Said the Gramophone

i'm the stranger's lonely glance

Two wonderfully fun heyday yee-hah zoomzoomzoom tracks!

The Divine Comedy - "Gin Soaked Boy". The release of this Divine Comedy original (sorry, Tom Waits fans) coincided with the band's 1999 greatest hits album, Secret History. It's a chugging, pulsing chamber pop tune, a circular melody festooned with piano and synths and electric guitars. The song's slightly stupid, but wonderfully so - it's a stolid showcase for Neil Hannon's crooner vocals, for ba ba ba la la's and, most of all, goofy/brilliant rhyming couplets. The inane bumps up against the wise, the cliche against the startling. "I'm the spirit in the sky / I'm the catcher in the rye / I'm the twinkle in her eye / I'm Jeff Goldblum in The Fly..." It's a great deal of fun, carefully arranged, fearlessly excited.

Wheat - "I Met a Girl". The sparkling opening track from Wheat's 2004 record, Per Second, Per Second... Every Second. It's a gutsy, vivacious bit of guitar pop - a delirious, backwards-bending chorus that's brought some verses along for tradition's sake. The drums smack like a solo bedroom dance-party, the guitars zip up and down the speakers, and one of them wiggles like a Modest Mouse runaway. Even more amazing is the middle eight: instead of doing more of the same, Wheat throw in a whole half-a-song of something else. There's a caressing build, a radiant rise - and then we stagger back into the arms of the twisting-and-jocund main melody. Fearless and feelgood, a celebratory dream of freedom (from, uh, being "with someone").