The Cay - "Company Store". We can't collect handshakes. We can't collect the times we've held someone's hand. We can't collect high-fives. Maybe there's somewhere someone with a Polaroid camera around their neck, documenting each one. A thousand snapshots of hands & hands. Maybe they decorate their room with the images, or decorate their Christmas tree. Maybe they keep the handshakes, handholds, highfives in shoeboxes under their bed. Maybe they burn them in their fireplace to keep warm in winter.

But most of us take these hands-on-hands for granted. We ignore the way they're each a small, distinct beauty. And so go our whole lives.

Not so The Cay. "Company Store" is a string of small splendours, like the line of white lights on a procession of bicycles, night-riding. It's a folk song that visits four seasons. In their knit of guitars, voices, rhythms, in their counterpoint and harmony, they're collecting each tiny moment. Each handclasp and gasp. "I see a bear and a child, and a baby grand." The small (big) pleasure in a long hard day where I can see the end. These are the beauties we forget & neglect, but they're the things that make a life. And before the end of the song, The Cay have marked each one with an exclamation point.

The Cay - "Littlest Hobo". The Cay is my friend Jordan's band. Here they cover the theme-song of a Canadian television show called "The Littlest Hobo". And while I snicker when they use the phrase "hobo-style", most of this song I spend just happy, simply happy. I feel such a pleasure in the scatter of shaker & guitarline, in the crooked voices, in the slang & slur. "Just turn aroun' an' I'm gone again," Christine sings, and I'm so glad to know her. There's a German word: Fernweh. The desire to be somewhere else. While wanderlust is the hobo's desire, a need to be on the move, Fernweh is just the opposite of homesickness. The wish to be distant. And as I listen to my friends' third CD, Don't Go Out Tonight, which is kind & complicated & beautiful & stirring (& without record-label!), - as I listen to this hobo's song, - I do not feel one tiny lick of Fernweh. I'm fine just here, with you. (Heck, come a little closer!)

[MySpace / email Jordan / say something in the comments]

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I tweaked Said the Gramophone's RSS feed, so if anyone has any trouble let me know.

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If you enjoyed the Luyas song I posted last week, you may be happy to learn that they now have a WEBSITE, featuring MORE MP3s (all great), and instructions for buying the CD. Faker Death is fast becoming one of my all-time favourite records of the year, dearer with every listen.