Born Heller - "I Want To". Back in the spring, my friend Monica met half of Born Heller - Jason Ajemian - at a show with Julie Doiron in Montreal. She sent me Born Heller's "I Am A Guest In Here," which I quite liked, but I wasn't really compelled to seek them out. This past week, however, the record found its way into my hands, and my gosh - it's really something special. Unlike the Devendra Banharts and Espers with which it is compared, Ajemian and Josephine Foster have created something that owes more to Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) and 20th century classical composers than it does to Neutral Milk Hotel. The instrumentation is skeletal, a kind of irregular recitative - on "I Want To" we hear harp, eerie oboe, the occasional thump of a drum. Foster's voice is beautiful, high as a bird's nest. In the gaps of instrumental sound it is apt to rustle free, duck, and then soar. Listening - especially when you're bad with lyrics, as I am, - it's hard to figure out whether the songs are sad or quietly hopeful. Is this an ache forward or an ache back? All I know is that when those oboes sigh, I want them all around me, buoying me somewhere new and green. [buy]

Old 97's - "Won't Be Home". Cody sent me this song, from the band's forthcoming Drag It Up. They've been making music for more than ten years, but in the opening lines of this rollicking tune, Rhett Miller sounds as young as Bright Eyes; Jeff Tweedy without the Ginsberg. "Won't Be Home" has a fantastic combination of urgency and regret, Miller all brokenhearted while the drums tap-ta-tap. Lesser bands would be tempted to slow it all down, but here they just push it faster, background oohs and jingle bells. It's an unstoppable forward motion, a car that's come back to life and cannot - will not - stop. As Cody wrote to me, it is country music for "that next moment after ... [when] you have to kind of steel yourself, like it or not ... [when] you try to find something good on the radio and fix your eyes on the road." It's a feeling that you have to lean into, a sound that demands you give it a chance. It yearns and hopes and drives drives drives... Fantastic. [buy]

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David kindly passed on some code from ned, which I've now implemented. It should act as a roadblock for people who have been using wget to strip mp3s from the page. If people want to listen to the songs I post here, I'd really rather they stopped by and glanced at the writing. Please let me know if the change has caused problems with anyone's normal use.

Caley cited The Mountain Goats' "Dance Music" as one of the finest songs of the year so far, and thanks to Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again, I managed to nab it (and for a limited time, you can too!). While there's no studio version to be found, it truly is an awesome track - wistful and jubilant, and (next to "International Small Arms Trader Blues," "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton," and "Family Happiness") certainly one of the Mountain Goats' best. Eppy's written a wonderful piece about it over at clap clap, and as usual, it's worth far more of your time than anything I could write.

The TypoGenerator is very cool. [via mefi]