10,000 Horses - "This Too Shall Pass". Sometimes I marvel at how small a song can be. Like a star, impossibly dim and far away, yet still undeniably a star. This song unfolds and emerges from so small a space. It rises rickety from just a few pieces - ukulele, voice, drum machine - and yet it's still fully, boldly, splendidly a tune. It's a pop-song of edges and winks, glints and flashes, with a promise at its heart. A fragile song with such a pretty melody, such a loud, brave vow. I'm left thinking of rhinestones, pieces of glass; how, if given the right light, even the tiniest jewels will never stop shining. [10,000 Horses are from Montreal / buy]

Pony Girl - "Foreign Life I". A song like a multicoloured coat, a many-kinded garment. They dress up in it one way then another, then another. Something for the grey cast of twilight - a hood, long sleeves, corduroy. Then later something for sunbleached road, an unfurling highway - short sleeves, whites, pieces of cherry red. Pony Girl have a few kinds of music folded in their pockets: the xx, Stars, Casiotone for Painfully Alone. They have a few kinds of music and scraps of other things too - polaroids, love-notes, shards of compact disc. They are collectors, I think, in the midst of a divestment. Riddlers in many-kinded garments, giving it all away. [buy]