Chris Malinchak - "So Good To Me". A rosy little Monday morning gift. Small, translucent, like a pink bead. So slight that you could forget it somewhere - on a windowsill, a nighttable, a bench. You could forget it in your own pocket. You could take it for granted - this song that is itself about not taking love for granted, about knowing that feeling in every wakeful moment. You forget the reminder that you should not forget. This is a rosy little Monday morning gift; take care that it does not send you spilling out into loneliness. [soundcloud]

Aidan Knight - "A Mirror". I feel like Knight has written the kind of story I have written before: a man at the back of the corner shop, in the corner of the keg party, doing his work, doing his life, and full of longing. Knight does not overburden the story - he sings it lightly, wry, a little aloof. The arrangement gives the tale its colour, its sprays of red and neon green, its willful blues. Neat ratatatting drums, flourishes of organ, stately cello and nudges of horn and then a distant crackle of feedbacking guitar. There is something of "Penny Lane" in it - "Penny Lane" more than "Eleanor Rigby" - but Knight's disappointed aspirations are all British Columbia. [buy]

(image by Sam Irons)