Kevin Coyne - "The World is Full of Fools". Courtesy of Dave comes this introduction to Kevin Coyne, an English songwriter whose reputation has floundered in the twenty years since he released the bulk of his music. This 1979 song most strongly recalls Van Morrison - a plaintive, roughshod voice over the straight strum of an acoustic guitar, a burbling organ. There's a lot of frustration in this melancholy, a lot of sublimated rage. While Tom Waits' curmudgeon persona shouts and snorts at the grey gristled mess around him, Coyne seems affected by it, terrified by it, made desperate by it. Fingers scrabbling at a heart.

Clive Holden - "De'ath at Neepawa". In 2001, Winnipeg's Clive Holden recorded an album of his poetry, with music by Christine Fellows and Jason Tait & John K Samson of The Weakerthans. An accompanying series of films was recently released. This is a beautiful, whitesky piece, contemplative as leaves. "I didn't expect to be moved by your gravestone," Holden says to the earth where Margaret Laurence lies. He talks of dark hair and a dark gaze ("from a 50 cent postcard"), of the unexpected pulse of feeling that can suddenly strike you. Samson's electric guitar stirs like a small breeze, lifting at the collar of your shirt.

Clap Clap writes much, and wisely, on Eamon's "Fuck It".

Listen Closer is a very fine new mp3blog that's started things with some brilliant posts. Beck's "Tropicalia" is one of my very favourites by Mr Hansen, and I had intended to profile both Harvey Danger and Joanna Newsom. He's beaten me to all three punches, so you should definitely go see (and listen). Welcome, Justin!

Never Came Home is a new and well-intentioned mp3 blog that doesn't know how to spell 'gramophone'.