Dreaming as the summer dies

““Hailing from Spring­field, Mis­souri” fre­quently pre­cedes SSLYBY’s intro­duc­tion in write-ups and reviews, that asso­ci­a­tion of band and place meant to locate the name in a homey, small-town sound. But the thing is, the band isn´t really from any­where — I mean to say, yes, they have a home­town, and of course they go to bed at night some­where, but the need to pre­clude descrip­tion with loca­tion (oh, they´re from that spe­cific town) is entirely at odds with what they write and sing about. Way back on “Oregon Girl” from Broom, Will announces to his stately sweetie that “Oregon Girl / I´ve been around the world / and I´ve never seen another / Oregon girl.” The band´s been all over, and if any­thing, it´s the geo­graphic that fails to con­nect, that abo­rig­inal “Oregon Girl” who will never appear again and yet who remains a fix­ture in the speci­ficity of the song´s mountain-moving desire (see also Cora, Ellie, Rachel Lara, Anna Lee, Gwyneth, and now Everlyn). Even Per­shing, with its Springfield-isms (have you ever sat on top of the HEERS building?) was largely con­ceived, according to the band´s own trav­el­ogue, in Moscow. For a band that is rein­tro­duced time after time by that pin­pointing Spring­field, MO placemat, it would seem that the songs seek to dis­tance them from name and place altogether.

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

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

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