Antony - "The Lake [live]". I wrote about this track in the summer of 2004. In the months since then, Antony's released a studio version of the song and of course with his Johnsons he's become famous, in a small way. But back in August 2004, nobody but me seemed much concerned with "The Lake". The comments on that entry are just a muddled dispute on James Joyce, with only Gretchen weighing in to say something about Antony. Now, a long time later, I still listen to this tune. Not to the studio recording - to this live one, a little blurrier 'round the edges, and better for it. And so I want to offer it again, for anyone who wants to take it.

My purple prose from last August needs to be dismissed, though. Forget "that darkbright still-lapping lake". Instead: a piano; an audience; and a singer with a voice that's light, light, light. When I saw Antony perform, what I was most struck with was this - that despite his melismas, despite his vibrato, nothing was weighed down. That there was nothing overbearing or heavy in what was sung. Just flight, flight, flight.

A song that flutters through the vents and out into the night - winding with the steam, the smoke, the city's sodium glow.

[buy Antony's The Lake EP (which features the studio recording, not this one)]

I also stumbled across this flash animation that is soundtracked by Antony's "The Lake". It is the story of a fox who is a knight and who falls in love with a goddess fox after being swallowed by a thornbush, but when he goes back to the real world he's old and he dies. There aren't any lakes in it but like i said there are two foxes who can wear clothes and ride horses and fall in love.

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Alexander Tucker - "The Patron Saint of Troubled Men". Alexander Tucker's Old Fog, released on All Tomorrows' Parties newish label, is a prickly, spooky record - bluegrass, drone, old-fashioned brit- and psych-folk. He sounds like someone who crawled out of a green hill: moss in his beard, mandolin in his rucksack, mic and fourtrack in his hands. "The Patron Saint..." has the multilayered flora of bands like Akron/Family but in places the vocals are a thinned-out version of something almost heavy metal. And of course throughought it all the pluck and spark and spur of those back-porch guitar-strings.

What I like best is that there's nothing elfin about this music. No gnomes or pixies or goblins. Just a man with mud on his shoes, scrapes on his knuckles, drops of something strong and red at the bottom of his belly. And his fingers are playing at some wooden instrument's steel strings.

[buy uk/US]

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"Mr. Himelfarb has served his country well during a period of considerable uncertainty."

This seems a truism of all Himelfarbs.

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You Ain't No Picasso has a new song from Bishop Allen's upcoming February EP.

McSweeneys is taking submissions for "the best sentences written in 2005. This means the best sentences, period, from any source—book, blog, newspaper, journal, magazine. Anything published in 2005 in a verifiable medium." (Thanks Kevin.)

Archive.org has the entirety of Mika Björklund's found-sound album Gunkanjima for you to download. Drones, creaks, field recordings and a bit of electronics, all a soundtrack to Japan's freaking incredible Battleship Island. (via MeFi)