Lydia Képinski - "Premier juin". Sock yourself with this song, take it like a conker to the temple. A pipe-organ and a string section; a synth and a guitar. A song that tastes so ripe and raw that it's partly bloody iron, partly strawberry jam. A sprint down the alley, a flight through the woods. Churn and boil and run, run, run - hearstroke and klaxon and wolves' matted fur. Képinski's Montreal pop points right back to Arcade Fire's "Tunnels", Charles Burns' Black Hole, Frankie Barnet's An Indoor Kind of Girl. An idea of future, the singer's self coalescing. An idea of past, all these names crossed out. And finally here, now: present (present, sir!). Today at full gallop, bolting toward the new.

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Mata Hari - "Easy". A song about living in a bull's-eye. Maybe he moved there six months ago, maybe it was last week. His whole adult life he lived in some other building, some shoebox apartment; then finally he hired a van and brought his boxes to the bull's-eye, signed a lease. His friends had warned him against it. He didn't know if it would work out. But: of course it did. It was a bull's-eye! Concentric circles, red and white stripe. A target. He had been there only days when the first dart came flying, direct from cupid's bow - pow. Maybe "pow"'s the wrong sound. Zing, snap, STRUM. The luckiest days feel like hitting a target; one step down are the days when you are the target, or feel like it, or feel like you live in a bungalow erected on a target. When it feels as if the whole world, or all the things you want, are convening on the place where you're at, the place you're now standing - right on the threshold, hunched, fiddling with your keys.

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