2 years ago, apparently, a band called Phosphorescent released an album called Aw Come Aw Wry. I never heard peep about it, but I don't get around much. I swirl around the windy streets of my neighbourhood and the neighbouring neighbourhoods, but I really don't go much farther than that. Anyway, excuses aside, I missed this album when it was new, so I'll appreciate it now. (thank you, Michael S.)

Phosphorescent - "Not A Heel"

A hot stumbly waltz. Like a flower, a drunk daisy, ambles dazedly down the street, to home, alone. The neon buzzes and bounces off her upturned collar, too short to reach her chilly petal ears. A bad night for one daisy, from this perspective. A few quiet rejections, a lot of sips to fill a silence, or to look around the room, and a lot of "fresh" smiles, the way an actor delivers a line "fresh" every night. Because, as everyone knows, daisies can't speak English, or any human language, so life in the city is hard.

Phosphorescent - "Dead Heart"

The album is mired, sunken, drenched, in the chords of the "Aw Come Aw Wry" refrain, which starts this song. Something I haven't seen so clear and used so well since On Avery Island, and it's not the only similarity. Shades of many other artists are here, but I'm not interested in getting caught on that. Instead, I want you to be hypnotized, intoxicated by the drone beneath the falling, tapered melody. I want you to be pulled in and down, like the kind of pull an undertow must feel like, until all of a sudden it all lifts, or falls further, who cares, into a pink and foggy yell.

[buy Aw Come Aw Wry]

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Happy Birthday, Sarah.