Travels - "Lucky". In a building in the suburbs there is a machine that generates wisdom. It is a large machine, as big as two garages. One day, its caretakers assure visitors, such machines will be small enough to fit in our pockets. The machine's operation is simple: give it data (pdf format only), and wait. The data can be anything - random weather stats, holiday emails, photographs of family-members. The machine will make sense of this information. It will take what you have told it and respond with wisdom. Sometimes this wisdom is glib, like this is a two-garage fortune cookie: Trust your own experiences, it says. Or, True love isn't hard work. Other times the machine spits out reams and reams of pages, wisdom rendered as philosophical treatise. Sometimes it offers the video of a baby eating a watermelon from the inside out. The caretakers are still arguing over whether this was a bug.

Travels' song, "Lucky", is the response of a machine to the matter of a dead dog. Lucky died. He was a good dog. The wisdom generator has rendered its opinion in oooooohs, mantras, flea-bitten guitar. It is funny, short-haired, wagging. It chases its own tail & then stops. It is a wooded thicket and bright blue sky. It has listened to Yo La Tengo and the Fall. It will bark the bracelets onto your wrists.

[this song comes with Travels' new 7"; just $7, it comes with a 7"x7" varnished still from Travels' upcoming animated film. There are only 150 copies.]

Ólöf Arnalds - "Close My Eyes". Iceland's Arnalds delivers a very un-icy version of Arthur Russell's "Close My Eyes". Despite her nordic vowel-sounds, it has much more to do with Sandy Denny or Anne Briggs than with Nico. It's one of those songs that seems of two seasons at once - the sun-skimmed summer, the clear-skied fall. Covers are so often redundant; it is strange & gratifying to hear a verison of "Close My Eyes" that is similar to the original but newly beautiful. This is not a deconstruction, a dance-pop inversion. It's voice and acoustic guitar. Arnalds singing those slightly different shades of rose and blue.

[buy other albums / Ólöf Sings is out Nov 8 / or buy this song on 7"]

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Go see these gigs in Montreal:

• Tonight: artful, sparkling rock'n'roll by Baby Eagle and the Proud Mothers. (Panda Bar)
• Tuesday, Oct 25: the inimitable Gillian Welch, though I believe this is sold out. (Le National)
• Thursday, Oct 27: very excited for the return of Blue Hawaii, long-quiet as they recorded and um Braids got famous. They are playing with (yes indeed) Braids and the young guitar sputniks in Parlovr. (Cabaret Mile End)
• Sunday, Oct 30: Eerie and bottomless folk music by James Irwin & Old Believer. (Casa del Popolo)
• Monday, Oct 31, Halloween: A Winged Victory for the Sullen, a ghostly side-project of Stars of the Lid. (Casa del Popolo)

(photograph is from this year's Louisiana floods, I believe)