The heat wave has hit Montreal like a bag of hot bricks. You sit in your home, soaking in darkness, half-alive, sweating. Then you go outside and get walloped by the sun. It's a sunlight that feels injurious - leaves cuts, bruised rib, maybe a black eye.

Light Rail Coyote - "Settling Out".

Heat is not always so violent. I've written before about slow-motion swelter (and yesterday I re-posted Spacemen 3 and Eric Chenaux from an old tribute). Some of that languor is captured in Light Rail Coyote's "Settling Out" - a drowsy folk-song that's more drift than destination, recalling Baptist Generals and some early Smog. You can imagine this tune on tilting turntable, skipping in the heat. You can imagine those backing sighs up fluttering against screened windows.

This is a song of slow spiral but to be fair, it's not a song of summertime. "When it's springtime in the city / every morning's a / parting / parting / parting," sings Montreal's Shaun Weadick. A reminder that sometimes life itself is sweltering, un-liveable. Sometimes it's your heart that wallops you, when you step out of the shade. It isn't just in July that you can wish to slip your skin.

[bandcamp]

Loosestrife - "My Money". The other side of Mr Weadick is this band, Loosestrife, his jumbling duo with Claire. It's picnic punk-rock, with frills of African guitar - reminds me a bit of Mecca Normal or the Evens. "My Money" is their poppiest song, their catchiest song; I want to say "catchy as a salary," but of course salaries aren't catchy - that's kinda what this tune is about. This would sound best coming ruffling outta an old school boombox, like the Mountain Goats used to, messing its smushed ferocity into the hiss of tape. [bandcamp]

(photo of Hubert Alyea/source)