I'm happily returned from an equally happy holiday to Toronto and Ottawa. No new musical insights, except that Stars of the Lid are really cool. Oh - thanks to those with the Mieskuoro Huutajat follow-ups. (nick, I'll be looking for you online.) Check out the CBC interview (via cyn and my mother). Their label actually answered my email, so it looks like I'll be able to nab me a copy, just as soon as I fax them my cc number.

Elvis Presley - "Are You Lonesome Tonight" [live]. "Do you gaze at your bald head," he asks, "and wish you had hair?" This is an infamous recording of Elvis cracking up in the middle of "Lonesome," snickering away as the back-up singer warbles on and on. (I imagine Elvis's manager before she signed her contract: "fuck up once, honey, and you're out. i don't care if the four horsemen of the apocalypse come marching through the theater - you don't stop singing, hear?") Perhaps not quite as cathartic as the Anthology version of the Beatles cracking up to "And Your Bird Can Sing," but good for a smile all the same.

Now two tracks from Madredeus, Portugal's vital, famed post-fado group. My dad's crazy about this stuff, but Madredeus doesn't follow the strict fado formula. Instead, they blend all sorts of European folk traditions, eking out songs that vary from oceanside loveliness to near-sinister gypsy blues.

Madredeus - "O Pastor". There's something dark and forceful to the accordion-pulse of this track, further underlined by the accusatory passion in the vocals. This feels like it should be the opening song to some brave, human film - a little boy bicycling frantically up a hill, the moon full and yellow above him. In fact, this is like the mature older-sister to the Oscar-losing Triplettes de Belleville track. You should download it.

Madredeus - "Oxalá". Madredeus at their most casually beautiful - it's a lazy, summery guitar melody over the light skip of an organ, and then Teresa Salgueiro's cream-and-lemon (but not-curdling) voice.