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There's a pleasant symmetry to the two artists profiled today.

Ball Boy - "A Day In Space". Ball Boy's a UK oddity, always sounding too indie to make the mainstream, and yet successfully charting (at least to some degree), with the help of John Peel. For the most part, they sound like Belle & Sebastian playing proper rock instruments, but really the differences run deeper (in spite of the common Scottish heritage). Ball Boy is a much more forthright band, more confrontational, less sensitive. They have more in common with The Streets, in a way, than they do Stuart Murdoch.

All that aside, of course, it's impossible not to notice the similarities between "A Day In Space" and B&S's "Space Boy Dream," off of Boy With the Arab Strap. Or, if not that, to notice the connection to the Scottish monologues of the band Arab Strap. I assert, however, that this is something rather different, that there's something new in Ball Boy's sarcastic wit and dreamy sincerity. This is a nifty spoken-word song that opens with acoustic guitar and Elvis Presley lyrics, sliding soon into long stratospheric synths and Gordon McIntyre's clear-eyed monologue. It's inherently goofy - a man's desire to visit space - but the gravitas of McIntyre's delivery, the full sincerity of the emotions expressed, make me both laugh along and share the silly fantasy. (The bit at the end, the dialogue he narrates, when he tells them he's going to say something "important," is comedy and truth and dream. in short, it's quietly wonderful.)

Donkey Boy - "Upchuck". Donkey Boy's stuff was passed on to me by Dave, whom I assume is Donkey Boy himself, and it's fine, splintered alt.folk - like Sparklehorse with toy instruments and a lofi pop glimmer. I like the wryness that breathes within the dustiness, the way the singer has withdrawn slightly from the back-and-forth of synths and sound-effects. It's sweet and forlorn, but there's a grin behind all that - it's a heartfelt song that ends with someone smilingly talking shit.

Again, sorry today's post is so late: I just turned in the final paper of my university career.

To make up for my tardiness -- an extra-special three-song cavalcade to kick-start all of our week-ends.

First up, Chris Lee - "Cossacks of Love". One of the breeziest, most joyful rock songs of last year - a chuffed guitarline, handclaps, and Lee's gladfly voice. It takes a moment for the song to really sink its teeth in; I'm always put off by the bassline in those opening seconds - it's like the bassline for a song I don't like, somehow. But by the time we're rushing into the chorus, whiteblue wind in our hair, all is forgotten. I'll avoid the "cossacks" and "tedious gangsters" of love, just so long as Lee keeps singing - excited, euphoric. Joycore in the kindest, creamiest, most middle-aged way.

Outkast ft. Sean Paul - "Hey Ya! [remix]". A straightforward remix of "Hey Ya!" dropping Sean Paul and a bullhorn into the midst of the Outkast beat-turned-riddim. Spizzazzz didn't like it ("Terrible!"), but I don't really see much to hate, unless you hate "Hey Ya!"/Sean Paul to begin with (which I don't). Not as good as the original, certainly, but this version's got some dancehall. Which is very pleasant on a Friday evening.

(n.b. This is actually the weakest of the three OutKast rehashes I've heard this month. The other two are Will Young's live r&b version of "Hey Ya" - really nice and slow, with blue piano and purple backup singing [it sort of falls apart at the end with a bongo breakdown, but-], - and the Benny Benassi remix of "Ghettomusick," which Mark sent my way, and which will appear on StG if there's any interest. It will make you dance like an electric motherfucking flower.)

Finally, Hanson - "Underneath". Listen up, indie kids - you're allowed to like Hanson, now. That's right: they quit Polygram and released the new one on their own label, 3CG. Come, you repressed indie rocker! Rise and embrace the pop ambrosia that is Hanson - the sweet vocals, the sugar-hooked melodies, the divinely inspired bridges. But wait! You think that they've already peaked? That they can do no better than they already have? That 2004's Underneath, as well as its title-track, will necessarily be a load of recycled dung?

Well, you are mistaken! Not only is "Underneath" a glittering, ringing, awesome pop-rock ballad, not only does it have a bracing piano and brotherly harmonies, Coldplay guitars and strident strings, but it was co-written by Matthew Sweet. That's right: the teenaged brains behind "MMMbop" united with the mind behind Girlfriend. It's like an insane pop superhero crossover, and the best part is that this isn't a clumsy career-grab by Sweet (or Hanson): it's a jubilant, catchy hit. It's like "MMMBop" for when it's pouring outside; Treble Charger without the grit; like singing to the storm in a smiling, unabashed way. (And it's also not the lead-off single.)

Other things:

Icepeople downloads includes music recorded by cabin-feverish ne'er-do-wells in Antarctica. Not all the links work, but you can download the complete album of "McMurdo [Station]'s Other Band," in mp3 format. It's good-natured folk-pop, with a few instrumentals. Particularly good are tracks 16 (guitar, bongos, and a solemn saxophone), and 15 (a shuffling ode to amphetamines: "I don't have a bad time / I don't need to come / for I have become an amphetamine bum. / If you don't like sleeping and / don't want to screw / then you should take lots of amphetamines, too." Then they go into an enthusiastic "ampheta-pheta-pheta-...-phetamines" chorus.). Oh yes, and track 3 is fun cuz it's a sad-sack guy-with-guitar, singing "every day it's colder and colder / and darker and darker / until it's gone," but it's true because he's in Antarctica. (Many thanks to my sister for the head's up!)

Also, be sure to peep the new (and really excellent) group mp3blog, music (for robots). great variety - hardcore, dance, hiphop, indie and more. with an ear to the ground in the fluxblog way. (I'll probably be posting a different track by The Killers, next week.)

TTIKTDA has had a great week, as well. The horn theme at first seems kind of stilted, but Keith's picked some great tracks to share. The must-haves: orchestral ska by the Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution (no really, it's good), the delirious, sweet Long Winters cut, gypsy-punk by Gogol Bordello, and the insane, riotous Giddy Motors song.

Other tracks of note: Vincent Gallo (sleepy Badly Drawn Boy alt.folk) and Architecture in Helsinki (indie pop) at new (ish). [no permalinks (!!!) so you gotta scroll down.]

Oh right - I see that Said the Gramophone is listed on kinja now, and I'd like an icon to go with our listings there. Art's not my forte, though, so I'm hoping someone out there has a little more ability and wants to give it a shot. If you're game, send me a 32 x 32 pixel image, and I'll dropload the winner something good from my vaults (I've got the new Streets and Badly Drawn Boy, f'instance). Thank-you in advance!

Happy Thursday, fellows and lassies.

Shearwater is the project of Austin's Jonathan Meiburg and Will Robinson Sheff, both of whom are members of the fan-fucking-tastic folk-crash band, Okkervil River. The group was conceived before Meiburg had joined the other band, as an outlet for Sheff's more barren songs, which would not have fit with the muddy aesthetic of Okkervil River's early releases. I've never heard their first album, but their second, 2002's Everybody Makes Mistakes, was a quiet and crushingly-depressing exploration of, well, accidents. Lonely pianos, Meiburg's high, plaintive voice, and a great deal of space. Winged Life, which was released earlier this year, flies closer to Okkervil River's rustling melancholy; it's very good, though, and there's a slowness, an ache, which was lacking in Okkervil River's last LP. Folk-pop for weeping - Sufjan Stevens without the prayer, Low without the bass.

That's the bio, then. Now the songs:

Shearwater - "Well, Benjamin". Perhaps the most 'stompy' of the songs Shearwater's released - closer to Okkervil River, certainly, than the bulk of their work. But the dauntless friendliness of the melody, the burbling organ, make it hard to refuse the track's appeal. It's about a pilot's lover, fatalistic love - "Because I thought it out, in the time I?ve got, and I don?t care if I drown or not: I just want to crash into that same cold sea." Sheff sings with a calm sincerity, that is, until a bowed acoustic bass sets the wheels in motion, folds the landing-gear up, sets to the air, and then stares back to earth. A dry-but-pumping love-song; an old love; a silly, serious, wonderful one.

Shearwater - "The Set Table". The final song off Winged Life, it's a long and meditative slide into feeling, electric guitars that tickle at long-calling voices. It takes only tentative steps till the drums stutter in, then finds room for a violin and some real (loud) voice. It's like yelling into a pitch black night, but only until a few lights begin to flicker on. Sad and fierce music for a big, lonely world.

Mickey 3D - "Là". This French band has released two records of rock for sensitive slackers, sincere but sloppy. "Là" is a terrific piece of quiet-loud mope-pop, reminding me a great deal of Snow Patrol's hit "Run". Whereas Snow Patrol is incontrovertibly nice, however, Mickey 3D's a little more honest in its melancholy-glad semilovesongs. To translate from the first verse: "One day I'll be there, well-hidden underground / And no one will see me / Looking under girls' skirts." Bass and drums trot along until they hit a wall of electric guitars, a waterfall mist of good-natured noise. Organs clamber in for the climax, like reliable brothers who promised they'd be there to see the city fall.

Hank Dogs - "Same New". Ovaltine for the ears. Sleepy blushing folk, with dreamy sighs and a glittering fingerpicked guitar. I wrote a couple of years ago that it was music "like eyelids fluttering open". This continues to feel true. The bassline wakes slowly, birds alight on bare branches, and Lily sings like a carefree Beth Orton - beauty with nothing to prove. "Everything to come will just be more of the same." It's a resignation that's dabbed with spots of hope, long strides up a hill, a quickening heartpattering pace. As folk-rock goes, Hank Dogs are descended from the Bert Jansch/Fairport Convention line, instead of Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie. In other words, they're from the UK.

Two wonderfully fun heyday yee-hah zoomzoomzoom tracks!

The Divine Comedy - "Gin Soaked Boy". The release of this Divine Comedy original (sorry, Tom Waits fans) coincided with the band's 1999 greatest hits album, Secret History. It's a chugging, pulsing chamber pop tune, a circular melody festooned with piano and synths and electric guitars. The song's slightly stupid, but wonderfully so - it's a stolid showcase for Neil Hannon's crooner vocals, for ba ba ba la la's and, most of all, goofy/brilliant rhyming couplets. The inane bumps up against the wise, the cliche against the startling. "I'm the spirit in the sky / I'm the catcher in the rye / I'm the twinkle in her eye / I'm Jeff Goldblum in The Fly..." It's a great deal of fun, carefully arranged, fearlessly excited.

Wheat - "I Met a Girl". The sparkling opening track from Wheat's 2004 record, Per Second, Per Second... Every Second. It's a gutsy, vivacious bit of guitar pop - a delirious, backwards-bending chorus that's brought some verses along for tradition's sake. The drums smack like a solo bedroom dance-party, the guitars zip up and down the speakers, and one of them wiggles like a Modest Mouse runaway. Even more amazing is the middle eight: instead of doing more of the same, Wheat throw in a whole half-a-song of something else. There's a caressing build, a radiant rise - and then we stagger back into the arms of the twisting-and-jocund main melody. Fearless and feelgood, a celebratory dream of freedom (from, uh, being "with someone").

Vincent Gallo, P.J. Harvey, John Frusciante, Jim O'Rourke - "Moon River" [live]. Last week, StG-reader Kieran attended Vincent Gallo's show at London's Royal Festival Hall, and then told me about this performance. I knew immediately that I would spend many hours hunting for it. Because I'm like that.

To my astonishment, I found the song. It's a beautiful duet - slow, tentative, vulnerable. Gallo sounds like Chet Baker, Harvey sounds like heartbreak, and Frusciante's solo is surprisingly (and quite beautifully) humble. Everything feels on the verge of breakdown, and yet it's ignoring this, it's trying hard not to care, it's floating with a peaceful smile. The harmony at the end - not right, and yet right - is why we listen to music.

In Kieran's words:
For a man unfairly known first as an egomaniac and second as an actor/model/director/artist/musician, Vincent Gallo makes surprisingly tender, quiet music, such that the cavernous RFH threatened to engulf it. As Gallo admitted, he was used to playing alone, and despite able support from Jim O'Rourke and Steve Shelley, the concert began nervously. ... As Gallo began to wind up the show he mentioned that he had tried to rehearse another song with PJ Harvey and John Frusciante, but that they had been more concerned with going to parties and so hadn't given him their undivided attention and so he was reluctant to perform it. Perhaps it was showmanship, but implored by the crowd's clamorous response, Gallo capitulated and PJ Harvey and John Frusciante made their way to the stage. ... [I]t was evident that the addition of Frusciante and Harvey had taken the focus taken off Gallo enough for him to relax to the immediate benefit of his vocals. Indeed, he even sat down mid-song to allow a kneeling Frusciante the spotlight for his obligatory guitar solo. It may sound under-rehearsed in places, but for a perfectionist such as Gallo this song is a rare unguarded moment, after which (like the best bits of Buffalo 66) you can't help but love him.

On a different note -

DJ Format - "The Hit Song". This was Andrew's favourite hip-hop song of 2003. It's a friendly, smirking track, word fun over a laid-back, Tribe-style groove. Andrew says, Everything just works so well; the effortless drumbeat, the lazy bassline, the careful samples, and most of all the lyrical gimmicks, performed by Abdominal with what can only be described as aplomb. Utterly, utterly brilliant; a dizzying high from a towering album. Me, I just like the part which goes: "once i hit my comfort level / hit record / soon enough we'll have another / hit record". Because it's mid-April and we all deserve to have some fun.

some other things i've been listening to:

Nirvana - In Utero. Is it bad that I keep skipping to the singles? There's such thick, resonating genius in "Pennyroyal Tea," "Rape Me," "Dumb," "All Apologies" and "Heart Shaped Box." The rest just feels like yelling. It makes me sad that someone who made such strong music disappeared the way he did. It's like a storm folding up and falling into a lake. (splash) Nirvana's guitars ring like church bells.

Of Montreal - Satanic Panic In The Attic. Yikes - why is this so whiny? People keep comparing them to The Kinks - but the Kinks would never make music so downright irritating. These are indie popsters who could use some Shins records to help them mellow down. Also, song-titles like "Vegan in Furs" make me want to kill someone (or else treat this like some unsolicited slush-pile crap). And I like Olivia Tremor Control.

Ghostface - Pretty Toney. On my first couple listens, I like "Love" and I love "Save Me Dear". But the rest simply burbles together and doesn't make an impact. (I need hooks in my hip-hop, dammit!) I'll do more listening, though, if only because Mark's so enthused... I'm getting a little tired of epic hip-hop records that have a fair bit of mediocrity (see: Madvillainy).

Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News. "Float On," "Bukowski," "World at Large," and "Blame It On the Tetons" are enough to make this very good. But it's too bad the band didn't cut out their hearts and brains and replace them with pieces of "Float On," because Modest Mouse would be way better if those guitar riffs zoomed down their veins, if those hooks were bouncing in their skulls - in short, if they took some disco dancing lessons.

Zero 7 - When It Falls. Don't look at me like that. This album is incredible, really. We tend to think of musical genres (at least sometimes) as slowly advancing, merging, perfecting older ideas and introducing new ones. Well, When It Falls is like the Omega Point for all downtempo-lounge-trip-hop. In terms of the genre, When It Falls is supreme, untoppable, as good as it gets. It's like some sort of astonishingly advanced weapon's grade technology, like the sort of album we'd be able to make after trading with an incredibly advanced alien civilization. "Warm Sound" makes everything else redundant. No one's going to record a better amalgam of Stereolab, neosoul and mid-90s electronics.

Wilco - A Ghost is Born. At first I loved this record, and then I thought it sucked, and now I'm back loving it again. What I like:

"At Least That's What You Said" remains utterly, blazingly brilliant. I feel like the guitar solo could go on even longer, could climb different ladders through breaks in the cloud, could get burned in different places. This song will be one of those few tracks (by any band) that I will seek out live versions of. (Especially with Nels Cline - sweet jesus!)

the way the guitar at the end of "Muzzle of Bees" sounds to me just like the horns on "Only a Northern Song," only better, truer, and more bravely foregrounded - and yet still far too short;

when Jeff Tweedy sings "and I felt / all right" on "Handshake Drugs";

the way that "Company in my Back" is basically about waiting for the guitar/mandola/thing to flutter in and strike you dumb with beauty;

the chorus of "Hummingbird," higher-pitched than anyone singing wants it to be, but which compels my girlfriend to sing along, full-voiced, joyous (and the fact that the chorus really only happens once, once!). Also, the guitar (?) which sounds like a kazoo;

the rhyme "One two three four five six seven eight nine / Once in Germany someone said 'Nein'";

the tumbling way that the chorus of "Wishful Thinking" appears - a happy inevitability.

Needless to say, there's also crap: I can't get over the deadness of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," the dance-beat that's there only for artiness, whose aesthetic is one of stasis and aloofness, boredom and a hipper-than-thou yawn (for almost eleven minutes). the 90s britpop guitar bit doesn't save it. also: "late greats"... I appreciate Wilco's desire to do a back-to-basics roots-rock hidden track (and Glenn Kotsche's drums make me want to appreciate the way they do it), but to be honest, there's almost nothing here to care about. The only good bit is when the song suddenly goes away, collapses to dust ("he just looks a little too old"), and we hear the ringing, never-ending piano path into nothingness... (The band has made available a full album stream, here. If you've downloaded the album and want to thank the band, donate to their charity-of-choice here).

holy crap it's almost five AM.

I received Jolie Holland's debut in the mail a little over a year ago. It's called Catalpa, and at that time it was self-released (the album's since been rereleased on Anti). The album packaging was exceedingly simple; the title card a one-sided piece of cardboard with "(C) 2002" written in Sharpie (Jolie's handwriting?). But within moments of slipping it into my CD player, I was arrested, compelled, smitten. Her voice is thick, run through with ribbons of highs and lows, smearing tones. It dips and lilts. Her writing is simple, traditional, but without pretense. In this, as in much else, Jolie Holland recalls the genius of Gillian Welch. Without David Rawlings' guitar-work, Holland's recordings feel simpler, plainer, but not less beautiful. No less sad. It's bluegrass that's only rarely hokey, songs reverent and resigned. Holland's new record, Escondida, is out very soon.

You should listen to these. They're pretty special.

Jolie Holland - "Roll My Blues". Catalpa has a dusty and lofi feel, a woman in a small room with sun filtering through the blinds. Jolie sings quietly, unremarkably, swallowing blame with a nod and a strum. Nothing pushy here, just the small truth, the sincere little blues. "Never have I longed so dearly," she smiles, "My mind sees you arrive so clearly." This is a song that flutters and glimmers and feels like it could blow away.

Jolie Holland - "Do You?". The opening words (the round, long vowel sounds) are sung with such slow, true honesty. (Soul and mind and life and heart.) The track comes slowly to life, like earth warming at dawn, and when the haze of cymbals breaks I can feel the fingers of the sun falling on my face. A long, high whistle - a (wo)man on a mountaintop, staring down. The words tumble out like a Yo La Tengo confessional, but the music is stronger and purer (and obv. more Appalachian), rolling toward the little rosy-lipped surprise at the end. (From Escondida.)