Dreamies - "Program Ten (excerpt)". Mike lived in Boston and Montreal and now resides in Sweden. He likes lots of bands I like. He told me I should hear this album. This is what he said, not verbatim: "So it's by a guy calling himself 'Dreamies'." "The Dreamies?" "No, just Dreamies. No the. He was an accountant in the 60s and he decided he wanted to make music. So he quit his job and spent all his money making a studio in his basement, learning to use it, learning to play instruments, recording an album. He spent a year doing this. And when he was done he released the album and then went back to work as an accountant and never recorded anything again. Each side of the LP is a single track. Experimental folk weirdness. Lots of samples. It just got reissued."

And then this is what I did not say to him, but might have, had I already heard this song then; had I already cuddled up in its thrum and drone, in its Roy Harper jangle and its proto-Grandaddy bliss; had I already felt the thrill of the theme that fades under sirens and broken dishes, returning like a lover you never expected to hear again; had I already done all this, I might have said:

"Mike, this is amazing. Is it a dream, Mike? Is it a shortwave transmission sent back to us from Venus? Is it what happens when you plug a transmitter aerial into a man's heart? How can a single strum and a multitracked voice keep my fascination for so long? How can something so long forgotten sound so much like Grizzly Bear or Wyrd Visions? How can this sound like "Mother Nature's Son" and "Revolution 9"? How can an accountant make such a beautiful music? If televisions were birds, is this what they would sing? Who was this guy, Mike, and why is his website so weird?"

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Camera Obscura - "Country Mile". We established several months ago that I like the sad Camera Obscura songs - well, that and "Keep It Clean". And while others go a little crazy for Let's Get Out of this Country, I'm left wishing there were more small and tender pieces - or, then again, that the glossy soul thumpers were even bigger, even tambouriner. But there's one song on the record I keep returning to, over and over. It's this one. A slow, sad one - a tune about long-distance love that's close to despairing. I interviewed Tracyanne Campbell a couple months ago and this is the song that most recalls her conversational voice: the pauses, the hesitancy, the sudden ardour. She is so front and centre here - forget the strings, the guitar, the keening lap steel. We're here for one thing: the woman spotlighted, sorrowful, and stronger each time she admits "I feel lost". It's not a depressing song, however - not for me. There's too much to long for when she sings "I wish you could be here with me / I would show you off like a trophy". There's a dusky promise when she sings "a blink of these lashes would make you come"... It's not depressing because there's no finality to the song. Strings swell in and out. "I hope," she sings. And it ends without any great climax. (The next song is the upbeat dance number called "If Looks Could Kill".) This is a song like a moment's sorrow. Like a pause for you to wipe your eyes. To write a postcard.

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