Shinobu - "T- T- T- Trepanning". If you had drilled a hole in your head, you'd stutter too. Shinobu are all over the place, guitars goin' wildly while the singer yells a song more slurred than sung. But the secret, inevitably, is in the hooks: one at the beginning of each line, in a whine that's totally pop. When the backing vocals come in ("Ahhhhhhhhhhh!"), I've just about resolved to go shoving through this rock'n'roll until I make it to the other side. This is an awesome minute and a half for fans of McLusky and men with megaphones.

[buy Worstward, Ho! for a mere $8]

Okkervil River - "O, Dana". The band called Okkervil River are presently (or were until recently) on tour in Australia and NZ. While travelling, they brought with them an EP, released on Oz's Inertia Records. It's a handful of new songs and a live recording of "Westfall". One of the songs that's received the most blog love is "The President's Dead", which is a sympathetic first-person eulogy on the death of a [presumably Republican] president. I interviewed songwriter Will Sheff much earlier this year (for a piece that is hopefully going to be published soon), and one of the things we talked about was Neil Young's recent Living With War record. It got Will mad. "Well, from a political standpoint," he said, "kudos to him. But from an artistic standpoint, that’s just so... It’s just so dumb. It made me want to write a song that gives people sympathy for Bush. I just don’t like things that massage your beliefs and say 'What you believed all along is in fact the truth.'" And so he did.

Anyway, I'm not posting "The President's Dead" because I don't think it's nearly as compelling a track as another song on the EP, called "O, Dana". This one doesn't have a political back-story: it just has a chorus. "O, Dana - o Dana come on!" It's the stuff that old jukeboxes are made of; honky-tonk piano, trumpet ba-ba-ba, everyone yelling that couplet. Like "The Latest Toughs" (from last year's Black Sheep Boy), each go-round of the chorus renders the rest of the track irrelevant; let me just hear that hook fading out all night, right til the sunrise.

Update: And of course a helpful anonymous commenter reminds me to check the liner notes: the song is originally by Big Star. Face: a little red.

[buy, replete with splendid William Schaff artwork]

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Contest time! Said the Gramophone has two pairs of tickets to give away to Grizzly Bear's September 26th show at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC. I last wrote about the band (and their album Yellow House) last week. If you'd like to go, email contests@saidthegramophone.com with a message guessing what Grizzly Bear (the band not the animal) would most like to eat, if it were lost in a forest. Either I or Ed Droste will pick our two favourite answers - and you'll be good to go. Deadline: Midnight EST on Wednesday, September 20th.

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Eric Marathonpacks writes some sociological thoughts on musicblogs. Please ignore my lightweight and scattered comment in response.

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Spoilt Victorian Child, an early and exceptional mp3blog, seems to have wrapped things up. I'd be sad if they had not done such tremendous work, over the years. All the best in what's to come, Simon.