Django Reinhardt - "Brazil". My favourite standard, performed by the world's finest gypsy jazz guitarist. This is, I believe, from 1947 (first released on the hard-to-find Péche à la mouche), shortly after Django 'went electric'. While some critics feel that Reinhardt should have stuck to acoustic guitar, he invests his work here with a beautiful, lingering, longing tone, a nostalgic slightly bop flow of notes. The final repetition of the theme, abruptly cut off, is like the sadness of recovering the old postcard, the one with the long lost blue sea.

Cool Blue Halo - "Too Much Kathleen". Indie pop from Halifax, ca. 1996. Cool Blue Halo was part of the booming East Coast pop scene in the mid-90s - they performed alongside bands like the Superfriendz, Sloan, Eric's Trip. Then Sloan moved to Toronto, the Superfriendz and Eric's Trip broke up, and Cool Blue Halo vanished into the ether. This is a silly, ripe pop song, high harmonies and chiming electric guitars. The central pun is awful, certainly, but it's made charming by the smiling sincerity of the verses. He's crushing on the waitress, and who can blame him. Like the Fountains of Wayne, had the guys been Nova Scotia boys instead of New Jersey hooligans. (OOP, I think, but from Kangaroo, on No Records.)

Pop (All Love) has got a leaked Fiona Apple track called "Extraordinary Machine," from her on-hold upcoming record. It's extraordinary all right. The angst's fluttered away from Apple's voice, leaving the spaces in between words to do any gnashing. I hear bits of Chet Baker. And she's adopted a terrific chamber-pop backdrop. It's like Nellie McKay, or even Mushaboom-y Leslie Feist, only - to be honest, - I like it more than both.

Spoilt Victorian Child is the new mp3blog from Simon, the man (i think) behind cool remix/bootleg artist Empire State Human. One day in, it's messy rock'n'roll.

Apologies for awkward writing today; I'm quite exhausted. I promise better tomorrow.