Woodpigeon - "Are You There, God? It's Me, Mark". A song of seeking love, like so many others. But Mark Hamilton beseeches the universe in a tone that is unexpected, rough. "Are You There, God?" is gorgeous and furious. It's unsettled. These are the browns and navy blues of a painted shipwreck, a frozen shipwreck, a shipwreck at that moment where it is not yet wrecked; and the sun may rise, and the waves may settle, and the world may be kind, not cruel. Even the coda's sweetness is laced with something bitter; perhaps it is poison, perhaps it is nothing at all. Perhaps everything can work out OK.

[from Woodpigeon's beautiful & serious For Paolo EP / listen now / out Jan 23]

Water Liars/Phantom Limb - "Whoa Back" (Song removed at label request.) "Hi Julie. You need to update your message! Anyway, how are you? I never got to finish the story I was telling you this morning. I told you how Susan got a boat and then we found this nice little cottage timeshare on Craigslist. But what I didn't get to say is how we went down there in September, towing the boat. Two beautiful days in the countryside - rustling aspens, shouting bluejays, the whole caboodle. Very much in love. And then one afternoon we went out in the boat to the middle of the lake, and hoisted our fishing lines and Susan caught the end of a piece of rope. It wasn't a gross seaweedy rope - just a regular wet rope. When she tugged it, she could feel something on the end, down below. So we dragged it up into the boat. It was a giant ruby. I mean - we didn't know it was a ruby, it just looked like a beautiful shiny something, the size of a navel orange. The rope was tied to the ruby and then the ruby was tied to something else: the rope continued into the lake. So we pulled it out some more, and this time got a golden boot. A knee-high boot, made of gold. Like a sculpture. And more rope. So we pulled and pulled and kept getting these incredible treasures. A silver tiara, a diamond sceptre, a huge emerald and another giant ruby. Also some weirder things - a marble bust, a binder full of baseball cards, a locked jewellery-box that we still haven't opened. Soon the boat was way overburdened. Like, we were going to sink! We had enough treasure, anyway. So Susan snipped the rope and we rowed right back to shore. We waited a day or two. Then we drove everything into town. We're millionaires now and it's just the begin--" [message abruptly cuts off]

[Water Liars' excellent Phantom Limb LP recalls Phosphorescent, Songs:Ohia, Bedhead and the peppery smoke of heartbreak. Also, it is a collectors item. Formerly known as Phantom Limb, the band changed their name in December, after the CDs/LPs were printed. // Buy -- highly recommended.]

(photograph is Le Trombe del giudizio, by Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1968.)