Fairport Convention - "Who Knows Where the Time Goes". Yesterday was Estelle, with a UK Top Ten from 2004. Today, Fairport Convention with their hit from 1969. Although intimately familiar to anyone who lived through the time (or so I assume), songs like this get buried in subsequent decades, especially when one is all the way across the Atlantic. But "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" was Fairport Convention's most successful track, a folkpop ballad that stands amid tumbling cherry-blossoms. Sandy Denny's voice is the whinsome flip-side of Van Morrison on Astral Weeks, sad but steadfast. Martin Lamble is indispensable on drums, touching the pavement with spots of silver puddle, sending down a sudden bird. And Richard Thompson - well, his guitar aches and thinks and hopes and smiles and then withdraws again. The song is a perfect articulation of its own message, that sad/glad push/pull of staying/leaving. It shimmers and then locks into a clear, steady image: a gate. [buy]

Bell X1 - "Next To You". Liz continues to send me the very best of the still-shining Irish folkrock movement (thanks, Liz!), and the artists continue to impress me with their understated earnesty, their ear for an interesting sound. While John Mayer would sing every note of this track, milking it over plain electric guitar, Bell X 1 makes it a lazy rolling tune, drums nudging aside bushes, synths chiming and then ring-a-roseying with horns. There are demure handclaps, flashfade cymbals, the deep (faux casual) longing for a slipslide back: "I'm not over you / can I get back under?" So many loose truths, so much glorious sound - and all in this compact little trifle, three minutes and fifty-five seconds of song. (Like Snow Patrol but better.) "Alphabet Soup" is also really really good. If people are curious to hear their more rocking side, I'll share it. [buy]

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My iPod Mini came in the mail today. Hoo-ha is it a nice little somethin'. Anyone have tips for supplementary software/applescripts/etc worth downloading? (I'm on OS X.)