Archives : all posts by Sean

Whispertown 2000 - "Through a Hole". Some songs rely on the alchemy of voice & voice, or voice & guitar. Just the right emphasis, just the right drawl, just the right throat with just the right strings. "Through a Hole" is like this, but bolstered with other things that make a song good: boot-stamps, sing-along, glockenspiel, mild twang, lyrics fired like watergun sprays - quantity over quality, tossing rings to see what catches. It's really good!

[buy it at their MySpace]

Greg Peterson ft. Fiona Kelly - "How I Got To Memphis". I don't think Peterson ever actually got to Memphis - he lives in New York, far as I can tell. And if he did I don't think he started out in the Arctic. But that's how I hear this song, with its long, slow opening of snow-white noise, then the sunbaked arrival of guitar, voice, horsehairy fiddle. It's a song of slow progress, tortoise over hare, a spirit very different from the Tom T Hall original (or the Solomon Burke cover). A song not of going but of having-gone. A lovesong I'd love one day to hear about me.

(thanks Ben)

[many Greg Peterson recordings for sale here, all at $5, and mp3s too. This track appears on It's Hard to Die With The Piney Wood Blues]

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Moka's Best of 2006 is a special list, and very different from most others that have appeared. Some very ghostly, potent post-rock and folktronica, much of which I haven't heard. The White Birch track she's posted is truly marvelous - sadly it's on Rune Grammofon, the (great) Norwegian label that charges a fucking fortune for its records. There is now a list as long as my arm of Grammofon records I want and have not mustered up the strength to order. I hope that you have hardier pocket-books! (I went to Norway hoping that their CDs would be more affordable there. Lest you follow the same tragic path: they are not.)

The always-worthy Nothing But Green Lights has released its Top British Acts of 2006, polling a small list of UK musicbloggers (myself included). Last year Girls Aloud won. This year the Top 10 is full of unsigned/small-time acts, which is really pretty cool. (I agree that it's not been a strong year for big-name British acts.) For those who are curious, my ballot's after the jump.

(drawing by Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch)

Let's Go Sailing - "Icicles". Straight from Los Angeles comes a song with jingle-bells and icicle-talk, a warming tone that's equal parts Winter, Spring and Summer (but definitely not Fall). Shana Levy sings sweet over jangling guitars, and me I imagine her in red shoes and red gloves, posing beside snowmen while icicles fall from red tile roofs.

[buy]

Alasdair Roberts - "River Rhine". There are madrigals, rounds, quatrains, sonnets, all sorts of names for songs and poems. And I want to add another name to this list: "a kindness". I'm not sure I can put into words what a "kindness" is, but for examples please look at the work that Alasdair Roberts has been recording for years. The Glaswegian sings traditional folk songs in a coaxing, asking, gentle voice - and he plays his guitar in colours gold and copper. This song is taken from his upcoming album The Amber Gatherers, which is very good, and one of the most special things therein is the use of drums. Brushes, claps, hits, hushes - a splash-and-slap undertone to the softness of the other sounds. "River Rhine" is no exception: the only thing better than the drums is the rest. It's one of the sweetest love-songs i can remember, hewn in rhymes and finger-picked guitar. When Alasdair says "...she sees The Clyde in mine," another guitar coming to life, my heart rolls over in my chest to stare wistfully up at clouds.

It's not even 2007 yet and I'm already my compiling my Best of Year list. "River Rhine" is near the top.

[The Amber Gatherers is released on Drag City later this winter. There's another mp3 bottom-left on the Drag City page.]

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Elsewhere:

Marathonpacks' Best Albums of 2006 writeup is very, very thorough and very, very good.

The new Arcade Fire album has a title, a website and a phone number. Torture Garden has more.

And finally-

Callum Robbins, the baby son of Janet Morgan and J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines, etc), was recently diagnosed with Type 1 SMA, a genetic motor neuron disease. "The disease affects the brain's ability to communicate with the voluntary muscles that are used for activities such as crawling, walking, head and neck control, breathing, and swallowing. Type 1 SMA is usually fatal; most Type 1 babies will die before their second birthday." This is very sad but by pursuing alternative treatments, Janet and J. hope that their little boy will have a long and happy life. (We hope so too.) DeSoto Records is working with the family to raise funds, as these expenditures could likely bankrupt them. Please consider donating.

(photo by lala ladcani)

Yesterday Dan and Jordan wrote about their favourite music of 2006. Today, as I did last year, I offer you my favourite songs of 2006. The list goes to #55 and there are mp3s for the top 35. I decided no artist would appear more than once. I regret the lack of pop and hip-hop but I didn't hear very much and not many people sent it to me.

If you like a song, please support the artist - there are links for you to buy each record.

My favourite albums of the year were, in descending order: Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies, The Knife - Silent Shout, Swan Lake - Beast Moans, Grizzly Bear - Yellow House, Jason Molina - Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go, Espers - Espers II, Beirut - Gulag Orkestar, Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds, Damien Jurado - Now That I'm Your Shadow, Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury, Fionn Regan - The End of History, White Flight - s/t.

I suggest you buy them all, and let them rattle you.

1. Beirut - "Postcards from Italy" [buy]
   Beirut became a little famous this year, and more than anything it's because two songs available free on his website - this one and "Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)". "Postcards from Italy" is a song so generous with its pleasures, so easy to love: beautiful, breathless, wistful. A pop music rendered in shades of brown, black and gold (beer-brown, night-black, coin-gold), Condon's woozy, heartflushed voice set amid ukelele, piano, gyspy trumpet, and roll-thumping drums. And just when you think "Ok, got it," about two minutes in - there's a whole other song that crests above you, sweet as full longing. "And I would love to see that day / That day is mine / When she will marry me outside / With the willow trees / And play the songs that made / that made me so." (Beirut previously on StG: 1 2 guestpost)
2. Lavender Diamond - "You Broke My Heart" [buy]
   "You Broke My Heart" was first released in 2005 and will be reissued on Matador & Rough Trade in 2007. But it is one of my songs of 2006. Nothing else in these eleven and a half months has so captured the way heartbreak can be answered with resolve, two songs sung in one voice. It's a victory march, with tears streaming. It's a parade down the Champs-Elysees with people cheering from their windows, tickertapes fanning & falling, clouds white as the pages of new books. Becky Stark sings the same line over and over, high as high, transforming heartbreak into triumph. And the drums and bells and piano say the same thing: Yes, yes, yes, oh yes, yes, to it all I'll say yes.
3. Munk & James Murphy - "Kick Out the Chairs (Who Made Who replay)"
   This didn't come out in 2006 either. I guess my list is a bit of a sham. But whenever it did come out, people did not speak of it. And so now here were are with the NUMBA THREE of TWO THOUSAND SIX, and thank god it's finally a song that is fun. LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy shouts himself hoarse singing a nonsense about "kick[ing] out the chizzairs, muthaf***ers!". Who Made Who turns the tiresome original into a thing of loud funky brilliance, a pleasure that's ripe as new peaches-persimmons-pineapples. As limes. You can hear the smile on Nancy Wang's lips as she sings along. You can hear the joy in the cowbell. There's nothing spooky-nasty-dark: it's all free glad glorious awesome life. (Previously on Stg)
4. Yo La Tengo - "Black Flowers" [buy]
   As I said in September, James McNew's got a tawny melody, light as sparrow, but he puts it in a room with sounds of deep blues, reds, blacks. Piano, french horn, violin, and these brilliant clipped synth-strings, like sprouts. The song's sumptuous, a ballad worthy of the radio - it has all the gentle prettiness that attracts people to Sufjan Stevens, the cresting feeling that draws listeners, even, to Snow Patrol or Coldplay (listen to the Chris Martin-like "Oh-oh" at 3:09). ... It's plain and unconflicted songcraft: it rubs my heart til it glows. No fucking around: just glassy, sweet song; dark petals blooming.
5. Grizzly Bear - "Knife" [buy]
   The prettiest song about backstabbing that you'll ever hear. The content of the message becomes detached from its delivery: "Do you think it's all right?" they sing in a chorus of chemical doo-wop, "Do you think it's all right? Can't you feel the knife?" Simultaneously intimate and public, bitter and celebratory, like a hate-letter written in curlicued clouds across the whole Brooklyn sky. (Grizzly Bear previously on StG: 1 2 3 guestpost)
6. Ola Podrida - "Pour Me Another (demo)" [MySpace]
   Ola Podrida's debut album will be released in 2007 on Plug Research. This is a demo version of "Pour Me Another". It's a love song as true as any you'll hear this year. You can hear him trying to get this down, fingers on piano-keys. Trying to tell someone exactly what he feels about her. It's clumsy, careful. It's graceful, brave. All I can hope is that you have someone to give it to. (Ola Podrida previously on StG: 1 2)
7. The Knife - "We Share Our Mother's Health (Trentemoller remix)" [buy]
   The original of this Knife song is very, very good, but divorced from the rest of the album I prefer Trentemoller's version, that wintry electro distended into cold ice. It comes at you from all directions, heaves of melody coming shattering up from under your feet. (The Knife previously on StG: 1 2)
8. Chris Garneau - "Not Nice" [pre-order]
   Previously on StG: This is the inverse of Antony (& the Johnsons). It's as if Garneau's been gathering songs like this, stillness and piano and cello, and he's been collecting all the gaps in these other peoples' tracks. And then with care, yes with pain, he makes his own song - a song made just of the gaps. Of the pauses that make something flicker instead of shine.
9. Ghostface Killa ft. Cappadonna, Shawn Wigs & Trife - "Jellyfish" [buy]
   It's a tribute to the perfect woman, body and mind: "I'm not cheatin' on her or beatin' on her / I spend the weekend on her." The organ sample's feels like nothing but a golden age - some downtown utopia with a Helen on your arm.
10. Herman Dune - "I Wish That I Could See You Soon" [buy]
    The song with the best music video of the year. Prevously on Said the Gramophone: Herman Dune's new album is made with major label lucre: horn section, expensive studio, backup singers. But it's also made with familiar stuff: tambourine jangle, sneaker squeak, rhymes like high-fives. "I Wish That I Could See You Soon" hides nothing. It's about wishing that I could see you soon. It's about seeing a photograph and hearing trumpets; it's about talking to yourself; it's about wanting, wanting, wanting; about there being no way to say and nothing you can do. Part of me wants to re-record it at half-speed, just murmur and lazy-strummed mandolin, singing all the sadness that the song submerges. Herman Dune don't wallow even for a second: they consider the worst-case, they sing it, but then they move on to the more important stuff. To wishing. And wishing is fast enough to dance to.
11. Destroyer - "Rubies" [buy ($8.99)]
    A sprawling, baffling song, all knees and elbows and spurts of juicy-red guitar. Previously: With Destroyer, every line is an aside; no line is an aside; we listen from all sides, and he knows it ... a drumkit that keeps throwing itself across the studio floor ... Bejar's wistful and moony; he's a dandy; he's exact ("typical / rural / shit"), and abrupt ("I won't repeat them here"). He's a Bowie-like frontman and later just a man with ... a plaintive reaching theme.
12. Justin Timberlake ft. T. I. - "My Love" [buy]
    Bar none the best song about Cameron Diaz that I've ever heard. Timbaland's made a love-song with hydra-headed personality: the club-banging synth blitz, the blushing falsetto, the easygoing beatbox, the goofy gremlin laugh that fastens everything to earth. And Justin & T.I. fill it with something that's at once sincere and exquisitely Prince-catchy.
13. Sunparlour Players - "Talk It To Death (live)" [buy]
    Two Toronto Mennonites play a song on glockenspiel, guitar, bass drum and throat. As Dan pointed out, Andrew Penner sounds a great deal like the Arcade Fire's Win Butler used to - it's a voice with a woodgrain of ache, desires sent wheeling up in a series of whoops.
14. Peter Bjorn & John with Victoria Bergsman - "Young Folks" [buy]
    A model duet, times three: 1) the perfect matching of clear drums and loping bassline; 2) Bjorn's tentative voice and The Concretes' Victoria Bergsman out-wearying even Camera Obscura's Traceyanne Campbell; 3) bongos (my most hated amateur instrument) and whistling (my most beloved amateur instrument). (Previously on StG)
15. Sunset Rubdown - "Us Ones in Between" [buy]
    I woke up to this song when Dan Beirne, of this blog, made a music video, of sorts, for it. (The video is archived here.) Before then I had enjoyed it but it was like being in a dark room and not knowing that in the corner behind you was a flame. It's sad and beautiful, shrill and soothing, a song perfectly about precipice. And if you listen to the words (which I eventually did), you'll find that Spencer Krug has quietly become one of the best lyricists in all of indie rock.
16. Christine Fellows - "Vertebrae" [buy]
    She has me at "tigerlilies". Listen and you'll hear what I mean. Fellows lives in Winnipeg. She has toured with The Mountain Goats and The Weakerthans. She plays her organ and sings in her strange, flowering voice - a bit Joanna Newsom, aye, and a bit Regina Spektor. But more solitary, more (yes) kind. And it's a song that is so sad, so moving and sad, speaking with small sweet grace to those hollowed weeks after a loved one's death.

    Kevin sent this to me and in so doing is the first winner of our Best of 2006 contest.

17. Swan Lake - "The Freedom" [buy]
    Swan Lake's Beast Moans is free - not like beer, like jazz. Every few bars, someone opens a cage and lets something loose. I don't think they even know what they're letting go. And the magic here is that amid all these weird-wood sounds, these industrial groans, are hooks and melody and catchphrases easy-on-the-ears. A pop song yoked to the cyclops, with Dan Bejar singing its tale. (Previously on StG.)
18. Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy" [buy]
    Only one je ne sais quoi away from being a stone-cold classic - like Marvin Gaye or Al Green classic, seriously. The bassline is tailor-made for college acapella groups, and Ceelo's vocals seem so slim-nimble that they'd be tailor-made for a tailor-made suit. Something in pinstripes, with seams about to split.
19. Casey Dienel - "The La La Song" [buy]
    Previously on StG: Casey sings her song and then figures out how to sing it better. She plays the piano, singing, singing, words about peaches and clementines and regret. She sings all these words - and then she realises that the tangled-up things she's trying to say - well that bundle of moments isn't gonna come across in rhyming verses. There's a better way: just some "la's", high and reaching, and then a final one, low and sure.
20. Bob Dylan - "Spirit on the Water" [buy]
    Previously on StG: All kinds of lavender as his band plays the most beautiful melody of any Dylan song I can remember: peace and quiet, chance and possibility, bliss and ease, all of it right there in the blush of steel strings.
21. Cat Power - "The Greatest" [buy ($8.00)]
    A dusty (springfield) kinda number, Chan Marshall stretched slow and wanting over a perfect field of drums - hit like so, brush like thus, chime and toe-stepping step. Summer hot, country fair, and ended (thank goodness) before it gets too sweet. (Previously on StG)
22. The Pendulums - "Brand New Song" [buy]
    Psychfolk from Glasgow that captures the whimsy of 70s bands like Gong and The Incredible String Band - daft, zinging, and a splendidly great song. Trombone, violin and Commodore 64s oh my! (Previously on StG)
23. Regina Spektor - "Fidelity" [buy]
    All of Spektor's work relies on her delivery - a thing more often magic in person than on record. But "Fidelity" flourishes in these glossy surroundings, the stuttering strings hanging back just enough for Regina to dare dash forward.
24. Sleeping States - "Rivers" [buy]
    Previously on StG: The river Sleeping States summon is so gentle, so Saturday, that the whole world can go fuzzy. A handful of grass in the bottom of your boat - squint and it's Pavement, it's Grizzly Bear, ... electric guitar, bass, and drums.
25. Hookers Green No. 1 - "Bloody Great Big Fucking Party" [info]
    Previously on StG: Electric guitars swagger and droop, a synth-line wiggles, voices woo-woo from the back. ... It's a crowd of rowdy Scots whose chants will rouse the housewives, whose coo will call the fishes, whose hot-cold sass will fry your egg, flip it into a roll, set it warm in your hands.
26. Espers - "Dead Queen" [buy]
    Electric guitar that smells of ozone, blended voices that smell of foreign, Northern winds. Espers' folk-music is eerie, lovely, rife. (Previously on StG)
27. Antarctica Takes It! - "I'm No Lover" [buy/MySpace]
    Previously on StG: Listen to the exclamation of this song! The band earns the '!'. Listen to the cannonade of percussion, the charge of clap-clap, the hoarsening voices and the go-insane of the piano... the closing horn fanfare like a cavalry of rainbows that the general's added "just because we can! On, men! On on on!" They're from Santa Cruz (!?).
28. Rah Rah - "Winter Sun" [MySpace]
    Saskatchewan's got something going on. First Matthew Feyld and now Rah Rah, from Regina, with a song that heats my bones. Despite the heat of their voices (boy-girl, with the latter recalling Cat Power and Newsom-squawk both,) "Winter Sun" is as blizzarded as the title suggests. The lyrics are double-edged: whether whispers meant for bed or fog, for the lost or the found.

    JW suggested this song and in so doing was the second (and final) winner of our Best of 2006 contest.

29. Lily Allen - "LDN" [buy]
    Cynical and fancy-free; yes, both. Ingredients: sun, lilt, dash of cane sugar.
30. Joanna Newsom - "Emily" [buy]
    It's not a compact song, nor one that offers itself up at first glance. It's hard to twist your life through it: the laces are tied. But for me it's a string of moments: splendours that show themselves like cloud emerging hush from behind the sun. (Previously on StG: 1 2)
31. Fionn Regan - "Put a Penny in the Slot" [buy]
    An Irishman with an acoustic guitar - but he's no sad-sack. He plays as he plays, trying phrases, trying moods, setting it in the same circling strains of guitar. And in the bridge at 2:05, everything goes goooolden. (Previously on StG)
32. Bishop Allen - "Flight 180" [buy]
    Bishop Allen have released ten EPs in 2006 so far, with many good songs therein contained. And this is my favourite. It's more Arcade Fire than indie-pop, something dark and full of promises. Justin Rice sounds ragged and a little scared. The violins sound strained. And when the drums come, they clear it all away.
33. Horse Feathers - "Finch on Saturday" [MySpace]
    I want a fiddle for my best friend. (Previously on StG)
34. Dorian Hatchet - "Fast Runner" [MySpace]
    A girl with a folded voice sings of killing her brother, over and over, while piano scampers, leaps, runs. As much fun as slipping on a patch of ice and for a moment flying. (Previously on StG)
35. Rappers' Delight Club - "Hum" [MySpace]
    Previously on StG: In short, this is four minutes of the looped Elmo themesong, but with kids laying it down. They rap like monsters, like beasts, like cheese-shop clerks. Like kids, really - and beyond the ceaseless sparkle of the song, there's the plain flact of their flow.

For the curious, my favourite songs #35-55 are after the jump.

Part 1 of our discussion of the best of the year, wherein Dan and Jordan discuss their favourite albums, and Jordan also lists his favourite songs. Sean's favourite songs of 2006 to follow tomorrow.

The world's population can be divided into two distinct groups: List People and The Others.

There was a movie made about The Others starring Nicole Kidman as (spoiler alert) one of them, and the philosopher and cultural critic Edward Said wrote a great deal about Others. Anyway, I am one of them. Lists bring me no pleasure. I remember as a little kid asking my dad who the greatest baseball player of all time was, and him treating this as a deeply misguided question, explaining to me that there were a great many great baseball players and what made each one great was a set of qualities so abstract that it couldn't be meaningfully judged against another's. This made sense to me (though I knew for a fact that Jesse Barfield was the greatest player of all time). So it is too with music, of course. What does it mean to say that Coltrane is better than Fahey, Charles Ives better than Marvin Gaye? Their respective greatnesses are, in mathematical terms, incommensurable. Which is not to say that no kind of judgment of relative merit in music is possible (otherwise we'd be out of a job) - we can surely distinguish between the great and the very good (Coltrane is better than Modest Mouse, right?), the merely good and the not so good - just that at a certain point, when dealing with music of comparable value (leaving aside what exactly "value" means here), such judgments start to break down.

So why a list at all? Well,

1. I made some perfunctory Utilitarian calculations which demonstrated that the pleasure that List People derive from reading a list likely far outweighs the discomfort that an Other, such as myself, experiences compiling one.
2. With a site such as StG, where we write only about music we really like, I imagine our constant praise can sometimes appear vacuous. Of course, though we may not always do a great job of showing it, we do not like everything we post equally. So this list is an attempt to give you some perspective on the hundreds of positive reviews we've written this year. Finally and most importantly,
3. Sean made me.

Albums

1. Joanna Newsom - Ys

And in no particular order:

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
The Red River – Some Songs About a Flood
Nat Baldwin - Enter the Winter
Richard Buckner - Meadow
Horse Feathers – Words are Dead
Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds

Songs

In no particular order:

Neko Case - "That Teenage Feeling" [Previously]
The Red River – "The Mighty Tide" [Previously]
Nat Baldwin – "Within Walls" [Previously]
Horse Feathers – "Finch on Saturday" [Previously]
Early Day Miners – "Sans Revival" [Previously]
Beirut - "Postcards From Italy" [Sean previously on Beirut]
Cat Power – "The Greatest" [Previously]

For my list, I feel sheepish about trying to present this to you. I feel like every one needs to be justified, as if in a sentence or two, I could represent to you the reason these artists are vibrant, present, alive. All I can say is that they are to me and I just want to share with you. So, in reverse order, here goes 2006:

12. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Brown paper songs that can tear and let loose a flood, a pink wind.

11. The Low Lows - Fire on the Bright Sky
Like flagless flagpoles that rattle their rings in the night breeze, and as you drive into an unknown town, the credits are always inching up behind you. (listen to "No Such Thing as Sara Jane")

10. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Checking your pockets, what's been jingling there all day, three coins, each ornate and priceless, one gold, one made of wrought-iron, one of good ol' solid steel.

9. Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
Broken pianos, voices standing on their heads, and dance beats like heavy winter coats. A song from every genre, not a single one of which is a musical genre. (listen to "Oh Sweet Woods")

8. Horse Feathers - Words are Dead
Eat this album like a sad yellow breakfast. Unrelenting and surprisingly eternal for an album so deathly, so final. (listen to "Blood on the Snow")

7. Parenthetical Girls - Safe as Houses
Percussing and throbbing with treble and warble and writhing with angry-eyed love. (listen to "The Four Platitudes")

6. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette
Like a Mike Leigh film, a book of Hemingway short stories, and a sleep on a stranger's couch, all at once. Pure winter. (listen to "New Year's Kiss")

5. Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
If there were any woods left, any real woods, this would be a walk in that woods. (listen to "This Lamb Sells Condos")

4. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up, I'm Dreaming
This is where it gets difficult. It really is harder to write about the things you like most. If this album could be charted like a map (which it ought to be) you'd have to use a pair of dice to navigate it, and you'd need to take a lot of weapons. (listen to the Daytrotter version of "They Took a Vote and Said No")

3. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
Ever eat an omelette and think, halfway through, "why do I like omelettes?" but then when you're finished, you just feel great? Yeah, me too.

2. The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth
Look at a row of books on a shelf. Think about how many words are between here and here. Art is so much fucking work. (listen to "Razorblade")

1. Joanna Newsom - Ys
Without trying to be over-emphatic or sensational, one of the best albums I have ever heard in my life. Head and shoulders the best album of the year, and possibly the best album, as I understand an album to be defined, made by anyone ever.

Los Campesinos! - "You! Me! Dancing!". Cardiff's Los Campesinos! have an exclamation mark in their name, like the Go Team!, are signed to Wichita, like the Go Team!, and blaze fucking technicolour, like the Go Team!. But while the punctuation, the label and the razzle-dazzle are familiar, they don't particularly sound anything like the Go Team!: instead it's the glockenspiel indiepop of The Delgados, The Winks and Ballboy. Boys sing with girls, nonsense is bellowed, calm gives way to dancebeat rock'n'roll. It starts all coy, playin' with atmospherics and anticipation, but come 1:38 you'll know what the song is about - a cycle of guitar, drums and glock that'll wear you ragged. They're a group that makes me wish I was in a band; it's a song that makes me wish I was a piece of vinyl.

[MySpace]

Kim Doo Soo - "Wild Flower". This is from a compilation called International Sad Hits, Vol. 1: Altaic Language Group. It's a record compiled by Damon & Naomi, with contributions by four Asian singer-songwriters who are veterans in their scenes - compared in the press notes to the likes of Tim Buckley, Bob Dylan and Nick Drake. This is by far my favourite cut on the record, something soft and a little broken by Korea's Kim Doo Soo. It opens with a clip from Badly Drawn Boy's "Stone on the Water" (thanks aleska!), violin trembling under disjointed organ phrases. When Kim Doo Soo's voice appears it is balanced delicate on the line between melancholy and maudlin. As the song rises around him - harmonica, plucked fiddle, - and returns to the opening melody, the maudlin aspect's totally gone. It's just plainly sad.

[buy / read Damon's StG guestpost from April 2005]

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Shake Your Fist shares Robin Allender's version of The Snowman's "Walking in the Air". Allender used to record as The Inconsolable. The Snowman was one of my most cherished childhood films: a spinning musicbox version still sits by the bed in my old room at my parents'. Allender's rendition is not quite slow enough, but as Amy says it is a "sugar-dusted murmur" - quiet as my whisper at the first sight of snow.

For something very strange, see IRN BRU's version of The Snowman (and "Walking In The Air"), featuring a fly-over of the Forth Bridge, Edinburgh Castle, Princes Street Gardens, George Square, and other suitably Scottish landmarks. IRN BRU is of course a Scottish soft drink, made of girders.

Scots should join me at Damien Jurado in Glasgow tonight. (Turns out this was last night - dammit!)

(Best of Year contest winner(s) will be announced next week when StG presents its favourite music of 2006.)

Matthew Feyld lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Saskatchewan is more often a place of wheat than of wonders - but you can never predict what will appear from under that big sky.

Please, please, please, leave a comment and tell him what you think.

These images look much better full-size. Click on 'em!

[Matthew Feyld, Saskatoon based artist, is a lad who grew up with a birth defect that made his head swell unbeliveably. this happened at the worst times possible... during show and tell... at the science fair... on his first date... it happened from stress. he found that keeping calm helped his head stay normal and drawing, painting, scribbling was his cure. his work is almost voodoo to keep his swollen head from reappearing. it recreats his greatest fears. beady eyed monsters with giant ballon heads fighting off the world in tights. See more of his work at flickr; all works are for sale by contacting Matthew.]

(Previous guest-blogs: The Weakerthans, Parenthetical Girls, artist Daria Tessler, Clem Snide, Marcello Carlin, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)

Vince Guaraldi - "Christmas Time Is Here (alternate vocal take)". Loo loo loo loo-loo. Loo loo loo, loo-loo. Loo loo loo, loo loo loo-loo, loo loo loo-loo loo loo. Loo loo-loo loo looooo. Loo loo-loo loo loooo. Loo loo-loo loo-loo loo-loo loo-loo loo-loo loo loo. Loo loo loo, loo-loo. Loo loo loo, loo-loo. Loo loo-loo loo loo loo loo loo loo loo-loo loo loooo.

The funny thing, of course, is that when Vince and his trio are playing, this is a language that I understand utterly.

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Da Bears - "Cage of Ribs". Da Bears take one riff, one hook, and use it to tremendous effect: first it's guitars-bass-drums, then it's backwards-singing, later it's piano and finally rattle-tat horns. It's not quite Broken Social Scene but it's something simple and juicy and a great deal of fun; it's an ice-breaker; it's a get-up-and-sing. Sometimes the alarm clock goes off and you leap clear out of bed, swizzle-twisting in the air, like a corkscrew of streamer that lands in socked feet on the floor. Sometimes you do it with headphones on, just walking down the street, listening to some San Diego indie rock band.

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You have until 11:59 pm tonight to enter my Best Song of 2006 contest. Some great entries so far.

And as I said before, if you're a reader in Krakow, Iceland, Istanbul or Paris, please consider getting in touch - I'm coming to visit in January/February. (I'll be answering soon the ones who have already written!)

(deer photograph by Christine Zilka)