This is Canadian turf, here, so no Memorial Day holiday for me - I'll be taking a day off on Wednesday, as I zoom down to Montreal for university convocation. That said, best regards to our American neighbours who are on holiday, and to those men and women overseas who are trying to do the right thing for human beings everywhere. I wish them luck.

Jean Leloup - "I Lost My Baby". And since my Canadian-ness is on show today, here's a wonderful ditty from the 'hood, an ode to "une fille d'Ottawa" - a girl who fled monsieur Leloup for the greener pastures of Hawkesbury, a town downriver from the Capital. While this song's bilingual, it evades the pitfalls of a lot of such music - rather than using English and French together for some universal, harmony-and-rainbows appeal, it's a self-serving musical tactic that lets English reign for the American-style choruses ("I lost my baby / I lost my darlin'"), turning to the flow of French for its narrative verses. There's humour in the silly tale, the lightest touch of melancholy, a cheerful strum of guitar, a woman's giggle, boy-girl vocals. Jean Leloup is a familiar face from the Quebec alt music scene, till he announced in December that he was committing "musical suicide" and ending his career. A live album and DVD have just been released, but the story goes that Jean Leloup's recording and performing days are over. On the other hand, he will be continuing to work (in some form) under his real name, Jean Leclerc. I'm not really sure what this means. "I Lost My Baby" is from 1996's Le Dôme. [buy]

The Poozies - "All I Want". An astonishing reinterpretation of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," the fine song from Lerner/Lowew's My Fair Lady. Where the original is contemplative but rather bouncy, here it has been transformed into something slow, heartbreaking, and full of longing. Eilidh Shaw's got a soft, slightly throaty voice, like wind through rushes. The Scottish band is known for its energetic folk repertoire, but everything's been stripped away here - two voices in harmony (Shaw with Kate Rusby), sleepy keys, and a perfect, restrained bridge on some sort of squeezebox. (I realize that it is incongruous to speak of a "perfect" squeezebox solo, particularly within a song as hushed and wistful as this one. But it's true.) Somewhere between Sufjan Stevens' "Flint" and Xiu Xiu's "Fast Car" cover. From the band's latest record, Changed Days Same Roots. [buy]

I realize I'm way behind the times here, but for anyone (like me) who missed it, Tiny Mix Tapes interviewed the Arcade Fire in January, and if nothing else, it seems to have sewed the seeds for the title of their upcoming debut on Merge...

Win: I hope our music is uplifting in a really full sense. We don?t just wanna make people feel good. Being scared or confused can be uplifting too. Music has this rare potential to be creative and completely non-destructive at the same time, which is a really powerful idea, even though it is rarely seen. I know most people in the world would probably not get much from our music, but you can hope right? Funerals are a lot more important than records.

Régine: But there?s almost always music at funerals. I like to sing for funerals. I sang for my mom?s funeral, I sang for my grandma?s funeral.

Win: Can you imagine if there was a publication like Spin Magazine or Rolling Stone about funerals? There would be articles about hot new trends in funeral services, and profiles on hot up and coming funeral directors, as well as lots of stuff about people who have been in the business for years, and keep doing quality work. Then in the back there would be reviews of services. "The first 15 minutes were really meaningful, but then the brother stood up and said some really cliché played out stuff." Maybe there could even be a rating scale about how meaningful or useful the persons life had been. I hope I get 7.5 out of 10...

Later this week, fresh Okkervil River and 'new' Nick Drake.

gmail swap update: The Times (London) [l/p: laexaminer/laexaminer]