For the one of you keeping track, these are my favourite albums of the year so far. Some of them are officially out, others are not.

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies (StG) [buy]
Espers - Espers II (StG) [pre-order]
Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds (StG) [pre-order]
The Knife - Silent Shout (StG) [buy]

and

Beirut - Gulag Orkestar [buy]

Wait - Who? Beirut? Is that the guy you kinda mentioned in passing last week?

Yes.

Beirut - "The Gulag Orkestar"
Beirut - "The Canals of our City"

I give you two songs. There are already two more, loose and free. So now that's four from an album of eleven: it's a sample and a half. But I'm not worried, friends, about sharing this with you. Because of two things:

1) As mp3s, these songs do not nearly swing, soar, thump or boom as they do on the CD. It's an album of wide, gold and silver sounds, the sort of thing that comes alive when loud in a room. You should buy it to hear this.

2) The album is really, really great, and after these I think you will know this, and you will buy it.

"The Gulag Orkestar" is the opening track on Gulag Orkestar. It is a throaty, burnished introduction: wobbling 'n weaving horns, a pile of shoes, a night getting slowly to its feet. And then, almost like a reggae tune, the drums take some unsteady steps and fall into place. Jingle jingle thump, jingle jingle thump, horns in line behind. And out from the curtains: it's Beirut. A smiling Balkan troubadour - part-gypsy, part-Wainwright, with a caravan full of Neutral Milk Hotel records and maybe Gogol Bordello's sparkling shoes. (A voice nourished on schnapps.) And if it doesn't make you wonder what follows (a track called "Prenzlauerberg"), well go home to your Wonderbread and Miracle Whip.

"The Canals of our City" takes Beirut's voice and a chorus of trembling trumpet, the rattling strum of an old guitar, and it turns these things into a mirror. It's a backward glance that's forward-looking, all of your past telescoping back behind your shoulder. Remembrance - remember the sparkle? remember the stammer? - and nostalgia. Squeezebox and gathered voices, that strident song, brassy till it evaporates. Two minutes and twenty seconds that feel like the invocation of a whole beloved world.

The Gulag Orkestar is a feat because it is a folky record that is so much fun. That is so much fun without being about dancing. That just raises cup after cup of wine, pulls wind after wind out of its pockets (north! south! east! west!), gives you breadcrumbs and also the opportunity to get lost. It's an outstanding, endearing debut. It's when you're wandering in the dark in a pasture, in a country of cornfields and herbal liqueurs, and you come across a barn that's full of fire and dance and song. And you go in. It's like that. The truest kind of souvenir.

[buy ($10 incl. postage!)]

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Fantastic stop-motion music videos by Potions Made For Children (colour and trees and prints and rag-dolls and splendour!), and Wolf Parade (the new one is "Modern World").