[photo source]

Alina Simone - "Half My Kingdom". A Brooklyn singer born in the Ukraine, singing a song by the Russian folk-punk Yanka Dyagileva - the title translated but the rest still Russian. But this is not as impenetrable as it sounds. Simone finds the song's heart and with absolute single-mindedness, she sings it. It doesn't matter that we don't understand the words, that we never knew Dyagileva before she died - of apparent suicide - at age 24. There's no mistaking the single, bright trumpet amid a mud of guitars, or Simone's hard strum against the fade of her voice. This is a song about sacrifice, yearning, and what's already spent. It's a song about hope, and about the currents that carried Dyagileva away. [buy/website]

Vancouver - "Penalty Box". An Italian band named after a Canadian city, singing in an English accent that somehow still recalls the Decemberists' Colin Meloy. But it's not the nasal hoi-meloy that makes this worthwhile; no it's the Orange Juicey vim of it, the Hefner heartache, the grasping for Weakerthans lyrics - the absolutely contagious love that Vancouver have for their influences. If Vancouver's house burned down, you better believe they'd be weeping for their mix CDs. [MySpace]

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Elsewhere:

Gotham Acme weighed in on "Half My Kingdom" earlier this week, along with an Alina Simone b-side. She dropped into Daytrotter, too.

Congratulations to Matt Perpetua, who has finished his Pop Songs project (blogging about every REM song ever [!]). I recommend exploring via his Greatest Hits tumblr post.

I really love Park(ing) Day NYC, where citizens reclaim parking spots and turn them into one-day parks, etc. (via Why^5)

Zoilus highlights a coherent, powerful, much less superfluous-than-it-seems letter from playwright Wajdi Mouawad to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, about the awful recent run of arts cuts in Canada.

Okay, oh man, the year's dopest over-long, official CERN-sponsored rap video is, well, obviously this one: "Large Hadron Rap". Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin / because except for charge and handedness of spin, / they're the same for a particle / and it's anti-self. Word! (also...)

and finally,

"Atchoo!" is a very short film.

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My short story "Bluebirds" will appear in The Art of Trespassing, an upcoming anthology by Invisible Publishing, edited by Anna Leventhal. Yay! You can buy a copy here or here. There's also a tiny book tour happening - I'll be reading at the Montreal launch this Saturday, 09/13 (at the Redbird studio, 8pm), and again in Ottawa on Sunday, 09/21, at Octobus Books.