A very late Sunday night excursion means that I forget to blog and so here we are, posting late. Apologies!

Josh Ritter - "You've Got the Moon". It was just announced that Josh Ritter is opening for Sarah Harmer on her Canadian tour, so here's a flashback to the American songwriter's first album. While he usually does slightly twang-tinged things, like a Texan David Gray, "You've Got the Moon" is an unearthly channelling of Nick Drake's spirit, finger-picking and a windsoft voice. For me, though, it's not crass imitation - it's tribute, perhaps, but also sincere emotion. This is the sound of the song Josh Ritter's singing, the wispy straining feelings that are locked up in "the tall grass and the trees / silhouettes and crickets singing". [buy]

Dawn Kinnard - "Wires in the Sky". Sometimes my Canadian-ness shows. Dawn Kinnard's not a Canuck, but listening to her creaking voice and rural-city landscapes, I hear only Kathleen Edwards, who is. (Maybe we'll visit Kathleen later this week, come to think of it.) "Wires in the Sky" is perfectly arranged: glowing organ pulses, little wails of pedal steel, sparklewashes of cymbal, a mandolin that circles Kinnard's voice. She dips husky low and climbs lilting high, and when she's hopeful it's a muted hopefulness, unwilling to fall into cliche. "And the words / in the sky / shine so bright / ... / I'm guilty / I don't know why." It's ghostly americana for a day with splashes of sun. [buy]

A hearty welcome to Lacunae, the new mp3blog by Douglas Wolk (who wrote perhaps the first big-media piece on mp3blogs).