Nico - "I'll Keep It With Mine". I had a wonderful afternoon, this afternoon, and it's a recipe I can share. Take Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, add Nico's Chelsea Girl, garnish with thick white sunlight through the window. And let it sustain you for hours: like fresh pieces of apple, cold wine.

I'm astonished that I didn't know about Chelsea Girl, that despite my out-and-out love for Astral Weeks and Nick Drake it wasn't till this that I thought to seek it out. The album is fine, thoughtful, cold/warm like narnian turkish delight. Nico's voice is so wintry, Cale's production so spring. Crisp, brisk, sharp, silvergold, sublime.

Brian Michael Roff - "Magazine Memories". This Mass. songwriter throws all of himself into his dusty roots folk songs; he wheels his tunes down the road with an ache in his back. The banjo walks alongside, a fiddle swoops in with a sympathetic glint in its eye. It's a song that asks for a drink on the table, some drink down your throat. Smudged dreams, dented hopes: things sawing and fighting inside, before they finally find rest. "I blast off." (From 2003's A Sweet Science.)

Tofu Hut's main man is finished his move - he's back, he's rearing to go, and my behind-the-scenes-curating days are over! Welcome back, John!

I echo John's endorsement of the Dopplebanger "Yeah"/"Requiem for a Dream" bootleg.

Loving the Crooked Fingers track at Listen Closer.

Some fine new-to-me mp3blogs (will the bubble ever burst!? [i hope not!]):

Tried and True Attention-Getting Tactics has a very motley one-a-day selection (Soft Cell! Terry Callier! Peanut Butter Wolf!), and wow do i love his intro writing: smart, funny, good, different.

The Lusitania has got terrific honesty, an eager voice, and some damn fine selections. A slight hip-hop bent, but then there's Caetano Veloso and Sunburned Hand of the Man and indian flutes. So indeed - do yourself a favour and drop in.

Oh right, for the hipsters who keep track of such things, I forgot to mention in yesterday's comments babble that The Cay were the headliners in The Unicorns' first-ever Montreal show. Indie-rockers of a feather flock together.