Bright Eyes - "I'll Be Your Friend". I was at a bar tonight and on came the Counting Crows' "Mr Jones." It's a wonderful song, and not just because of the way it sends me spiralling into nostalgia. August and Everything After, like Coldplay's Parachutes, is a critically-maligned album that I'll go swinging for. Even if both bands have long been treadmilling, hashing out the same lukewarm stuff, those debuts are chockablock with great songs, full of feeling. The schtick wasn't yet schtick, and there's bravery in the now-familiar sound.

Bright Eyes isn't the same deal. His music mostly sucks. Conor Oberst has become a poster-boy for indulgent indie nonsense; he inspired invoked the term "sadcore," and then made it a joke. In general, I'm on-side with his critics. I really liked Letting Off the Happiness, with its almost absurdist dose of grief, but I haven't enjoyed anything since (except maybe the EP before Lifted). The wailing and gnashing is beyond tired. I don't care when he releases a new record, I don't even bother to read the newsflashes on Pitchfork. His angst isn't enough to make his music matter, and he's not impressing me when he rehearses the same formula.

And yet, well, you should never write someone off. "I'll Be Your Friend" is taken from Oberst's split EP with Neva Dinova. Lyrically there's something interesting going on - a begrudging friend, leaned upon, scornful and tired but maybe a little in love. Better still, the boozy trumpets slide all the way into a 1988 bender, a mocking Perfect Strangers sax solo. The protagonist sighs and shakes his head, but the song won't let him take it too seriously; we hear the absurdity of his self-inflicted situation. The protagonist keeps his upper lip stiff, asserts his dignity - "I'll be your friend but you just haven't made me yet" - but there's no escaping the oafish bassline and smirks of horn. It's a bad scene, but he chose to wander in, to drive up in his Chevette and guide this girl through the debauched, pathetic fray. You're the pansy, kid. So laugh - at yourself, at your high, sober and gullible horse. [buy]

French Kicks - "Only So Long". Cody has been a vocal advocate for the new French Kicks album, and the band has certainly done some quite extraordinary things. Gone is the garage-rock fixation of their 2002 release; instead, Trial of the Century is richer, warmer. Less of Velvet Underground, more of The Smiths. I don't care if they're pretty or rich or cool - this is a fine song, the ticktacktoe of drums nested against a hungry rumble of electric guitar. For all the lyrics' softness, that reassuring touch of piano, there's always a return to the guitar and its precipice. That is, until the end: "Never made up my mind / never liberated / feel you coming alive / and you turn around and / wait a little bit more / I'll parade around then." And the vocals stop. That's it - no happy ending, no embrace. But the rhodes is like a dose of soma, a creepy lethargy that saps the frustration away, puts it to sleep, applies a smiling mask. 'Forget,' it seems to say. 'Lie down.' [buy]

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A wonderful Dolly Parton track at Spoilt Victorian Child.

#644 has two fascinating, beautiful, strange tracks by Umka & Bronevichok, a russian acoustic guitar duo that are part Jobim, part Kings of Convenience. Light as a Soviet summertime, sweet as borscht. Recommended.

In a mere two weeks, I've heard four new albums that will likely break my top ten of the year: The Arcade Fire's Funeral (yes, like I said, more later); the Go! Team's Thunder Lightning Strike, Devendra Banhart's Nino Rojo, and now The Delgados' Universal Audio. Finally 2004 is shaping up.

Till Monday!