Basia Bulat - "In the Night". An unreleased song, a living-room demo, four walls & a floor and sounds bravely sounding. It's a lighthouse desperately seeking its ship: that brave white beam scouring a million nighttime wave-tips, grazing two hundred low-flying birdwings. Too much hope, love, fate, joy, fear for one voice; instead it's a host of them. Too sick to be seasick, too awed to be awestruck - the song just whirls and whirls, the light-house-light spins and scours, and the drums & autoharp gallop with the whole breathless pace of possibility.

I raved Basia Bulat's Oh My Darling in January, and my enthusiasm remains steadfast. It's now out in Britain, and a North American release will follow in the fall. (Some cool tour-dates are also in store.)

[buy! / MySpace / website]

The Children's Hour - "SOS JFK". This one's a ship in search of its lighthouse. And the personal ad runs like so:

Josephine Foster's voice is wind in sails, whales in tide.

[buy The Children's Hour's single (?), exquisite LP.]