Bubba Sparxxx - "Comin' Round" [full version]. Since there's some interest, here's the version of "Comin' Round" that I downloaded, from Deliverance. As was the case with "Nowhere," this version is significantly different from the one that appears on my (Canadian) copy of the album proper: the strange country-squelching-hip-hop (fiddle alongside Timbaland beats) slides toward its end into the backwards-and-forwards hook from Missy Elliot's "Work It." It's very good, but you won't like it if you hate fun.

Okkervil River - "Okkervil River Song". I really should upload one of the songs from 2003's Okkervil River releases (Down the River of Golden Dreams and the Split EP with Julie Doiron). After all, a song from each appears on my forthcoming Top 30 of 2003. And yet... I couldn't help myself. Okkervil River is one of the very best bands in the world, and this eponymous track is their very best song. Taken from the group's second LP, Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See, it's a long, soothing and passionate marvel. It's about death and life and living and dying. And loss. It builds with such amazing ease, flowing forward with musical and lyrical verve. The words are perfect fits, the rhymes snug, it holds together as secure as the riverbed. Guitar with organ, tom-patter drums, and a mandolin that's a sunbeam, a barn-burning, a childhood game and a dirge. "The Okkervil River Song" is never hokey, simply home, and while on the record it fades into birdsong, long and wild chirps, I give you only silence, here: you're just going to have to go and buy it yourself.