she will not be able to live with him after this, but there is nothing else he can do. He can save his country. He travels to the government facility. The machinery is settled into place over him, connected to his brain. There is no turning back. He would do anything for her, but he can’t change who he is and what he must do now. He closes his eyes and concentrates. The machinery hums to life, and suddenly the entire hemisphere is illuminated with rhythmic pulses of an unholy light. Somewhere, unseen, enemies are being struck down as though by the hammer of Thor. The attack is a success, but at what cost? It is the beginning of a new, frightening age. I’m serious. That is exactly what this song is about. (Jason)

10. Janelle Monae — “Sincerely, Jane”

Janelle Monae, Afro-Futurism’s heir presumptive. Like my dreamy crush Joanna Newsom, she’s an outre female artist with her own distinct aesthetic. And like my other dreamy, gay spaceship of a crush Sam Delany, she refracts social experience through the lens of science fiction, looking crazy cool in the process. Sincerely Jane comes from her EP Metropolis Suite I of IV, a song cycle about dystopian android enslavement and a more-human-than-human protagonist (the remaining installments will be packed into her forthcoming LP, the Arch-Android, to be released in May). Monae is unusually literal here, calling out the gun, drug and sex trades that suffocate communities around the world. But it’s impossible to sound boring or preachy on a track like this. The horns carry the song, they sound nothing so much like particularly jazzy elephants swaying back and forth–outsized, a little goofy, but undeniably powerful, like Monae herself. (Mike)

11. Class Actress — “Careful What You Say”

This is a warning song, a right-now-future kind of song. It’s danceable enough to seem blithe, but it’s actually rather severe – “how many times do I have to say it?” Translation: don’t fuck up, or there will be some answers required. Her beautiful voice just makes it all the more terrifying, because you know beauty is always cruel (god, I did just quote Cradle of Filth). When she gets to the repeating singsongy end part (“careful what you say / it hurts me when you talk that way”) I think she’s just taunting us. Guys, lately, when I think of a song about the terror of the immediate future, I think of this one. (Niina)

12. Talking Heads — “(Nothing But) Flowers”

Here’s one we can take literally. Some apocalypse has cleanly wiped away human civilization. Noise and pollution are no more. The world is fields and flowers, birdsong and beauty. But this guy is right, most of us would hate every second of it. And with that admission, we can acknowledge that the things we do to harm the planet are pretty much inevitable. The scene described in this song probably really is in our planet’s future, with the difference that none of us will be there. Also, I’m ashamed to admit that I unironically love the Talking Heads. (Jason)

13. Okay — “Huggable Dust”

Close your eyes and picture a wobbly widdle plushie bear singing this song to you. Now open your eyes and gaze into the twin flickering iPhone screens worn on this sentient mound of stereoscopic wires and microfibred debris gathered by a kid robot and shaped into a familiar ursid that’s trying to start a thing with you. This tragic Furby is still speaking human gibberish after millennia of isolation. He lives in an android’s septic tank, and probably knows the Oracle from The Matrix. Don’t cry for him, he does not compute. He does, however, respond to hugs. (Joel)

14. Neil Young — “After the Goldrush”

So look, it’s pretty obvious to everyone that Neil Young smoked a great deal of weed in his day. “After the Gold Rush” is a key example of the sort of lyrical output such indulgence produced: it’s got “mother nature,” “knights in armor,” “silver spaceships flying,” and of course the line where he just flat out states, “I felt like getting high.” Broken up into three verses—past, present and future—the song charts the development of, and destruction caused by, the rise of human civilization. Then it posits a somewhat fantastical sci-fi conceit for how the human race might carry on after we’ve irretrievably fucked everything up here. Fun stuff! (Ben)

15. Mirror Mirror — “New Horizons”

Mirror Mirror’s entire album actually presents a future impression contrary to Pallett’s glimmering vistas; it’s something darkish and Pink Floydish, combined with the awesomely stressful carnival antics of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (my favorites). This song is a bit happier-sounding than some of their others, but it still gets me a little nervy when someone asks me about any society whatsoever, much less the “society for the advancement of inflammatory consciousness”. The future is right there, and as anyone can see, you’re such a sensible girl, and everyone agrees we’re going to be friends for a long long time. (Niina)

Download the mix with all those proper tags and stuff that everyone appreciates: [Multiupload]

Don’t Worry About the Future — Joel’s 2009 Mix

Joel — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:56:18 +0000

I’m taking the Ben approach to my post this week and doing a recap of some underrated hits from “the past”: up first, my most recent times, ’09. Since I have to show some discretion, a bunch of good tunes got cut here – I really can’t justify putting anything from Explorers or Second Family Band (unless you wanna listen in for another 92 minutes), and though I love Forget the Night Ahead, putting the Twilight Sad on any mix is kinda like pooping in the special water at communion. This may not work as the most representative 2009 mix out there today, but I hope it encourages readers to seek out these albums.

01. Cryptacize — “My Thomania”
from Mythomania (Asthmatic Kitty, 2009)

They’ve got Nedelle and what’s-his-face from Deerhoof. And tracks like “Blue Tears” and “” are just too much fun to leave for the last decade. “My Thomania,” which can (but probably shouldn’t) be treated as the title track for the album, contributes to a veritable potluck of –manias going on in 09, “Lisztomania” being a principal one, but also the lesser-known and rarely-acknowledged “Tulipomania” that I found at a used book store this past weekend being also important. Just listen for the chorus. [Buy]

02. The Postmarks — “My Lucky Charm”
from Memoirs at the End of the World (Unfiltered Records, 2009)

Remember how I said I didn’t like Acid House Kings? Well, I think I cracked a bit on that position after my friend Eric D. put Memoirs on a few weeks ago. Like the Kings, the Postmarks craft pop like it’s something you sneeze out occasionally. Oh look, another perfect-pop booger. It’s like that. If this song doesn’t make your tears pink then something’s not working right. [Buy]

03. Cotton Jones — “Gone the Bells”
from Paranoid Cocoon (Suicide Squeeze, 2009)

It’s the guy from Page France being all mopey, but it works. Even the most desolate tracks like “Gone the Bells” have a shimmer and bounce about them, that the entire album comes off bright-headed from a slow-burned haze. Apparently, the full band title is/was “The Cotton Jones Basket Ride,” which I’m starting to think describes a travelin’ sensation buried somewhere on this record. [Buy]

04. Nurses — “Lita”
from Apple’s Acre (Dead Oceans, 2009)

Simplicity is strategy on Apple’s Acre. The entire record is built on vocal harmonies and light percussion. In many ways, it feels like Two Dancers turned inside-out: the same morbid curiosities occupy Nurses, and the insistent pull of rhythm and melody is at once haunting and mesmerizing. “Lita” is my favorite track, and it’ll be yours too soon enough. [Buy]

05. Hayden — “Let’s Break Up”
from The Place Where We Lived (Hardwood Records, 2009)

There’s no bad Hayden album, and there’s no bad Hayden song. I think Hayden fans have come to expect this from him year after year, which is why The Place Where We Live is somewhat disappointing. So I guess I’ve included “Let’s Break Up” on that principle alone: it’s yet another charming Hayden narrative about coincidence, failure, and self-deprecation. Even though you could call all that a big whiney complaint, thing is, I wouldn’t want it any other way. [Buy]

06. The Love Language — “Sparxxx”
from Self-Titled (Merge, 2009)

Not to be confused with that band I mix’d about back in Feb., The Love Language is a frontispiece for Stuart McLamb’s four-track recordings. Here McLamb’s booming, theatrical affectation butts heads with micromanaged orchestration and that washed-out (frequently clipping) tendency of the high peaks on record. Overall this is a fun listen, and if you’re interested check out “Lalita,” “Nocturne” and “Nightdogs” as well. [Buy]

07. Hanne Hukkelberg — “Bandy Riddles”
from Blood from a Stone (Nettwerk, 2009)

I don’t get this song, but I like it. I think she’s Norwegian or something, and her other albums are supposed to be insta-hit material, so check those out after you listen to “Bandy Riddles.” Also, this album takes the album cake for coolest album cover on the mix, with runner-up being them dogs in Dog Day, featured in the stuff that follows this stuff. [Buy]

08. Dog Day — “Rome”
from Concentration (Outside Music, 2009)

“Dr. Dog Dies in Hot Car” – headline, or another terrible band name involving dogs? Hah! Alright anyway I like Dog Day, in part because they seem cool as fuck all, but also because they sound like they seem. Concentration got little to no press last year, even though it’s jammed to the gills with great tracks like the stoned “Judgment Day” and periled tale “Neighbor” (sounding a bit like Beauty Pill here in that exchange of vocal duties and eerie emphasis on house parties with demons). Another band with that uncanny ability to sound like every other band that sounds like New Order and still find something to do different. As they say over at AMG, highly recommended. [Buy]

09. The Wooden Birds — “Seven Seventeen”
from Magnolia (Barsuk, 2009)

Make no mistake, this is the latest American Analog Set record. On “Seven Seventeen,” Andrew’s hushed voice is still smooth as glass, and the palm-muted, strummed percussion sets the pace to heartbeat. Just cue Leslie on backing vocals and bring in some thick tremolo. Beautiful song, beautiful album; expect nothing less from these folk. [Buy]

10. Jonathan Johansson — “Säg Vad Ni Vill”
from En Hand I Himlen (Hybris Records, 2009)

Jonathan Johansson, for lack of a better introduction, is from another world. His music is thoroughly engaging, often spirited and triumphant, and lyrically incomprehensible to most of his admiring audience. He’s definitely not an alien, but his music manages to sound otherworldly while rooting that unfamiliarity of language in a familiar cultural nostalgia; Jonathan’s point-by-point reduction of 1980s electro-pop titans into his own earnest compositions resonates with the sounds of the era while somehow transcending the period altogether. I love this record from start to finish; it feels like I’ve known every melody on it for quite some time, and I plan to enjoy them for years to come. [Buy]

Get a good mix here: [Multiupload]

I’m done for today’s post, but I’ll be back sometime next week. I’d like to return to 2008 in April with another mix. See you in that time and place.

when u were young: girlpants does your childhood

Ben — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:59:58 +0000

If you read the bios of our writers here at girlpants, one of the things you’ll inevitably notice is that every single one of them spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the subject’s childhood, generally in fond if overly wacky terms. Mike was born under a bad sign in Death Valley; Ben had an idyllic childhood, filled with boats; Joel matured into a rugged outdoorsman in the wilds of West Boca Raton, while somehow remaining perpetually 13 years old (this part is true); Niina was raised by bears. Jason, well… we’re not sure he was ever a child.

Ok, so we romanticize our youth, but the truth is that childhood is a splendiferous and unique and unforgettable experience that you can never ever get back no matter how hard you try, and that makes us all depressed and makes us all have babies.

But hey, it’s also fun to reminisce about, so here’s a mix about childhood from your friends at girlpants. Some of these songs tackle childhood themes directly, some in a more roundabout fashion, and some simply remind us of our childhoods, but you’ll find that all are killer tunes.

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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Our Triumphant Return, or: From Girlpants, with Love

Niina — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:30:19 +0000

It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say we’ve had some shakeups at the Girlpants offices. When I say offices, I mean offices: we had some pretty nice ones, but we lost them in an ill-considered card game that big time hustlers Joel and Mike initiated against a rival blogful of poker-shark web journalists. Then several hard, unmusical years passed, and we could nary afford a seven-inch as we lived on oatmeal packets, the paltry nickels from our freelance stump grinding, and whatever Ben could scare up spanging by the highway on-ramp with his “Opinions: 25 Cents” sign. But our hard work (and the steel toes I had to pawn) paid off, because we finally collected enough minutes on the internet cafe card to be able to print out the application and–blessing of fiscal blessings–got that government bailout.

And now we’ve landed here, in the amore month, and we’re about to romance your ear-betweens with this love-themed mix. It’s not Valentine’s Day anymore, but who cares? Love is better late than never.

01: The Mountain Goats — “Cai Dao Blowout”

They say women look for their fathers in the men they date, which sounds like Freudian bullshit to me. But they fuck you up, your mum and dad, and in “Cai Dao Blowout,” John Darnielle asks the perennial question of well-meaning boyfriends everywhere: “When the ghost of your father comes to town, what the hell else can you do?” There’s a lot to like about this song: the way the ramshackle banjo and organ give it a buzzy, backyard-summer-evening feel, the way the word ‘citronella’ unfolds into an unexpectedly pretty sound, all the funny bush-devil antics (knocking over furniture? Getting into the reception on the wireless? LOL?) But what really gets me is how affectionate it is. While JD writes bitter, loathing and doomed pitch-perfectly, he doesn’t always connect with the more heartfelt stuff. But he here manages to capture a rare kind of sweetness: resignation at its lightest and warmest. This is a song about loving someone and wanting to do everything you can for them, even when you can’t do anything at all. Hardly the stuff of a valentine’s day crush, but we should be so lucky to be loved like this, in all of our stupid, helpless vulnerability. (Mike)

02: Acid House Kings — “This Heart is a Stone”

I was never a big fan of Acid House Kings. Actually, I’m still not a big fan of Acid House Kings. They make that kind of cutesy, innocuous, soundtracked-pop that makes me think of a teeny kitten getting smothered by a soft, marshmallow pillow (a familiar nightmare for all, I imagine). I confuse them with just about every other Swede combo/trio/quartet (well, maybe not ABBA); I hit “skip” every time one of their songs ruins a sweet run of blissed-out glo-fi (rare); I think I made a mean face at Nina Persson when I thought I saw The Cardigans outside a Jiffy-Lube last week (doubtful). Yet needless to say, I still listen to the Acid House Kings, and now find myself putting “This Heart is a Stone” on a crummy love-mix for cranky hipster people. And this is a song about cranky hipster love, about hearts calcified into small pockets of coal. On the opening bounce, Julia Lannerheim begins “They say your middle name is ‘Trouble’ / but I know it’s Caroline” and “They say that you only bring heartache / but I know you brought a bottle of wine,” that self-knowing delivery suggesting the type of tongue-in-cheek playfulness that is so tongue-in-cheek it’s like there’s a smaller tongue inside a smaller cheek tucked away inside. Coupled with that long pause right before the insta-classic chorus (“This heart is a stone / no one will ever break it / this heart is a stone / just for you it breaks easily”) and you’ve got mixtape fodder for years of catty Carolines who are lookin’ for the right guy to cleave that heart-shaped carbonate rock. (Joel)

03: First Aid Kit — “Hard Believer”

This song puts me in a corny but genuine mood. I want to believe there is a bit of Emmylou influence in the singing style of the Swedish sisters that make up First Aid Kit, and listening to the crystalline melody and harmony makes a statement even as brash as this one pretty easy to back up. But though most of the other songs lack the necessary melancholy, “Hard Believer” delivers and that’s the reason to pick this song off their debut, The Big Black and the Blue. “And it’s one life / and it’s this life / and it’s beautiful” – these are not complex lyrics, but set in the framework of this melody, they’re words that you want to wail when you’re drunk. And love, like the best Americana, should be spoken plainly and timed as tight as a rope walk. (Niina)

04: The Shondes — “Make it Beautiful”

From the Shondes’ upcoming album My Dear One, which is one album I’m highly anticipating. The gorgeous blend of riot grrl and classical instrumentation is what makes their sound, and this song, so fucking irresistible that I can’t even make a halfway decent metaphor to describe it. The Shondes have a special magic with melodic breakdowns, and this song is no exception, with its self-conscious lyrics about structure. Singer Louisa’s voice makes the instruction “let’s make it beautiful” seem more like a command than a coax, and I’m totally along for the ride. (Niina)

05: Pia Fraus — “Loveloops”

It’s tough not putting this song in the mix, although I know what it’ll do to my reputation: make my colleagues pin me for some sort of sappy, depressive, aspiring song-smith who thinks any and every song with the word “love” in it means that the “special feeling” is somewhere buried in that composition (please take note the repetition “and again / and again / and again” that loops into sunny hysteria at the end of the song, and further note that I don’t own no song-smithy). Here I appeal to higher reason: Pia Fraus is a band all about feeling music, and After Summer is one of those records that has a feeling of its own. I put “Loveloops” here knowing its bright synth leads and soft boy-girl vocals don’t lend to the lovelorn atmosphere of a few of the other cuts — the heady-drone tracking from beginning to end like a wave of August heat,an ambient nostalgia in each note — but with hopes that it’ll serve as sanctuary from the trials and tribulations of love lost. (Joel)

06: Why? — “Good Friday”

Awesomely named band frontman Yoni Wolf is something of a specialist in heartbreak and longing. Having made an entire album’s worth of songs about those two subjects in Elephant Eyelash (also: family, drugs, suicide, and death in general), he turned around and made another, even better, album about the exact same stuff with Alopecia. Like most of my favorite lyricists, Yoni has the rare ability to employ seemingly nonsensical, or at least impressionistic and scattershot, verse to sneakily devastating effect. “Good Friday” is about many things, in that it covers a pretty stunning array of scenes and moments for a song that runs just under four minutes–but at its base, this song is about the process of assimilating the loss of love. A litany of the ways the narrator tries to forget, the lyrics are at the same time intermixed with admissions of pain and confusion as well as fonder reminisces, leading to a conclusion in which he gives the girl the best sendoff he can muster. In a roundabout way, it covers the entire breadth and depth of a relationship in the space of a pop song. (And hey… the music is awesome, too.) (Ben)

07: Xiu Xiu — “Chocolate Makes You Happy”

Then again, in the vagueries of romance, there is very little solid. As we dart through the shades of delirious love-lorn innuendo like guppies through a miniature ceramic diver mask, all the while we secretly long for something obvious. Luckily there’s chocolate, which we can use to mash into our eat-faces when we don’t get that phone call we deserve. And even more luckily, Jamie Stewart’s new Xiu Xiu iteration drops this month, and it contains this dark and danceable tidbit concerning chocolate. It may also concern depression. It may also want to make you reconsider being happy. But that’s not my issue, that. (Niina)

08: Rocketship — “Naomi & Me”

“You were in my favorite band, Naomi understand I’ll do all I can…to love yoooou.” Let’s be honest, the best Valentine’s Day crushes are the ones you don’t actually know. None of the blemishes and complications of speech–why write lyrics when you have the hook in all of her pure, pop perfection? This is something twee understood inherently, in all of its radical idealism. Sometimes all you have to do, as Rocketship demonstrate, is sing along with the ‘Oooos.’ (Mike)

09: Love Connection — “All Over”

I wanted to include something on the mix that I’ve been digging recently, and figured (by name alone) that Love Connection fit that bill. They’ve got their first record out now on Sensory Projects/Inertia, and after d/ling it on a fanciful whim (I was cheery that day), it’s been on constant rotation in my bedroom. What I know about Love Connection I’ve gleaned from their Myspace page and an interview on Mess + Noise: Dean Noble, Kobi Simpson (who is adorable), Nathan Burgess, and Michael Caterer are from Melbourne, and they play music. I’m fond of labelmates Minus Story, and I’ll use their frantic, wide-eyed, fractured psych-pop as a frame of reference: they are not similar at all. Instead they remind me of Mojave 3 and Miracle Fortress, with that same hazy, whirling hum circling each finely-tuned track. Spoiler alert: “All Over” is the last song on their album. From that breathy line “I love / the way / you talk / to the friends / inside / my heart,” “All Over” grows and grows in warmth, building to a fuzzy wash of synth paired with a meticulously-patterned, clean guitar line. It manages to be sweeping and big while sounding tiny; it’s the part of our mix that will probably make you feel tingling under your nice button-up shirt when thinking about a girl. (Joel)

10: jj — “My Love”

11: jj — “Intermezzo”

A low-level buzz band that snuck into the eardrums of a few listeners last year and refused to leave, jj are a mysterious act from Sweden, but you’d never be able to tell that from their sound (accent aside). Like their labelmates Air France and groups like Lindstrom and Studio, the anonymous act incorporate elements of what has come to be known as the Scandinavian balearic sound. I’m not enough of a specialist in this genre to be able to tell you exactly what that means… just that I know it when I hear it. “My Love” is a simple pop song with lyrics that don’t aspire to much–a simple tale of love lost, but this time from the other side of the divide. Unlike Yoni Wolf’s emotionally crippled protagonist, this one is empowered enough to tell her former lover that the “next time you see me; you better stand in line.” “Intermezzo” is an instrumental outro that carries “My Love” to a charmingly ramshackle conclusion. (Ben)

12: Florence + the Machine — “You’ve Got the Love (XX remix)”

I dunno, I just imagine icy, coked-up Cupids floating over the beat, plucking their celestial harps. This remix is all pizzicato, really, from the two-step beat to those chirpy lasers and weirdly precise tabla samples–a perfect 180 from the ringing power chords and belted vocals of the original. And so with the sound, the feel. They take Florence and the Machine’s exalting “you’ve got the love” and even it out into a groove, an encouragement. If you’re too cool for valentine’s day–which, let’s face, would be pretty fucking cool–this’ll be playing during your makeout session in the club tonight. (Mike)

13: Genius Sir — “Girl U Want (Devo cover)”

“Girl U Want” is pretty simple and pretty dead-on in its assessment of the sort of blinders love (both in air quotes and out) can put on you. Inbetween the repeated chorus of “she’s just the girl you want,” the lyrics elevate said girl to “the top of the greenest tree,” from which she “sends out an aroma of undefined love; it drips down in a mist from above.” First recorded by Devo, this homebrew cover of the song was put together for the recent Hipinion Totally or Totally Not: 80s compilation by boarder Genius Sir. To my ear, it somewhat miraculously captures and even improves on the manic energy and the barely masked hopelessness of the original, while substantially upping the tempo. (Ben)

Get the mix in full (with special edition cover art!) here:

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(links updated to correct iTunes tagging/importing issue)

Gpants Mix of the Year Award Goes To: Joel!

Joel — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:25:01 +0000

Hey there everyone, we made it! I’d love to stick around and chat, but it’s pretty cramped here in the men’s bathroom. I actually had to run the ethernet cable into the women’s toilet station (they got ports under their sit-n-pees) and I’m afraid some stately man of cruel demeanor will stomp and smash my connection out. I’ve been away, and no one needs to tell me how long the train’s been gone. With this many extracurriculars you’d think I was running some elaborate DRM-violating Taiwanese soap-opera dvd transfer scam (dvds are $5 and if you want your name engraved on them it’s $15 sorry). Frankly, I had to get away — away from the guttural tones of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (Of Natural History is top on Niina’s “Pissed-Off Tuesdays” playlist) and Ben’s yappy DJ Mehdi bullshit (what is dance music even) — and find some quietude, friends. Plus I’m recording my own ambient album called Urinal Piss Crashing, Seven Sorrows Removed under the name “Ephraemi Rescriptus”. I was just signed to Victory Records and yes I will be touring with Silverstein. But really, I’m just busy with school. Meanwhile, you’ve got Ben, Niina and Mike with your hip updates. I did take the time to compile a list of my favorite jams of 2006, though. And who knows what the year will bring. Hopefully presents. Joel’s Best of 2006 and Never the Opposite of This: 01. Yo La Tengo — I Am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass Try: “Black Flowers” [site][label] They may have murdered the classics, but Yo La Tengo surely didn’t butcher this one. My second favorite Yo La Tengo album (next to the alarmingly quiet Painful) and favorite record of the year, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is pretty much perfect. Be it Hem’s pastoral Americana on “I Feel Like Going Home,” synth-strolling with Quasi on “I Should Have Known Better,” genre-shuffling-‘n’-scuffling on “Watch Out For Me Ronnie” and “The Room Got Heavy,” the remote malaise of “Daphnia” and “The Weakest Part,” or 2006’s best pop tune “Beanbag Chair,” it’s absolutely everything I love about the Hobokenites. Ending with eleven minutes and forty-eight seconds of three-piece rock-jam malarkey on “The Story of Yo La Tengo” couldn’t be any more fitting. [buy] 02. Horse Feathers — Words Are Dead Try: “Dustbowl” Justin Ringle and Peter Broderick make beautiful music together. That’s about all I know of this record. Also, they’re from Portland, Oregon. And they sound like Jans Duke de Grey opening for a young, depression-addled Tom Rapp, complete with rapturous choir of angels and shoeless, prepubescent girls crying soot. [buy] 03. Under Byen — Samme Stof Som Stof Try: “Palads” [site][label] At 2003’s annual Danish music festival “SPOT,” Rolling Stone journalist David Fricke introduced Under Byen as his favorite act of the year, stating “welcome to the best band in Denmark, probably the best band in the world.” While I know little of this band outside of their tidy homepage and new release, I can totally see where the praise would come in. Samme Stof Som Stof, (which I now know is Danish for “Same Fabric As Fabric”) sounds like some futuristic cityscape set against Henriette Sennenvaldt’s aurally hypnotic voice. At great length, “Den her sang handler om at få det bedste ud af det” (phew) miraculously outruns itself before the eight-minute mark, tragically crumbling into its own covert melody, while tracks like noise-infused “Film og omvendt” and ever-braiding “Siamesisk” could only be longer. And yes, they do sound like Sigur Ros having a power lunch with Bjork in a Turkish textile factory for Angora wool. [buy] 04. Grizzly Bear — Yellow House Try: “Central and Remote” [site][label] Grizzly Bear has received a lot of attention this year for Yellow House, a record almost always described as a space. Like a less intimidating and much cozier version of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Yellow House plays around with familiar interiors and the trappings of an enclosed yet ever-changing realm of memory, stretching infinitely into warmer corners. As Edward Droste and company conjure aspiring songstress and aunt Marla Forbes on “Marla” and win hearts with “Lullabye,” it’s easy to see why this has been a repeated play. Also try that rumored synch w/ The City of Lost Children, cuz shit’s hotter than watching Episode 24 of “Fraggle Rock” matched up with Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. [buy] 05. Shearwater — Palo Santo Try: “La Dame Et La Licorne” [site] I can’t think of any other record this year that has unfolded itself so unwillingly. While Shearwater isn’t Talk Talk (nor do they really aspire to be), I think the comparison fits: grandiose yet humble, brave and initially challenging, Palo Santo represents a definitive step into greatness for Shearwater. Each song is carefully placed and excruciatingly detailed — “Seventy Four, Seventy Five” and “Johnny Viola” each come to mind — and not a single searing moment wasted. [buy] 06. The Brother Kite — Waiting For The Time To Be Right Try: “Get On Me” [site] Y’know, I never thought I’d be writing a blurb for this album. I asked Ben if I could just draw a picture about the album, but he said “no that’d be stupid”. I went ahead and drew the picture anyway (it’s a small kid riding on a smiling kite in a sunny day), but then Ben said “no that’s stupid,” so here I am, no kite, no blurb. And this is a great album too — pure sugar, plays all bright and pretty, kinda like Throwing Muses fronted by Sice from The Boo Radleys — which deserves more than I could give it. Sigh. [buy] 07. mewithoutyou — brother, sister Try: “The Dryness and the Rain” [site][label] God makes humankind, humankind proceeds to make small cybernetic dogs that don’t really poop and also vacuum the carpet. While the name is somewhat cringe-worthy and Aaron Weiss’s lyrics occasionally fringe on precocity, behind the fanaticism/facade/reverence is some pretty heartfelt music. From mwY’s frantic and uneven ferocity on “Wolf Am I! (and Shadow),” the ruminating guitar and meditative bass on “A Glass Can Only Spill What it Contains,” to the blissfully conjoined “In a Market Dimly Lit” and “In a Sweater Poorly Knit,” Brother, Sister is an outstanding listen. Not since The Gloria Record’s Start Here or SDRE’s How It Feels to Be Something On (frontman Enigk is actually featured here on several tracks) has a record principally concerning Christianity come across as this genuine, engaging, and enjoyable. [buy] 08. French Kicks — Two Thousand Try: “Knee High” [site][label] On Two Thousand, french kicks move past their fellow garage-rock shoe-shufflers (The Walkmen, The Strokes, et all), delivering a record that outshines A Hundred Miles Off and First Impressions of Earth alike with brazen confidence and originality. As far as third albums go, this one sounds just as fresh and upbeat as their 2001 debut “One Time Bells” — “So Far”’s breakbeat shift into a ringing, harmonious chorus is the first indication that things are off to a great start, come the mellowing panache of “Cloche” and Spoon-channeling “Keep It Amazed”. It’s all fast, pretty, and good golly, is it good. [buy] 09. Band of Horses — Everything All The Time Try: “The Funeral” [site][label] AT ANY MOMMMEEENT I’LL BE READY FOR A FUNERAL [buy] 10. Anoice — Remmings Try: “The Three-Days Blow” [site][label] While Ben has pretty much placed Helios’ breezy Eingya at the top of his 2006 (and it’s a good record and deserves being liked), I can’t help but think of several other instrumental records this year that have “got-me-all” excited. Tops on the list (and just barely beating out Pallin’s “Bright Moments”) is Japanese six-piece Anoice; dabbling in electronica and all-too-maligned post-rock, Anoice’s Remmings is first for the (unfortunately titled) Important Records label, home to (fortunately titled) acts like Merzbow, Piano Magic, Angels of Light, and Muslimgauze. Sandwiched between five untitled sessions, the four songs highlighted here present an excellent sense of production dynamics and compliment an innovative “suite” structure — on “Aspirin Music,” for example, percussion alternates between organic and electronic composition, strings pierce the leaden drone of electric guitar, all over an embossed piano landscape. Just gorgeous. [buy] Close Hits of 2006: Camera Obscura — Let’s Get Out of This Country [site][label] The “other” great Scotland popsmiths of 2006 – overlooked, underplayed, and just so adorable. [buy] Aloha — Some Echoes [site][label] Blissed-out, self-cannibalizing pseudo-psych pop from the arsty Cleveland foursome (Tony Cavallario is part-angel and Cale Parks is my homeboy). [buy] Balun — Something Comes Our Way [site][label] Electronica trio from San Juan, Puerto Rico finding all the best ways to tuck pretty half-songs in snug woolen blankets. [buy] Maritime — We The Vehicles [site][label] Ex-Promise Ring pundits (sans D-Plan’s Axelson) get it right on their first great album since 1999. [buy] Nina Nastasia — On Leaving [label] Sparse full-length from our favorite twilight belle, accompanied by Dirty Three drummer Jim White. [buy] I gotta jet gang. Ireland’s Department of Metafiction was tipped off that somebody around here has been photocopying pages from Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds for use as band flyers. Good thing I ate my copy of Sartor Resartus. Have a good one, readers, and see you all sometime in 2007.

Girlpants’ Top Tens of 2006: Ben!!

Ben — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 02:14:46 +0000

Maaaybe you’ve been wondering where we’ve been. Here’s the short answer: GPHQ got put under some kind of shady CDC quarantine because Joel left a half-eaten banana sitting on his desk and it achieved a degree of low-level sentience. They just barricaded us in the office with the thing and told us to call them when it was dead. Turns out it was some kind of banjo savant, and Mike considered starting an all-banjo traveling band with it until he realized that a) he couldn’t travel, b) it had no opposable thumbs, and c) “Banjo Bandana” was a terrible band name. After that he just locked himself in his office and didn’t come out for weeks. Not even to pee. Joel and Niina and I played Scrabble until we ran out of “e“s–I think Niina was covertly slipping them into her pants, but I have no proof. When the hunger really started to get to us we talked about making plans for drawing straws to see who would be eaten first, but we never got that far; Joel remembered the banana (who’d been slowly re-sorting our stack of 2006 promos alphabetically by bass player’s name–problematic when a large number of the bands lack bass players) and shoved it in his face. Needless to say, we were all eating Taco Bell by eight that evening (except Niina, ’cause she don’t go near that shit). When we’d recovered our wits and digested the masses of faux-Mexican food, naturally our thoughts turned to our dear readers. We knew what we had to do: halfheartedly start assembling year-end lists. It was an arduous and ennui-filled process, but here we are. There’s not really any unifying theme to my list this year–it wasn’t particularly the year of any one genre, and there weren’t any trends that I really aggressively followed. Plus, the banana misplaced at least half of my CDs. It was a good year for music from all over the map, though, and hopefully this list reflects that. So hey, let’s go: 01. Helios — Eingya Try: “Halving the Compass” [site][label][myspace] For a number one, this is a pretty laid back album, but really it’s that very placidity that’s made it my go-to record this year. It works both as active and passive listening–one man band Keith Kenniff’s music is complex and layered enough to stand up to close scrutiny, and calm and soothing enough to fade into the background if you want it to. Some might criticise its melodies for a certain wistful emotional transparency, but for me this works to transform the album into an exercise in careful optimism amidst a genre that often wallows in bleakness and melancholy. For a record with no spoken words, it manages to speak volumes. [buy] 02. Belle & Sebastian — The Life Pursuit Try: “Sukie in the Graveyard” [site][label] I can’t help but think that if this album had been released, oh, six months later in the year, it might have placed quite a lot higher on many of the big critics’ year-end lists. When I first heard it in November of 2005 I knew for sure it would make the next year’s top 10, but I had no idea it would stick around for the top 2. This is a record that doesn’t age, at least in the relatively ephemeral terms of pop music. It’s a risky thing to call an album that’s only a year old “timeless”, but if the band’s early work qualifies, this one does too. Furthermore, it’s a warning that Belle & Sebastian haven’t yet hit their apex, or perhaps that they’re about to hit another one. [buy] 03. Junior Boys — So This Is Goodbye Try: “In the Morning” [site][label][myspace] When Last Exit came out I heard and liked “High Come Down”, listened to the album once, and never listened to it again. I’ll admit that I still haven’t, despite placing So This Is Goodbye at #3 on this year’s list. Why? Because I can’t stop listening to “In the Morning”. It’s really that simple–for me, no other song released this year comes close to its pop perfection. That’s not to say that there aren’t other great songs here (“The Equalizer”, “Double Shadow”, “FM”), and it’s not to say that the album as a whole isn’t wonderful and consistent (it is). But Jesus, what a song. [buy] 04. Burial — Burial Try: “Broken Homes” [site][label][myspace] It’s not surprising that Burial is the best dubstep album of the year–it’s pretty much the only dubstep album of the year. As is the case with hip-hop, it’s traditionally a singles genre, and the release of any full-length of consistent quality is a cause for celebration. What is surprising is that Burial’s record is one of the best records of the year, flat out. It’s a writhing, pulsating mass of darkness and blood and chrome, the likes of which hasn’t made a dent in the music-conscious landscape since Tricky’s early days. There was no better music for a rainy night’s drive released this year. [buy] 05. Tunng — Comments of the Inner Chorus Try: “Jenny Again” [site][label][myspace] Tunng’s storytime lyrics tend to come off as something like Grimm’s fairytales told by an English balladeer–Nick Cave wandering around the woods on ecstasy. Their musical approach is that of a slightly less patchwork, slightly poppier Books (whether “The Wind Up Bird“‘s one-off vocal sample “the books have nothing to say!” is a dig at Tunng’s competition is left open to question). The result is a lovely collection of songs about girls turning into rabbits and murder victims talking to their murderers and you get the idea. It’s all very wonderfully weird. [buy] 06. Ellen Allien & Apparat — Orchestra of Bubbles / Apparat — Berlin, Montreal, Tel Aviv Try: “Jet” [site][label] I’m folding these two in on one another because they are, conceptually and soncially speaking, very similar, and also because I love them equally. I heard Apparat’s three-song EP first and it was one of my favorite things from the first half of the year. Talking about it with some friends, I was strongly encouraged to check out his collaboration with Ellen Allien; needless to say it was a good recommendation. What we have here is a subtle combination of Apparat’s masterful IDM songwriting with Allien’s electropop instincts. Together they’re really something to behold: danceable, complex, and with a huge range, it’s by far the best electronic record of the year. [buy] 07. Vetiver — To Find Me Gone Try: “Maureen” [site][label][myspace] NorCal hippie folk to its very core (in the very best of ways), this is an hour-long excuse to lie out in the lawn and watch the sun set. It’s the kind of album that overflows with simple but breathtaking melodies, complimented at every turn by bandleader Andy Cabic’s smooth, summery vocals. Though it can and should be played quite loudly, at its loudest it still retains a sense of warm intimacy, like a blanket thrown over the room. At only one point does it really rock out, and that one point hints at the fact that Vetiver have a lot of range left to explore. I for one am looking forward to hearing what comes next. [buy] 08. The Twilight Sad — The Twilight Sad EP Try: “That Summer, At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy” [site][label][myspace] I had quite the internal debate over listing this EP. Aside from the Apparat EP I slipped in above, it’s the only short-form record I paid any attention to this year. On top of that, I’ve only had it for about a month now. And, finally, their name is crazy ridiculous. Goddamn, though, what a impact it’s made in these short few weeks. These guys are garnering lots of comparisons to The Walkmen, but the influence I hear most is the core shoegaze bands of the early 90s. Every song starts out slowly, plaintively, and eventually launches into a multilayered hydra of guitars and accordion and found sound. Singer James Graham’s voice is easily the most Scottish I’ve heard since that guy from The Proclaimers, but it’s oh so true. Max Richter’s surprisingly glossy production manages to subtly conceal a lot of the miniscule touches that are thrown into the mix, but they’re there for the discerning, headphone-strapped ear. [buy] 09. Magenta Skycode — IIIII Try: “Go Outside Again” [site][label][myspace] Magenta Skycode are, for me, one of those out-from-nowhere bands–they’re from Finland and completely unassociated with the few bands I’ve followed from that country’s scene. They don’t sound particularly Finnish–all English lyrics, sung with a sort of anonymously pan-Euro accent–and in fact have a lot more in common with the last fifteen years or so of British pop than with anything Scandinavian. That said, their monochrome cover art and similarly monochrome sonic spaces definitely mark them as snowbound. The sound is a pastiche of tons of different influences (latter-day New Order, The Cure, Doves, etc.), all of them emotional in a reserved, semi-detached kind of way. It’s a dark record for sure, but also one that’s full up with points of light. [buy or buy] 10. Wolves in the Throne Room — Diadem of 12 Stars Try: Sample from “Faces in a Night Time Mirror, Pt. 1″ [site][label][myspace] You’re probably going to think I threw Diadem of 12 Stars in here to fill my Japanese butt-rock quota or something (note: Wolves in the Throne Room qualify as neither Japanese nor butt-rock), but the truth is that it’s simply the best metal album I’ve heard since Mastodon’s Leviathan, albeit a completely different type of metal. And yes, that means I think it’s better than Blood Mountain. This is a four-song, one-hour monolith that seamlessly melds Scandinavian black metal’s bleak and brutal sonic assaults with the comparably reserved volume of post-rock-leaning metal bands like Isis and Pelican. Opener “Queen of the Borrowed Light” is the standout here, but the album is (perhaps not so remarkably, since it’s basically one long song) very consistent throughout. The cover art tells you pretty much all you need to know about the album’s tone. [buy]

The Rest: 11. Irene — Apple Bay 12. Tenhi — Maaaet 13. Bitcrush — In Distance 14. Comets on Fire — Avatar 15. Andrew W.K. — Close Calls With Brick Walls 16. Mastodon — Blood Mountain 17. Espers — Espers II 18. Destroyer — Rubies 19. Matmos — The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast 20. Shogun Kunitoki — Tasankokaiku 21. Phoenix — It’s Never Been Like That 22. Drudkh — Blood in Our Wells 23. Coil — The Ape of Naples 24. Booka Shade — Movements 25. Xinlisupreme — Neinfuturer

Expect the others’ lists soon. Mike’s still recovering from scurvy, but I heard he has some clever gimmick for his list, so stay tuned.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, by Ben Girlpants

Ben — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 18:13:43 +0000

There are a lot of up front protestations to be made before presenting an all-time top whatever list. If the list isn’t particularly gender-neutral (mine includes exactly one female vocalist), the writer is required to employ some disclaimer to the effect that s/he likes plenty of female artists, it’s just that, you know, the world of rock ‘n roll has been historically male dominated, so it’s natural for a list to contain so many male acts. If the list doesn’t include enough genres (mine features exactly one album that couldn’t be called pop or rock), the listmaker feels compelled to point out that s/he listens to many genres, but simply tends to prefer the tried and true. If the list is predominately Anglo (mine is pretty much exclusively so, with one quasi-exception) it’s common to claim some kind of natural connection to the music that’s impossible with foreign tunes. I’m not sure I buy any of it, really. My explanation for my caucaso-anglo-mascu-rockin’ tendencies is this: at my formative musical age (16ish) I was given five albums: Radiohead’s The Bends, Blur’s Parklife, Pulp’s Different Class, Afghan Whigs’ 1965, and Portishead’s Dummy. Put them all together and you’ve got a lot of wussy but undeniably white and mostly male rock ‘n roll. There you go. So here’s a list of the albums that have come to form the bedrock of my musical education (in no particular order): 01. Wilco — “She’s a Jar” (from Summerteeth) Being There is more fun to pump your fists to, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a better explanation of our post-everything malaise, but Summerteeth is a perfect pop album and “She’s a Jar” is a perfect song. Tweedy’s poetry has a macro focus here compared to his later bird’s eye perspectives and as a result the emotional connection is all the more direct. 02. Blur — “Coffee & TV” (from 13) 13 is one of three albums I can think of that completely floored me on first listen. Like the other two, I’ve gradually drifted away from it, but I return from time to time and it’s inevitably nearly as transcendent. “Coffee & TV” is what I’d call the song least like the rest of the songs on the album, but the truth is they’re all pretty much all over the map. Graham Coxon’s closing guitar freakout is almost comical in its struggle against the rocksteady drums and cheerful keys. 03. Slowdive — “When the Sun Hits” (from Souvlaki) Nine out of ten people who’re familiar with the bands give me shit when I say I prefer Slowdive to My Bloody Valentine, but in truth I feel a little disingenuous every time I make the comparison. I don’t really think they sound much alike at all. Souvlaki is one of the best mood albums I know of, and “When the Sun Hits” is one of my favorite examples of musical onomatopœia–which isn’t the right term, but what I mean is this: a song that conveys the feeling of its title, but through the music rather than the lyrics. 04. McLusky — “Day of the Deadringers” (from Do Dallas) I would have a hard time numbering the rest of the list, but I can say with relative certainty that McLusky’s Do Dallas is my favorite album and that “Day of the Deadringers” is my favorite McLusky song. If I had to give you something, then I think I’d give you nothing. If I had to give you something, then I think I’d go to hell. Yeah. 05. Pulp — “Monday Morning” (from Different Class) For some reason, no one else I know seems to love “Monday Morning” as much as I do, but, well, fuck them. It’s a brilliant song. The tempo change in the chorus and the hopelessly anthemic nature of the whole thing is pure Pulp to me. (Side note: I was watching Trainspotting the other night at about 2am and “Mile End” came on during the whole Rentboy-as-real-estate-agent section and my heart went all aflutter. And not because of Rentboy, I swear.) 06. John Vanderslice — “The Mansion” (from Life and Death of an American Four-Tracker) I’ve written about JV here before, and I’ve used his songs on mixes before, but this is my favorite song of his from my favorite album of his. More songs need to use dramatic, heraldic horns, and more songs need to sound like this. As usual, John’s vocals are waaay up front and, as usual, that’s a good thing because the lyrics are golden–a simple but affecting breakup story blown up to epic emotional proportions by its surroundings. (For an isolated little glimpse of Vanderslice’s brilliance in production, check out the simple, near buried, but totally on-melody upward-snaking synth at around 0:59.) 07. My Morning Jacket — “The Way That He Sings” (from At Dawn) At Dawn isn’t really a songs album–all of them are great, but there aren’t really any that stand out as stunningly mixworthy like, say, “One Big Holiday” from It Still Moves. Any song from this record will be a quiet, contemplative moment in whatever mix you put it on, but that’s alright… nearly every mix needs one or two of those moments. “The Way That He Sings” pre-echoes Z’s “Wordless Chorus” with its, well, wordless chorus; and that chorus echoes the central sentiment of the song: “why does my mind blow to bits every time they play that song? / it’s just the way that he sings, / not the words that he says, or the band / I’m in love with this soul, it’s a meaning that I understand.” That’s as good a centerpiece for an all-time favorites mix as I can come up with. 08. Destroyer — “English Music” (from Streethawk: A Seduction) Streethawk, on the other hand, is absolutely a songs album–any of these tracks could have worked here. I chose “English Music” because of its deft mix of irony and casually looping free-associative storytelling and because it’s a damn fine song. 09. Can — “Sing Swan Song” (from Ege Bamyasi) Can is the exception to at least two of the categories outlined at this post’s opening. Non-Brit/American band? Check (Germans + Japanese singer!). Not of the 90s or 00s? Check (70s, even!). Ege Bamyasi is one of four equally awesome albums from Can’s heyday (the others being Monster Movie, Tago Mago, and Future Days) and an awesome illustration of their status as a band both far ahead of their time (seamless integration of modern-sounding studio wizardry with organic, live jams) and very much of their time (live jams, sounds good when you’re on drugs). A beautiful album and a beautiful song. 10. The Mountain Goats — “Source Decay” (from All Hail West Texas) I said to Niina the other day that I’d realized I like Tallahassee more than All Hail West Texas, only to immediately reconsider and revise: I like Tallahassee’s songs more, but AHWT remains the jewel in JD’s musical-narrative crown (who’s gonna take it from him? nobody). “Source Decay” is an epic on an album intentionally devoid of any epic tendencies, a study in details and closeups. It’s the sound of a life in review, a recognition of stasis, and a desperate desire for an epiphany that just won’t come. 11. George — “Tip Top Song” (from The Magic Lantern) Ah, hey, here’s a female voice. I’ve also written about this one before, but let’s see what else there is to say. “Tip Top Song”, unlike the George tunes I posted about last time, is short and sweet with its doubletracked vocals and characteristically chugging, scraping beat. Mangion’s voice is a rock, as always. Hmm, not much more to say, I guess, except that you should really check this one out so that there’s more people for me and Niina to discuss it with. 12. Hrvatski — “Cirrusminor” (from Oiseaux 96–98) And here’s the last outlier in the mix. Hrvatski is an electronic artist, all breakbeats and machine glitchery. Here’s the curveball, though: this is a cover of a Pink Floyd song. It’s indubitably the most uncharacteristic song on the (consistently excellent) album, but it still manages to showcase its obsession: the “amen break”. I won’t try to run down how and why Oiseaux dissects the break since it’s been extensively covered elsewhere, so I’ll say instead that though it works well here, it’s ultimately secondary to the majestic drone that builds on the corpse of the Floyd song from about 2:40 onward. Yeah, that’s 10 minutes of drone. Headphones required.

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This is #1 of 4 mixes this month, each of which will (hopefully) illustrate the author’s favorite albums and whatnot. We’re hoping to have them all up by the end of the month, so keep checking back.

The May Girlpants Mix (Girls!)

Mike — Wed, 31 May 2006 17:35:17 +0000

The May Girlpants Mix arrives on your hot little screen fashionably late, its due date being around the middle of the month. It wasn’t entirely my fault though. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say this but Girlpants might be bought out by MTV2 [editor’s note: don’t you mean “sell out to…”?] and this has divided the staff considerably. Joel’s been the most vocal supporter, probably because the nu-emo on constant rotation is closest to his own tastes, and he doesn’t mind writing about Taking Back Sunday on Thursday. Niina–ruthless capitalist that she is–just goes where the money’s at, so she’s in, but Ben isn’t so hot on the idea ’cause he won’t get to write about whatever Japanese sludge-core he’s currently abasing himself with. As for yours truly, I went on strike, determined to keep the flame of indie rock alive and pure. Finally, after much cajoling, pleading and promises of new girlpants I relented. What can I say? Indie rock is important but so is looking hot in fly jeans. Look for my next post on Atreyu. This month’s theme is songs about girls. Orginal, I know. Niina’s handclap masterpiece was a hard act to follow and I wanted some rich source material to work with. This mix does a good job of deconstructing of what’s generally a pretty vanilla genre, I think; a genre that Joel captures more or less perfectly in his Lucksmiths write-up. Yea you’ve got your Ditty Bops and your Weezer, but you’ve also got your Grizzly Bear and your Tuung, which rework the “boy meets girl” dynamic in pretty interesting ways. Unfortunately, as I write this I’m getting ready to leave town and go meet my grad school commitee(!), and so I leave the sequencing of Kate, Anne, Lauren, Lola, Minerva, Aura Lee, Suzanne, Audrey, Danielle Steel, Marilee, Jenny and Jenny Again in Ben’s capable hands. Hope you enjoy!

[download the entire mix as a .zip file!]

01. The Ditty Bops – “Sister Kate” — The Ditty Bops (buy) This song totally makes me wonder about its eponymous Kate, a being whose very shimmy provokes the song’s self-conscious-but-driven narrator to observe “I may be late but I’ll be up to date when I can shimmy like my sister Kate.” Maybe it’s just teen angst, maybe classic older sibling envy, but I still wanna know what it is that Kate’s doing exactly to make it “shake like a bowl of jelly on a plate.” What, furthermore, is the mysterious “it”? If I knew, then maybe I would, you know, really get the song’s good-natured jealousy, but for now, I might have to just enjoy it for its charmingly irreverent doo-wop and its immaculately executed harmonies (not to mention the bicycle horn in the beginning). Which is fine. Some mysteries are better left unsolved. Kate remains enigmatic, but so be it. –Niina 02. Envelopes — “Audrey in the Country” — Demon (buy) Told from first-babe perspective, Envelope’s “Audrey in the Country”, from their superb 2006 disc Demon, dips in and out of the furryvision, buzzy and bobbing like a very special child. Probably the shortest number on this mix (hell if I know), this song is good and download it and please be gentle, sweet ladies of the night. –Joel 03. Weezer — “Suzanne” — Available on the Mallrats OST or Blue Deluxe (buy or buy) No one does regressive, slightly mothering (“you gave me flowers and said don’t you cry”) Girl songs like Weezer–for me and plenty others, they are the template for every suburban nerd who thinks he might get the girl, and who remains bitter and satisfied when he doesn’t. In other words, they simply had to be included here. Suzanne continues where Buddy Holly left off–restaging 50’s era sexual politics as emo sensitivity. No suprise then, when the 6/8 doo-wop time signature puts a sunny retro sheen over the sad, borderline pathetic lyrics. In many ways this was Weezer’s only move, or at least their best one. Just like your highschool sweetheart, Suzanne is catchy, fun and worth remembering once in awhile. –Mike 04. The Lucksmiths — “Danielle Steel” — What Bird is That? (buy) If I was Marty, Tali, or even Mark from The Lucksmiths, I’d date Danielle Steel. Better yet, I’d write a catchy tune called “Danielle Steel” and instead write about a girl who has “the mind of Sharon Stone / and the heart of Danielle Steel,” a veritable “best of both worlds,” if you will. Then I’d date that girl. I’d take her to the movies, I’d take her to the movies again, and then I’d take her to see the parade, buy a pop (we call soda “pop” in Jupiter), and slink my arm round her slender side. Man do I love you, dream-based-apparition girl. –Joel 05. Aarktica — “Aura Lee” — …Or You Could Just Go Through Your Whole Life and Be Happy Anyway (buy) I never, ever pass up an opportunity to use this song on a mix, which means that it’s been on approximately fifteen of them since I started making mixes way back in the misty green depths of the early 00s. But I am unashamed! Here it goes on another. This “Aura Lee” is not, as best as I can tell, related to the Civil War folk song of the same name, though it does share some winter imagery and the same vaguely girl-related subject matter. The wintry theme carries through to the music itself, with fuzzed out, distant shoegaze guitars that tread lightly over a blanket of subtle drums. It’s the sound of Slowdive stumbling snowblind through your laptop’s innards, getting all tangled up in the wiring but pressing on anyway. –Ben 06. Grizzly Bear — “La Duchesse Anne” — Horn of Plenty (buy) Having recently joined two members of the g-pants gang at the Books show at which this band opened, I can say that Grizzly Bear are a lot more explosive live. A lot. But on this album they stay subdued, preferring to venture mostly into avenues better described as “haunting,” and this song is a perfect example. The layered vocals languish (or more like “l’anguish,” OH) over the persistent guitar riff and other sounds like bluish curliques of smoke from a lover’s lonely cigarette in the wee hours before a sad solitary sunrise. It’s plaintive and understated, like most of the rest of the album, and it’s lovely. –Niina 07. The Mountain Goats — “Jenny” — All Hail West Texas (buy) I can’t help but think Jenny is the bike here. Whereas alot of bands use names as a quick and easy way to flesh out feminine archetypes, John D. just seems like too good a writer to need a trick like that–characters practically claw their way out of the tape hiss. It’s notable, I think, that his recurring pair of warring, volatile lovers only recieve the enigmatic designation “Alpha”. Compared to the rest of All Hail West Texas–which piles on the misery and doom–Jenny is pretty lively, but like “Riches and Wonders,” it’s got all sorts of dark crosscurrents, not the least of which is to who or what Jenny actually refers. So why name the motorcycle? I’ve got my pet theories: the narrator fetishizes the bike as a substitute for the girl he’s slowly losing, as a condensation of their relationship’s best, and maybe most fatal qualities (“nine-hundred CCs of raw whining power”). Maybe, if you can’t love someone anymore, you can at least love the new Kawasaki she rode in on. –Mike 08. Tunng — “Jenny Again” — Comments of the Inner Chorus (buy) Though it sort of steals the melody from Lennon’s “Oh Yoko” and though it apes the Books with its spoken word sampling, this one’s a sweet, sweet tune–a perfect piece of dreampop whose placid, hushed mood nearly successfully conceals a harrowing story of murder and lifelong regret. The lyrics are fairly straightforward, but there are several lines that hit with a peculiar force. “Your edges diffuse in the light,” says the victim to his killer, and, in turn, the listener to the song. –Ben 09. The Crash – “Lauren Caught My Eye” — Wildlife (buy) Ben thinks I’m goofy for this, but holy crap, I love this song. I was originally going to pick “Phoebe” from the same album for this mix’s theme, but this song is a jubilant, smiling, glittery Europop monster that just won’t quit lurking in the metaphorical closet of my music taste. Maybe, because you are intrepid at making connections, you remember that The Crash were mentioned in the aforementioned pantster’s recent interview with Magenta Skycode. You’re right. And yeah, I dig on The Crash. Je ne sais pas. Hope you do too. –Niina 10. The Raincoats — “Lola” (the Kinks) — The Raincoats (buy) With erratic guitars and bash-happy drums the Raincoats assail this Kinks classic about a hapless boy and a beguiling transvestite. One of the great things about writing a song around a girl’s name is the way you can wrap a melody around it, and Lola’s delectable syllables are lovingly twisted, punctuated and stretched–the pop song equivalent of Nabokov’s unforgettable opening paean to Lolita. The droll female vocals add another layer to the sexual confusion, re-fashioning the song as an excercise in equal-opportunity gender play. –Mike 11. Deftones — “Minerva” — Deftones (buy) Minerva was (as us liberal arts majors ought to know already) a Roman goddess, responsible for the governance of many things–chief among them, poetry. (And she was also credited with the invention of music. Thanks, wikipedia!). The Deftones’ “Minerva” is probably one of her lesser works in the poetry realm. The small snippets of lyrics that make any kind of sense do seem to outline some kind of muse figure that the goddess might be aligned with, but it’s pretty skeletal. Musically, well, I guess it’s probably not exactly tops there either, but it’s a rare ray of (murky) light in the perpetual cesspool of modern rock radio. Even if its album was a bit of a step back from the highs of Around the Fur and White Pony, this song is a gem and the closest they’ve come to fully assimilating MBV into their post-hardcore sludge gestalt. Chino can still wail like no other and oh, those guitars aren’t far behind. –Ben 12. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin — “Gwyneth” — Broom (buy) Hey, another song about a girl, what do you know! It’s all like, Jenny, 867‑5309, yeah! YEAH! Haha, keep ‘em coming! But to be serious, folks, “Gwyneth” is quite darling. A graceful step back into a quiet calm and pretty sense of wonder, it’s probably my favorite girl-based song, ever–gentle sweep, golden moments, hair-meets-your-eyes sadness, let little yarn unfurl. –Joel

compile this!: two compilations for a lazy wednesday

Ben — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:34:59 +0000

Note: sometimes (and mostly because of me) Girlpants gets downright incestual. For instance, there’s a Pink Panzer show coming up on May 5th, and I’ll probably do a more extensive post about that sooner or later. I don’t think it’s wrong to post about the band, even though two of its members are writers for this site. Journalistic objectivity, at least in that regard, is something that’s pretty flexible when your readership is in the low hundreds at best. And I’m not shy about referencing where I get my music, or who’s recommended it to me, and I think that’s alright. Credit where credit’s due, and all that. So, that said, take my recommendation of at least the first of these comps with a small grain of salt. (I really do think it’s good, but my allegiance to its creators might play a role.) First comes Sleep of the Banned, a compilation of ambient loops and drones (think: 1 Mile North, Ekkehard Ehlers, Eluvium, early Aphex Twin, etc) from the forums of anti-hipster (mostly anti-PFM) hipster website Hipinion.com. It’s the third in a sporadic series of board compilations, following on the heels of the Snakes on a Plane OST flash-comp (“are there metaphorical snakes inside you?”) and a collection of Bowie covers. This is discounting, of course, the board’s three compilations of members’ bands’ material and boarder Gonzo’s epic two-disc concept album about the board, all of which are surprisingly good. Sleep of the Banned is either a testament to the latent talent present on the board or to how unfathomably easy it is to DSP good songs. (Warning: there’s a substantial argument in the project’s forum thread as to whether Geologist’s track is likely to blow out your speakers. It sounded fine on my [backup] headphones, but you might want to play it safe.) Check it:

Cud Nylon — “Untitled 4″
Robert — “One Chord Nord”
Curtain — “It Was Not Obvious”
Moses — “Untitled”
DigitalBrad (Awkward Moments) — “An Evening With Boxed Wine”
Canned Kitty (Windfucker) — “I Read That Black Holes Eat Stars”
Harry Lime — “Untitled”
Geologist — “Echoes”
Kristopolis — “Sooner or Later”
Crisp Arson — “Proteus”
Percy Dovetonsils — “Heather Moves and Eyes”
Paul (Radical of Genius) — “Nofunswick”
Totally Not — “The Sally Jessy Raphael Show”
Don’t Think — “Kings”
Killd0zer (Abominog) — “Water Bored (Bored is Life rmx)”
Queen Victoria — “Dance of the Midnight Monsters”
Shermer High (Soft Disaster) — “Drone and Stutter”
Kevin McCallister (w/Slang King) — “Hamburglar: Mixing Business with Pleasure”
Crispin (Hadley) — “I Had an Arrow”
Webb Bored (Catalpa Catalpa) — “Debbie Drone”
1 Mile North vs. The Grace Period — “Watership Dub”
Cud Nylon — “Untitled 5″
[“secret” track]

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Second (and also from the dark realms of Hipinion) comes a double-disc mix of songs from 1969, compiled by boarder Hey Look (aka Andy). The entire mix is available from his site, along with an extensive and enthusiastic if poorly copy-edited set of blurbs. It’s got some obvious choices right alongside a bunch of stuff I’ll bet you’ve never heard before, and all of it is excellent. Here’s the tracklist: Disc 1:

1. The MC5 — “Kick Out The Jams (Uncensored)” 2. The Stooges — “1969” 3. Thunder and Roses — “White Lace and Strange” 4. Led Zeppelin — “Communication Breakdown” 5. Can — “Outside The Door” 6. White Noise — “Firebird” 7. The Soft Machine — “Pig” 8. Jefferson Airplane — “Volunteers” 9. Nina Simone — “Revolution (Part 1)” 10. Os Mutantes — “Nao Va Se Perder Por Ai” 11. Dr. Strangely Strange — “A Tale Of Two Orphanages” 12. Arzachel — “Garden of Earthly Delights” 13. Sonny Sharock — “Bailero” 14. Dusty Springfield — “I Can’t Make It Alone” 15. Sly & The Family Stone — “Somebody’s Watching You” 16. David Axelrod — “London” 17. Nick Drake — “The Thoughts Of Mary Jane” 18. Alexander “Skip” Spence — “Broken Heart” 19. Scott Walker — “The Old Man’s Back Again” 20. Fairport Convention — “Farewell, Farewell” 21. Amon Duul II — “Flower of the Orient” 22. Buffy Sainte-Marie — “The Vampire” 23. Bob Dylan — “Lay Lady Lay” 24. Neil Young — “Cowgirl in the Sand”

Disc 2:

1. King Crimson — “I Talk To The Wind” 2. David Bowie — “Space Oddity” 3. The Who — “Amazing Journey” 4. Charlie Haden — “Interlude (Drinking Song)” 5. Serge Gainsbourg — “L’ Ananmour” 6. Johnny Cash — “A Boy Named Sue” 7. Judy Henske & Jerry Yester — “Horse On A Stick” 8. Sunforest — “Lighthouse Keeper” 9. The Holy Modal Rounders — “Birdland” 10. The Summer Sounds — “Gimmie Some Lovin’” 11. The Kinks — “Victoria” 12. Don Cherry — “Psycho Drama (Excerpt)” 13. Quicksilver Messenger Service — “Who Do You Love, Pt. 1″ 14. The Rolling Stones — “Love In Vain” 15. The Open Mind — “Magic Potion” 16. The Allman Brothers Band — “Whipping Post” 17. The Common People — “Soon There’ll Be Thunder” 18. The Flying Burrito Brothers — “Sin City” 19. Crosby, Stills, & Nash — “Helplessly Hoping” 20. John Fahey — “View (East from the Top of the Riggs Road-Bando Trestle)” 21. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band — “Well” 22. Pharoah Sanders — “The Creator Has A Master Plan (Excerpt)” 23. Isaac Hayes — “One Woman” 24. The Beatles — “Something” 25. The Velvet Underground — “Candy Says”

you may finally clap your hands together

Niina — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:54:53 +0000

Handclaps. Think of all your favorite albums. Aren’t there handclaps on at least one song? Think hard. Yeah, that’s what I thought. And now you don’t have to go a-searching for your favorite handclap tunes ever ever again: that’s right, the intrepid grillpants team of pop sleuths and pinheads takes care of you once again. This mix shows exactly how versatile a weapon the handclap actually is — that is to say that the variety on this mix is extreme. Also, I don’t know about the rest of the pantsters, but I had a hard time deciding on my songs, and ended up dropping a lot of old favorites (The Cure, X-Ray Spex) for the things you’ll see below. And ok, ok, so it’s the middle of April, and there’s no excuse, but we’re hoping this special collection will speak (loudly) for itself (and clap along). So happy, uh, March. March, that is, through April, to the beat of our sweet, sweet handclaps. And with that, we humble ourselves.

[download the entire mix as a .zip file!]

…or don’t (jerk!): 01. Beauty Pill — “The Cigarette Girl from the Future” — The Cigarette Girl from the Future EP (currently out of print) I dig Chad Clark, and I dig Beauty Pill. In many, many ways, The Cigarette Girl from the Future is a bomb-ass testament to space-dub, hyperculture, and the strange new sound of a band getting shit together. Off-beat handclaps, tightly wound grooves, and a sci-fi babe staring dully at the future, draggin’ that last worn cig. Fuck haters. –-Joel 02. Yeah Yeah Yeahs — “Black Tongue” – Fever To Tell (buy) This thing’s a fucking barnburner. When I first heard this album back when it came out, like most of the population I loved “Maps” and one particularly melancholy morning I woke up to “Y Control”. The rest of the album seemed a bit… rough? Obnoxious? Self-obsessed? Well, yes. But surprise surprise, those were the traits I eventually came to love it for. (That’s stock character reversal #24, for those keeping score.) “Black Tongue” is a great little song that simultaneously shows off the YYYs (formerly) great guitar tone, Karen O’s ridiculously theatrical/catchy vocals, and, yeah, some awesome handclappery (to accent an already-great White Stripes-y drum bit [yeah, that might be an oxymoron]). –Ben 03. Boys of Scandinavia — “Good Looking” (Regina Mix) – Kill The Party (this remix was downloadable on their site) Oh, so handclaps make you want to dance? Me too. No doubt this song’s handclaps (shamclaps) are totally synthetic, but I couldn’t resist, since it’s so uber-indulgent a tune (the refrain [“they say! I must be good looking!”] ought to be enough, for goodness sake!). But this song is also oh-so-current: it’s got the robot vocals and the wiggly bass riff and the nostalgic synth sounds. But best of all, it’s self-obsessed, and that’s cool on the dance floor! And speaking of dance floors, this remix by Regina is apparently burnin’ them up all over (you guessed it) Finland. ‘Cause gpants can’t NOT talk about Finland. Though this isn’t really about them. –Niina 04. Mirah Yomtov Zeitlyn, Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Friends – “Oh! September” – Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project (buy) A ramshackle cottage, two indie babes and an eight-track: it’s not just one of your more inventive amorous scenarios, but the mis-en-scene of this jumpin, lo-fi Motown throwback. Besides, as I understand it, Mirah has eyes for the fairer sex, and so your awkward charm would probably be lost on her. “Oh! September” makes a virtue of restraint, waiting until the pre-chorus to let loose the handclaps, at which point the raunchy horn and double-time guitar riff seal the deal and the song sinks its irretrievably charming hooks into you. –Mike 05. Roisin Murphy — “Ruby Blue” – Ruby Blue (buy) This one was absolutely a must. Roisin, as you, the dedicated girlpants reader, obviously recall, was a 2005 favorite of mine. This song pretty much encompasses many of the reasons why. It has a funky foundation (that fuzzy bass), immaculate, joyful, and totally sassy vocals sometimes marvelously layered over one another, and those kinds of handclaps that compel a person to clap along. This song inevitably makes me at least tap the steering wheel, if not move my head side to side like a mid-90’s cobra, while I’m driving. The album’s being released Stateside at the end of April, by the way. –Niina 06. Bearsuit — “Itsuko Got Married” – Cat Spectacular (buy) The ever-spunky tweester pets made their debut lp an extraordinary affair, compl–CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP–ete with the exuberance only handclaps can provide. On this particularly special number, Bearsuit conju–CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP-res up the crazy rhythms of The Boys and the cheeky pop of Heavenly, prov–CLAP CLAP–ing their exper–CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAPC ALACPACL–tise in all things (CLAP) peppy. –Joel 07. Liars — “We Live NE of Compton” — They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top (buy) I’ve lost count of the number of twists and turns that Liars have taken over their three-album career. This song from their post-dance-punk-y debut starts with a noise collage–whispered vocals, sleigh bells, backwards guitar, cymbals–that resolves into a sudden, unaccompanied drumbeat. Seconds later, off-beat handclaps come in. Another few seconds and the bass comes crashing over the whole thing, carrying repeated vocals on its back. From there it’s straight ahead dancepunk (a bit higher-energy “Waiting Room”?). Betcha can’t help singing along, even if you can’t make out the words. –Ben 08. Oxford Collapse — “The Boys Go Home” – A Good Ground (buy) Up until now, I’ve always considered the ultimate man-gets-depressed-at-party-life tune to be Dismemberment Plan’s swan song “You Are Invited,” with the conspiratory undertones of a paranoid causal and the chill of his self-destructive girlfriend’s smile. Oxford Collapse takes gold on this one, gang, from snazzy build-up and hearty chorus to a pre-climatic cheer, handclaps mixed high. Gives new meaning to this wild college life. Harr harr. Whoop, there it is. Here we come Jock Jams 5. –Joel 09. Sufjan Stevens – “The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders” – Illinois (buy) There are a lot of reasons not to choose this song–it’s like 7 minutes long and thus guaranteed to muck up the flow of any mix, and it’s done by Mr. Indie Christ himself Sufjan Stevens. Joel and Ben imagine that they rack up cred points by slagging him, and this regrettable stance has prompted not a few heated exchanges by the girlpants water-cooler. On second thought, that alone probably merits inclusion. [Editor’s note: I got your back, Mike.] [Editor’s editor’s note: You tip your hand by even acknowledging the existence of cred points, Mike.] If you’re still unconvinced, here are some more reasons:

Most songs with handclaps, I imagine, are a straight 4/4 beat. The odd time signature sets this one apart and makes it unusually fun to clap along to.
To wit, one of my favorite memories of Joel involves this song. Last summer we’d ride around in my car, singing and, at my insistence, clapping along in unison. It was fun and goofy and slightly hazardous, since I kept having to take my hands off of the wheel. Try it at your next brodown, you won’t be disappointed.
This song conforms with my own chosen sub-theme of “exuberant use of horns.”

–Mike 10. Fruit Bats — “The Earthquake of ’73″ – Spelled in Bones (buy) This band bothers me. Why? Well, I’ll tell you why. They’re absolutely capable of writing highlight-of-the-year type pop songs, but they only manage to pull it off once per album. Echolocation had “Buffalo and Deer”, Mouthfuls had “When U Love Somebody”, and Spelled in Bones has this one. But the highs, o they are high indeed. “Earthquake” is anchored by singer Eric Johnson’s McCartneyesque vocals, mixed way up high over carefully picked acoustic guitars. A buzzing bass (synth?) bubbles in the low end as the simple but simply stunning lyrics soar overhead. The handclaps come in with about a minute to go–almost an afterthought–and carry the song toward its sunset finish. –Ben 11. Tilly And The Wall – “Bad Education” – Bottoms of Barrels (buy) Well, this song, from Tilly And The Wall’s forthcoming and currently pre-orderable album, is like some kind of oddly exuberant mixture of an Andalusian flamenco joint and a soundtrack to a Tarantino film. It’s got that Spanish flouncy-skirt-and-castanets vibe, but also the vintage choral sound that gets all the communists moving. And in addition to the clapping, there’s all kinds of other compelling percussion too (feel free to tap dance along, guys; it’ll help to get rid of that hipster malaise). –Niina 12. Jens Lekman – “A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill” – Oh You’re So Silent Jens (buy) Like the Sufjan cut, this song has that inclusive, communal vibe that handclaps evoke so well, but whereas the former is a stately, choreographed processional, this is more like a good-natured drunken barbeque, replete with the whoopin’ and hollerin’ of rambunctious Scandinavians. Come to think of it, this is not unlike get-togethers at Niina’s place. Finally, there is this priceless, poignant inquiry: “I still remember Regulate with Warren G / could that have been back in the sweet summer of 1993?” Indeed it could, Mr. Lekman. Indeed it could. –Mike