Casual Business 02: Kleenex Girl Wonder — Fancy Pants of Central California

GENESIS
When Gra­ham Smith accepted my invi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in this fledg­ling Casual Busi­ness series he also offered to write two new songs for the occa­sion. To this I intu­itively responded “hell fuckin’ yeah.” Like any real man he made good on his promise. Ladies and Gen­tle­men, allow me to present to you this 2-song record enti­tled Fancy Pants of Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia, which con­sists of the songs “Jobs Jeans” and “Cuperchi­nos.” Trust Gra­ham. He knows exactly what he is doing.

PRE-GENESIS
Sev­eral years ago, Zachary Mex­ico turned me onto Kleenex Girl Won­der with the album Ponyoak. As promised, it was a delight. Gra­ham recorded these very sophis­ti­cated, ultra melodic pop songs all by him­self pre­sum­ably in his par­ents house. This record came out orig­i­nally in 1999. Stand out tracks include: “The Near­est Future,” “The Sound of Paul,” and “The Mohi­can Antler Yard Alpha­bet”. Lis­ten and buy directly from Smith here.

CREW
So for those who don’t know, Kleenex Girl Won­der is his­tor­i­cally Smith’s one-man show, although he’s fre­quently sur­rounded him­self with strong allies. For our ses­sion, which occurred on June 7th 2010, he enlisted a very capa­ble duo of men to help with the bring­ing of the rock. We had Mr. Matt LeMay (Get Him Eat Him) on the drums and Mr. Thayer McClana­han on the gui­tar. Smith han­dled the bass.

GEAR

Smith arrived to the ses­sion sport­ing a sweet pair of what he con­sid­ers to be “Jobs Jeans,” those loose-ish and sen­si­ble denim pan­talones that fre­quently dan­gle from the ass of one Mr. Steve “Jobs Jeans” Jobs. We taped this ses­sion on the day Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4G. Smith opted to not wear the sig­na­ture Jobs turtleneck.

GAME
Smith lived in the iso booth for this ses­sion. The booth can be a steamy place when inhab­ited by a rock-maker exert­ing him­self. For­tu­nately, he either doesn’t nat­u­rally gen­er­ate much body heat or the new Vor­nado fan my lovely wife donated to the stu­dio works very well. While he inhab­ited it, Smith owned that boof. He’s the type of singer who knows exactly what to do and does it again and again. He’s deci­sive. It’s com­fort­ing to be around some­one this certain.

His songs would be dif­fi­cult to cover if only because the words would be a chal­lenge to mem­o­rize. Who else but Gra­ham would be able to sing this stuff?

TWO JOINTZ
“Jobs Jeans” is the pep­pier of the two and undoubt­edly will go down as the A-Side. Inject this num­ber into your ear-holes and you’ll find twist­ing chord changes, exquis­ite manip­u­la­tions of lan­guage and what seems like three dis­tinct sec­tions catchy enough to be referred to as sweet chorii. Yes, “Jobs Jeans” might be a good place to start for the G. Smith neophyte.

Pre-take con­trol room chat­ter slated B-Side “Cuperchi­nos” as Kleenex Girl Wonder’s “Slint song.” Now wait, it was Shel­lac. Yeah it’s their “Shel­lac song.” Spe­cial kudos to manly-drummist Matt Le May for his pum­mel­ing man-beats on this one. Musi­cally, this omi­nous pounder hits the tar­get but I don’t know if Albini would ever rock cou­plets like these:

“The things we crush
And turn to dust
Always end up blown back at us.
A woman’s lips,
A blun­der­buss
The reper­cus­sions are thunderous!”

I didn’t know what a “blun­der­buss” was so I had to look it up. Accord­ing to Wikipedia, a the blun­der­buss is a muzzle-loading firearm with a short, large cal­iber bar­rel, which is flared at the muz­zle, and used with shot. A-HA! Then it made so much sense. Oh, I see. This is for real. I emailed Smith and asked him to send me the lyrics. I fol­lowed along while lis­ten­ing to the songs. He’s not just kid­ding around writ­ing joke songs about Steve Jobs’ pants. Well he kinda is, but this is one man’s unique voice and this is some next-level shit. “A woman’s lips, a blun­der­buss … the reper­cus­sions are thun­der­ous!” Good line, sir! What bet­ter way for a man to express the simul­ta­ne­ously ter­ri­fy­ing and seduc­tive nature of the lady-piece!

I took the lib­erty to pub­lish the full libretto for Fancy Pants of Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia below. Fol­low along and engage your­self. Grasp­ing this artist’s use of lan­guage will enhance your enjoy­ment of the music! Visit KGW.me to lis­ten to the entire Gra­ham Smith ouvre and to read along with the lyrics, pro­vided by the artist him­self, for every song.

THA STRUGGLE
We’d like to bill this ses­sion as Kleenex Girl Won­der but Smith was served with a cease and desist order in late ’99 by the colos­sal booger con­trol cor­po­ra­tion men­tioned in this band-name and nowa­days goes by Gra­ham Smith or KGW or Gra­ham Smith and KGW. But as long as Gra­ham doesn’t mind too much, I’m tak­ing the lib­erty to bill this ses­sion as Kleenex Girl Won­der within these para­graphs. This is the same name that appears of the cover of Ponyoak, the song cycle that knocked me and pre­sum­ably thou­sands of other bat-eared nerds on our asses. Gra­ham, if the booger con­trol corporation’s jack­als hunt for you I’ll make it my mis­sion do any­thing in my power to defend you. For now I’m sat­is­fy­ing my rock phan­tasies. I recorded Kleenex Girl Won­der and it was awesome.

THA HUSSLE
Smith issues his music and com­mix on his own micro-indie enter­prise, a nerve cen­ter called REESONABLE. It will make you happy to pay this site a visit at rsnbl.com. You might also enjoy kgw.me and twitter.com/grahamsmith

PS — Stay tuned to breakthruradio.com for a Break­Thru­Ra­dio Live Stu­dio ses­sion taped on the same evening as these selec­tions. The band rips through ten other songs live in the stu­dio plus Smith sits for a prob­ing inter­view. This is essen­tial lis­ten­ing. Hysterical!

FIN

JEANS!

Travis Har­ri­son

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