Bruce Springsteen - "Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street". Taken from Springsteen's "first-ever radio station show and the earliest circulating 'live' material with the E Street Band", what I like best is that it doesn't feel like "Springsteen" or "The Boss" playing - it just sounds like a guy called Bruce, and his pals. Bruce is full of such joy; he's so happy to be there. Listen to the way he says "Yay!" at the end of the session. It's "Yay!" for chrissakes, but you can hear the smile. And before that, too - when Bruce droopy-slurs his way through "Rex said that lady left him limp"; when the accordion tips his head inside the door; when the saxophone shuffles carefully in, spinning and trying not to knock over the furniture; when Bruce gives two uhs and a "sock-it-to-me", as if he's trying the whoops on for size. These are the kinds of things I want to use to wallpaper my room.

On this recording, Bruce has a voice like Dylan or Van Morrison: a voice that strains into its lyrics; a man fitting into a suit that just barely, precisely fits. It's a singing that's suited to sudden jubilance, to exhortations, to whirls of feeling. He doesn't go overboard here, no, but you can hear the tremble in him - he's feeling like a real musician, a real singer, a real songwriter. Like someone who's finally caught in the current of his own career. Some lucky young matador.

The Desks - "We Will Rise, You Know, We Will". I think by this point we've established that I have a soft spot - nay, the softest of spots, just a hole in my heart, - for a certain kind of dusty murmured song. At least when said song is good. And "We Will Rise, You Know, We Will" is decidedly good, decidedly dusty and decidedly murmured. Like Julie Doiron, The Robot Ate Me, Doveman, Damien Jurado, Thanksgiving - oh, the whole boat of them. Here it's The Desks' electric and acoustic guitars, a creaky larynx, an organ and an electric harpsichord. And a song that's catchy, in its own tiny way. Like a big acheing ballad turned into a little train - a locomotive the size of an orange, puffpuffpuffing its way around your apartment.

[more songs/info] (thanks tim)

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P.S. There aren't any readers in the Orkney Islands, are there?