The Winks - "Abalone". Crooked is as crooked does. What does that mean? It means that if a song is crooked, it will do crooked - it will make crooked things seem straight, make straight seem crooked. It'll make a lawn seem like a crunched piece of paper; it'll make a flute and a giggle sound like a tugboat. The Winks are from Vancouver but they ought to be from the secret Cloud Level on Super Mario. You know the one -- it's got crackles and pops, mandolin and cello, pipes you can walk into, question marks that sprout into forests. This is chamber pop with its strings cut: P:ano's lilt, The Unicorns' ADD and Sufjan Stevens' sweet smile.

The band is signed to Swim Slowly (see also: The Robot Ate Me, Doveman), and have an LP out, but this track is from their new split EP with Tights, out today on the Ozzie label Drip Audio. The Winks are touring Canada. (montrealers: you have yr mission.)

Hello Saferide - "Get Sick Soon". Awwwww... Seriously. Here's a love song to make all the curmudgeons (Hi!) throw up their hands, cute as a bouquet of flowers and a cough in the face. It's a song about loving someone so much that they are allowed to be sick of all you. "I'm such a Florence / a real Florence Nightingale / I'll fluff your pillows / I'll buy you a Spider-Man comic and read to you til you fall asleep." It's sharp as a needle, funny as a raspberry, and the closing lines are lovely enough to make my heart go ping.

Hello Saferide's new album is kind, catchy and yes thank goodness silly. She's a fine songwriter; she has muddy hands; she has butterflies in her stomach, chest and coming out her mouth. Catch up with "High School Stalker" (if you missed it the first time,) here, and you'd do well to tune back in to that page when the mp3 for "San Francisco" goes live - it's a galloping handclapping cracker.

Introducing... Hello Saferide is out tomorrow and you can [pre-]order by clicking the link at the bottom of this page.

[Previously: Hello Saferide's Said the Gramophone guestpost / "Teen Line"]

---

Happy Birthday, Avril Lavigne!

---

Elsewhere:

I (Heart) Music is fairly new to the musiczine biz but has already won my (heart) by featuring Wolf Parade this week, and holding a contest to win their new record.

At the Architectural Dance Society you can still read Jeff's ruminations on Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover". He writes about the long version of the track, which he's in fact tweaked to match his vinyl recollections, about the way little musical choices can transform a song's feeling. And you can of course download the mp3. Jordan wrote here about the song in December.

Any of you who have missed a gig on the Zoobombs' current tour should be finding a way to kick yourselves in the head. I say this not because I caught their show (um, come to Edinburgh please), but because the fact is obvious. Keith was there in Montreal has got the Zoobombs' live disc, and he's even got a live (mp3) recording of my fave Zoobombs track, "Mo' Funky" (heard at Gramophone here). Bluzzy, rotoring Japanese fun(k)-rock. (There's still time -- Athens tonight, Columbus on Thursday, then back to Montreal on Saturday night.)

Todd clatters onto the scene with a new mp3blog called MERE PSEUD, starting with a neat shot of Guided by Voices and, inevitably, The Fall's "Mere Pseud".

---

Special Gramophone request: My little sister lives in Toronto and has discovered that Saturday's Architecture in Helsinki show is sold out. She is stricken - and understandably. If there's anyone out there in blogland who has a ticket for sale or something, please drop me a line.