Hanne Hukkelberg - "Searching". The press materials would have her be the Norwegian Joanna Newsom, but no, that's not right. If anything, Hanne sounds like Cocorosie, wetmouthed, ringing, glimmering. There are, however, some differences: Hanne's one person; She would, I bet, would make you (good) breakfast; And instead of dating Conor Oberst, I can only imagine Ms Hukkelberg on the arm of Bill Murray. Some Slavic Bill Murray, I guess. He'd probably be an entomologist.

This song is underwater sunlight or a squirt of lime. It's scrapes and dings, Jon Brion organ, an unfliching brightbright faith. "But now that I can see / my man / will come to me." There's a true tenderness in these strange sounds, the squeezed voice, the theremin's distant sorrow -- I have the feeling we could break Hanne Hukkelberg's heart.

[buy from the Leaf Label]

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I had no interest in liking Flotation Toy Warning's debut album, Bluffer's Guide to the Flight Deck. I hate the band name, I hate the album name.

But wouldn't you know it - it's great.

Popsheep already posted the record's best track, "Popstar Researching Oblivion", but there's much, much more to be heard. Maybe there's even too much - you better know what you're doing when your debut is seventy minutes in duration and most of the tracks are longer than six minutes.

Flotation Toy Warning - "Happy13". I guess the album is what the kids would call "avant pop", and this is a good label only inasmuch as it keeps things very vague. "Happy13" trudges a bit, never reaching euphoria, while "Popstar Researching Oblivion" lolls in silly wagging cornfields. "Donald Pleasance" is impressionist sorrowful, "How the Plains Left Me Flat" stamps like a one-man-band. What's terrific about "Happy13", though, is the way that synth line cuts right through, grabbing you by the collar from those very first notes. Flotation Toy Warning have a bevy of resemblances - The Eels, The Unicorns, The Flaming Lips, Grandaddy, the Polyphonic Spree, even Chad Van Gaalen, - but they're also very clearly their own thing. That knife-edge synthline gives way to dusty drums and a dustier lead vocal, but later it's resurrected in a bed of twinkles, rhodes and maybe even distant choir. The song ends abruptly, but that's because it's not a radio single - it's part of an LP.

Yeah - The biggest challenge that Bluffer's Guide... faces, other than its absolutely awful moniker, is the fact that it's really an album album. There are a very many musical ideas, vignettes of melody and timbre and mood, snatches of song that bump into one another like so many brightly coloured boats. Unlike Ian, I don't find myself reaching to play the same track(s) over and over, but instead I compulsively hit 'play' to listen again to the whole CD. I relish the moments that are already familiar, I am brought to attention by the unexpectedly brilliant sound.

The band is from London. You can buy the album on Misra as of August 16th, and if the label gets its website troubles sorted out, you can already order it from the UK label, Pointy.

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Elsewhere, and perhaps of interest only to Canadians:

Rick Mercer's got a blog! And it's funny!