Malcolm Sailor Quartet - "Looking for Something to Say, Anything to Say". The piano is doing the looking: ceaseless, inquisitive, moored. All this song's other sounds are false leads, fool's gold, lights lifting off of wing-mirrors. The Quartet stumbles into a love-affair, into melody, and Adam Kinner's sax follows that glinting route. It blossoms and fades. Other loves end more abruptly. When the Quartet grasps finally for a climax, it is the recollection of a theme: like a lost thing they pretend has been found. [MySpace / album launch at L'Envers, Fri Feb 12 - 9:30pm, Fred Bazil Quartet opens!]

Surfer Blood - "Swim". A few weeks ago, I wrote on Twitter that this band was tickling me under the chin. Weezer crossed with Vampire Weekend, I said, which is a comparison I largely maintain. But in spite of listening to Astrocoast on repeat, mostly as I build, defend and demolish gargantuan 30" snow forts, I had not yet written about this song, "Swim". I have been too busy repelling invaders and repairing avalanche-flattened sunglasses. I have been too busy in the corner of my fort, high in the Laurentian mountains, where I rest sweaty in my snowsuit and write a log of my adventures. The log is based on an elaborate metaphor: I am not a man with a snow fort; I am a surfer with a longterm career-path and two marvellous shiny revolvers. [buy]

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Montreal's Constellation Records has composed a wonderful little podcast for Scotland's Skinny magazine.

London-based Plan B magazine, perhaps my favourite music publication of the 2000s, folded last year. But they have now put all of their old issues online. Cover stories on Joanna Newsom, Arcade Fire, MIA - generally before they hit mass consciousness. My articles for Plan B over the years included a couple of features and 40-something reviews. My favourite was a review of a Silver Jews concert in 2006.

(photo source)