Kind readers, I invite you to choose the Monday morning that suits you best. Let me know which you pick.

The Wombats - "Moving to New York". New single by a British band of boys with guitars, but oh how it strikes me. This is a post-Bloc Party kingdom, where they've learned the value of doublespeed drums and a highkicking highflashing smoothsinging vocal line. The whole thing is so breathless and roughly beautiful, with noisy handclaps hidden in the corners; but mostly what you hear are that voice, those guitars, those drums, and some "ooh-ooh-ooh"; over well before it has worn out its welcome.

I wonder if somewhere out there there's a man who said "All right, lads, what if you play this twice as fast?" Maybe the man was just the drummer. But either way - golly, I want to buy that dude a coffee.

[info / Single out October 23]

Larkin Grimm - "The Jasy Tree". What's so often missing from contemporary folk recordings is a feeling of heat. Of something sharper than lulling warmth: something that will cut through the blood and muscle and sinew of you to leave that silver in your heart. That silver and that gold. There are different ways to heat a song, tactics sneaky and subtle. One of these is in the recording. Take the right kind of guitar, the right kind of voice, the right kind of microphone - and let it all be so lofi and close and buzzing that the sound seems to bounce around in the speakers, embers loosed, sparks flying. Providence's Larkin Grimm sings a soft song, a song with the spirit of Vashti Bunyan or Vetiver, but the sound of it makes it feel more sun than sunny. Stuff not just to tide you over; stuff to send out tides.

(Have you ever found a small flowering plant, near the beach? Just up from the ocean sand, something tufted and prickly and beautiful? Perhaps two small purple flowers? Three round yellow ones? Or a single, strange white blossom, ringed in rings of ringing orange? Yeah? Near the streaked pebbles and watercoloured mussel shells? Well I've not checked with Larkin Grimm, not checked Wikipedia nor even googled it, but still I will bet you more than a few quid(s) that this rough flower is a jasy tree.)

[New record out soon: release party in Providence on Wednesday. As for this song, it's taken from a limited edition Sloow Tapes cassette you can buy here or here.]