Maher Shalal Hash Baz are an enigma. Their name is hebrew. It means "the spoil speeds, the prey hastens." It was the name of the prophet Isaiah's son, as ordered by God.

The band, meanwhile, is Japanese, but inspired by Scotland. Their website is extremely opaque, filled with images of frontman Tori Kudo's ceramic work, and some errant pages with a handful of links. Blues du Jour was released by Domino in November, 2003, and it seems to have received very little press. Which isn't really surprising. I imagine it's difficult to write a fluff piece about a band who come out somewhere between Joao Gilberto, Belle & Sebastian, and Volapuk. I'm having the same trouble (and it doesn't help that it's four o'clock in the morning.) Maher Shalal Hash Baz do breezy tracks with clumsy singing, awkward english and the occasional sentence in Japanese. Bossanova and indie pop, wacky gypsy folk stirred through with a whinsome melancholy. They're as strange as moomins, but not as finnish. Blues du Jour isn't exactly perfect, but I love it all the same. I really do. (It's got forty-one tracks! I hear their previous one had eighty-three! My gosh!)

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - "Post Office". A little bossa, modest and small-smiling, acoustic guitars and sunnygold trumpets. It's a cloud that bops along the sky, hopping over church-steeples and making faces at the bushes. It's perhaps the wimpiest thing I've ever heard, but fuck you - wimpy is great. I want to be a wimpy cloud, with wimpy friends - just so long as there's music like this, for tea-shoppes and summer showers, for abashed or unrequited lovers.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - "For A Recorder and a Euphonium". MSHB at their most twee and sedate. The title pretty much sums it up, except that it leaves out the trombone (which is a pretty egregious oversight). There's a tambourine, too, and an acoustic guitar. But mostly it's a winding one minute of instrumental calm, a soundtrack for a village playground, which would feel like 'interlude music' if half of Blues du Jour wasn't made up of just such pretty nothings.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - "Peter Said". This is almost a proper pop song, with electric guitars that jump in, heartfelt exuberance, and a dance-beat for nice-and-friendly dancing. Of course, that only lasts for about 30 seconds - but in a 78 second track, that's not so bad. What I appreciate is the way that it's such a gift: something sweet and small that will soon pass, certainly, but that's beautifully alive while it's playing. Such joys are fleeting, but lovely (and maybe somehow sad) while they last.

Et pour ceux parmi vous qui connaissent le francais, je répête la recommendation de largehearted boy: il y a d'excellentes petites choses à indiepoprock.net.

(oh yes - you must visit today's tangmonkey link-o-the-day: Subservient Chicken. It's an ad for burger king, but listen to me: it's better than anything you thought possible.)