Ray Rumours And The No-Eyed Deers - "No Way To Know". So you move to a new city - you're there and when you walk down the street you marvel at the colour of the asphalt, that unfamiliar grey, that new grey, your new grey. And you meet new friends: people like the history student who wears polkadot dresses, or the painter in the straw hat. You spend every weekend in conversation, clinking glasses, thinking about how much you like lamps, how they cast a better light than overhead bulbs. Every time you get a phonecall from one of your new friends, your heart gives a leap of excitement. It's new territory. It's literally new territory and you never know what's in the telephone ring.

And you've heard that one of your friends, a girl named Ray, has a band.* And you've never heard them, because it seems a little silly to ask, and instead you often walk down the street, staring at the asphalt, and wonder.

One day you go to Ray's house and everyone's there, all your friends and her whole little band. They're cross-legged on the floorboards and the lamps are on. Ray's got an acoustic guitar under her arm and she plays a little ditty when you come in, a welcome ditty, and Gill rattles his tambourine. And you realise that her voice is precisely the thing you hoped it would be, precisely the mouse-hole murmur. It's a voice with nooks, and smile, and the same peachfuzz fur that you find sometimes on the surface of flowerpotplant leaves. It makes you love your friends very much.

Then they're playing a song called "No Way To Know" and they ask you to play melodica. The first time round, someone shows you how it should go. After that you're on your own. You stand awkwardly as they play the first verse, listening, waiting, tapping your sneaker at the same time as everyone else is tapping their sneaker. And suddenly Ray nods to you, grins, and you furrow your brow and concentrate and try your goshdamnedneess to get the solo right. You're concentrating so hard, staring into Ray's eyes and Gill's eyes and everyone's eyes, that your whole history disappears. There were no years before this one, no places before this one. There were no other homes. You play the melodica and a smile's on your lips and you get it wrong but you know, with certainty, you're getting it right.

Caz Mechanic - "If I See a Bear". A song like a secret casually disclosed; a "So there!" murmured so quiet that the pride is lost. Sounds gather above Caz Mechanic's head, crowding like clouds. If she ever sang this song before You, the You of this song - the bear, the no-longer, - she would stare him right in the eyes. "And ok if I see you, and you look really great, 'Don't worry' I'll say. But you're a dangerous hesitation - so get out of my way." Like the most important thing about de-clawing a bear is learning that it can be de-clawed.

* Ray is actually in three bands: this one, Sisisi Sisi, and a little group called Electrelane.

[These songs are from a terrific split CD EP by Caz Mechanic and Ray Rumours. The CD also has v hot cover art. You can buy it from Tome Records for just 5 squid.]

[bird image above by matthew feyld]