Withered Hand - "Oldsmobile Car".

You were checking your email at your parents house. You had come over for dinner because your mum asked you, and you realised it had been a long time, and without Jonathan there you thought maybe the house would feel empty. It didn't, though. You ate your mum's chicken and they poured you wine and your dad had for some reason baked a cake, since when does he bake cakes?, but he had, something with peaches, and you ate it and it was pretty good.

Now your parents were in the living-room, in easy chairs, watching Law & Order. It was 8:41pm. You were at the black IKEA computer desk checking your email; the only light in the room was the big buzzing CRT monitor.

You clicked refresh and there was an email from L.

At 8:51 you padded into the living-room and asked if you could borrow their car. "Night owl," said your father.

The garage was darker than you remembered it. You pressed the button that lifted the garage door and you looked at the Oldsmobile glinting in the street-light. You got in and turned your keys in the ignition and the radio began to mumble. You sat blinking at the bottom of your parents' driveway in the rear-view mirror. You thought of L, in the park.

You got out of the car, you left it running, you scampered up the stairs to your old bedroom, to the cardboard box in the corner of the closet, under packets of unopened athletes' socks and suit jackets that didn't fit you any more. The box held cassettes. You closed your eyes and you thought of L and you grabbed a mixtape without looking. You scampered back down the stairs. "Everything okay?" called your dad, and you yelled "Yep!" just as you closed the back door with a thump.

You got back into the Oldsmobile and you clattered the cassette into the tapedeck and on the mixtape's case you saw in your handwriting the words OLDIES AND NEWIES 1996.

Looking over your right shoulder, with your hand on the back of the passenger-side head-rest, you backed out of the garage.

And you drove. The lines on the street seemed freshly painted. The conifers seemed further away from the road. The Denny's had become a Dairy Queen. The car felt good and strong & it felt like it was under your foot, like the gas pedal was the engine of the car, like you could feel its heartbeat through your right sole; and the tape played "Lola", and "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)", and something that reminded you of King Creosote, but of course it wasn't King Creosote because the tape was from 1996. And you drove toward the park where L would be waiting for you, words on her lips, and you wondered if there were more yeses or more no's on her lips, and you wondered where she was right now, walking or bicycling or still at home.

And you looked at the empty passenger seat beside you and hurtling down the highway you wanted more than anything to have L here beside you, no matter what she was going to say, no matter if it were yeses or no's; just to have her here with streetlights flashing in your faces and this cassette playing. You would take a corner and she would look at the case and she would say, "You still write your e's the same way."

["Oldsmobile Car" is from Withered Hand's new EP, You're Not Alone, recorded by King Creosote. Withered Hand is my favourite new Scottish artist and I loved his debut EP, last year's Religious Songs. Dan launches the new EP in Edinburgh on June 9 - together with Benni Hemm Hemm, Ish Marquez, Emily Scott and Sebastian Fors. Scots, mark your calendars & non-Scots, send in an order.]

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Beloved Montreal record-shop Phonopolis writes about the pleasures of Bach.

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If you speak French, read Garrincha's precise and elegiac words on Iron & Wine's "The Trapeze Singer", so that you will never hear it any other way again.

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My dear, dear, dear friend P is participating in the Ride to Conquer Cancer and is earnestly seeking donations. It would be really wonderful if you donated any amount.

(photo source)