Evening Hymns - "Sweet Surrender". Somewhere in the multiverse, there is an alternate Earth where Sarah McLachlan listened to different tapes, signed to a different record label, stayed east in Halifax instead of migrating westward to B.C. This universe's "Sweet Surrender" is not necessarily superior to our universe's "Sweet Surrender" - McLachlan's 1998 hit is one of my favourite mainstream cancon ballads. But instead of boasting a clean, polished sound; instead of trim drums and neat electric guitars, where the only mystery is the singer's cool + reverberating voice; instead of all that, in this Eric's Trip-inspired "Surrender", there'd be fuzz and chug, voices like burnt sugar. There'd be something closer to what Evening Hymns have done - recasting Thursday midnight as Saturday hangover, mystic longing as grounded wishing. But the same hope and the same defeat: Sarah McLachlan knows and Evening Hymns know that this song is about the hope as well as defeat. Sometimes hope and defeat are call and answer; sometimes they're just singing at the same time. Sometimes hope and defeat are the same syllables in the same voice at the same time, impossible.

[This "Sweet Surrender" is taken from Quick Before It Melts' DOMINIONATED (Deux), a free compilation "of classic Canadian songs covered by contemporary Canadian artists". / more from Evening Hymns]