Nord Express - "Tripleplay". I've spent this week sick, but happy. In the wee hours, as I write these posts, I cough like a crazy man. Like a crazy man who coughs. Last night I tried to go to sleep at 10:30 and kept being woken by my own somnolescent groans. Wednesday morning, talking, I sounded like a piece of charcoal that had learned to hiss. But I've been so happy in spite of it all. Walking around fatigued, hunched-over, droop-nosed, and yet smiling at high-fives and good lies and blue eyes. Smiling with that mintleaf sharpness that means it's really real.

This song seems to be the opposite. It has all the buoyant blush of an early Belle & Sebastian song, the sun-tan of the Go-Betweens, the sweetness of Yo La Tengo and the gentleness of Bedhead. And yet & yet & yet, over that smiling scamper, dig: "You may wish but it won't come true / it doesn't mean I love you." Nord Express punches its lover in the gut and then has the gall to murmur: "Ba ba ba ba ba."

[buy]

Jonquil - "Sudden Sun". Let's imagine this song as a kiss. This beautiful, flickerflashing work of folk-pop, part Akron/Family and part Grizzly Bear, hot with the full heat of a fierce talent. Let's imagine it as a kiss.

First of all: The kiss don't get started until things really kick in at 1:25. Until then it's the slow coming together of mouths and hands. You know what I mean. Eyes fluttering closed, hands don't know where to go. The sudden recognition of a new gravity. Your lips are going to meet. It's a very pleasant falling.

And then things really kick in and the song's really going, and it's just simply so sweet. It's sweet and sustained and if this were a kiss it would not be a thing to leave you speechless and gasping - no, it's a thing that you'd do all fucking afternoon, like little tonguetouches of honey, just so easy. If this were a kiss I'd leave it on my turntable till dawn.

If you want to kiss someone, and you're waiting and waiting, and it's fall or spring (a season where waiting is okay), be patient. Take it slow. Count the leaves falling just right and at the precise moment when lips meet lip and fingertips meet cheek, nose meets nose (soft, soft), the song will kick in, there thumping in your heartmost hearts, and you'll want to put the kiss on the turntable till the sun comes up.

[this splendid LP is out in a couple weeks!]

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This is so sad: RIP Megan, mother, writer, Moistworks contributor. My condolences to all who knew her.