Robyn - "Dancing On My Own". Robyn's tremendous new track, seething and crystal-clear. It's a song about being alone at a club, watching you kiss her, and as with the bridge of "Be Mine" (still the Swedish singer's finest hour), this watching is mixed-up, bittersweet, alive. She's alive in the moment, but more powerfully, her voice keeps nothing hidden. Pop stars do not hide in their songs - she is bare before us, showing us everything of her heart. NB: the only difference between the first verse and the first chorus is a bass-note, an extra rhythmic subdivision. You make beauty out of what's at hand. [Body Talk Pt 1 is out in June - website]

Greg MacPherson - "Smoke Ring". It's not the same thing as 2002's Good Times Coming Back Again, the last MacPherson album I heard, and one of the best Canadian albums of the decade. But Mr Invitation has a similar appetite and snapping jaws, the handsome combination of snarl and hook. MacPherson would back you up in a fight, would give you the money to buy London Calling, would burn himself to catch the falling star. "Broken Dreams" is rock'n'roll that never rolls away; it rocks back and forth, hard, until the wood begins to splinter. [buy]

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