Woodpigeon - "Home As A Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always And Forever". Mark Hamilton used to live in Scotland but is now back in Canada. So he's like the future version of me - I, who leave Edinburgh in 8 days, and who will return to the the land of frost & tulips in May. It's therefore fitting that we have here a song about home, home (ahem) as a romanticized concept where everyone loves you always and forever. And indeed that's what I hear in these four minutes: warmth and love, familiar spaces, forgotten harmonies, that place where you're adored and safe. Perhaps too safe, but for one song we'll let it slide. Woodpigeon hail from Calgary, a place I've never been, and they're a sprawling band. Sandro Perri sometimes plays with them. I've never played with them. But the song makes me wish for my own sprawl of singers, guitar-players, bell-players, brushed-drummers, lovers. My own wooden trunk to crawl into and which, as I lie with pine needles and lavender, finally at home, is set out to sea.

[MySpace / buy]

Jetplanes of Abraham - "Take the Cash". Jetplanes of Abraham feel strangely out-of-date. Maybe it's the guitar-tone, maybe it's the way the male voices mix, maybe it's the clever-biblical band-name, but something here recalls a particular strain of late-90s indie-emo - Jimmy Eat World's Clarity or fellow Ottawans Kepler. Some things are from this 21st C, post-Arcade Fire world: violin, high-hat, tom drum, multi-part yelling. But mostly this is a song without gimmicks - it's just boys with guitars, a girl with violin, all with optimism, and a song that runs faster than they can. And the second half is breathless, brilliant, idea after idea; friends bounding happily into opportunity.

[MySpace]

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People might be tired of such things but Shane-at-Torturegarden's Best Songs of 2006 is amazing. The art alone is reason to visit. Yes, oh yes.