Hookers Green No. 1 - "Bloody Great Big Fucking Party". With "Bloody Great Big Fucking Party", Hookers Green No. 1 come closer to capturing the spirit of The Unicorns, so dear and departed, than anything I've heard since Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone. Aberdeen, Scotland is a very long way from Montreal, Canada - but there is no mistaking the rattle of glee and melancholy, like front teeth in a coffee tin. Electric guitars swagger and droop, a synth-line wiggles, voices woo-woo from the back. And then, well, there are horns, drums, ratatat and tickticktick. There's a coda that arrives like a parade rounding a corner - giant balloons, floats, a marching band; whistles, percussion, a roaring team of pals. It's a crowd of rowdy Scots whose chants will rouse the housewives, whose coo will call the fishes, whose hot-cold sass will fry your egg, flip it into a roll, set it warm in your hands. And it's one of the best singles of the year so far.

(the music video is shambolic and suitably joyous)

[Hookers Green No. 1 are unsigned. (MySpace)]

Ola Podrida - "Instead". Sometimes the horizon's like a hook, a flash of silver that catches your heart just as the day is fading into its night.

Old Podrida is the project of David Wingo, the Texan musician who has scored or contributed music to all three of David Gordon Green's feature films. This includes 2003's All the Real Girls, one of my favourite movies. When Dan screened it for me at his apartment a few years ago, the room was red, my heart was tender, and next to the flutter of that moving picture the rest of my world felt like a melting waxworks.

Ola Podrida's music is murmur and lift, the bird you can step close close closer to, that then turns and flies away. (If you are quiet you may feel the wind from its wingflap on your face.) "Instead" is as beautiful as a sad song can be. It guards the listener with as much care as the Red House Painters do and it grows to meet the shape of your silhouette: be there one of you, or two. It's a calm that implies a coat full of turmoil; a sunset that implies the broken-and-mended day. It's the way, the way, the way a lover can look so beautiful even as s/he leaves. They won't turn to see your face.

[MySpace]

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My writing elsewhere: I have feature review in this month's Plan B of the Silver Jews' remarkable gig in Edinburgh last month. And in The Skinny you can read an interview with Camera Obscura.

Londoners, take note: Plan B is looking for editorial staff.

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Bishop Allen's May EP is now available. The first track, "Butterfly", is a free download. It is light as, um, well, you know - and it will make you sway. Dig the girl singing, but dig even more the roasted sound of the saxophone.