The "My Funny Valentine" contest is over. Thank you all for your submissions - the winner will probably be announced next Monday.

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Blanket - "All Love is Dead". Sit down, sit down. Don't go anywhere. Sit. There's a candle on the table and Lauren (we will call her Lauren) is in the kitchen, washing dishes. She speaks to you over her shoulder. She's wearing her short skirt, the one you like, but her hair's falling across her face in an ugly way. Her eyes look hard. You're sitting there as she speaks but you're not listening for the first long time - you're listening to her voice, the sweet and mumbly flow, the voice you love to hear close-up, right in your ear, marble-mouthed, - but you're not listening to the words. And then you begin to hear, over the tapwater shhh, over the scrub scrub of her rubber gloves, over the sighs of the backing vocals in the corner -- you begin to hear what she's saying and you realise she is telling you off. You deserve it. It's a rage that sounds for a moment like a whine, then sad sad sad, then like someone deep in love. And then like all three and neither. Because she's gone cool again, sharp and collected, back straight, and the only soft thing over there, at the other end of the room, is a voice and a pair of lips. And they're not coming closer.

Girls, I don't know what you'll hear. But this is a song of easy, dusty unhappiness; a folky tune that owes almost everything to the singer. Part Rickie Lee Jones, part Isobel Campbell, a face you want desperately to see smile.

[Brighton's Blanket have things for sale, but I can't see where to buy them. This is their website. I heard this track on the Crystal Cabinet Harvest Festival sampler.]

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Phantom Buffalo - "Cheer Up My Man". It's a weak story but it lets me name-drop:

So when I was at Rough Trade's London offices, flipping through their CD shelves, Richard from the Arcade Fire/Bell Orchestre pulls out this Phantom Buffalo CD in a clear vinyl sleeve and says "Have you heard this?" and I say "No" and he's like "It's really good," I think he explained someone from the label had played it for him, or maybe it had just been recommended to him and he hadn't heard it yet. But anyway I was like "Who are Phantom Buffalo?" and he shrugged and I put it in my pocket to take home with the Sufjan, Furnaces and Cameras. When I got back to Edinburgh I put it by the stereo and forgot about it. Occasionally I'd glance at it, but come on - Phantom Buffalo? An album called ShiShiMuMu? Clearly this not a good band. Probably some syrupy Japanese psych-pop, or a third-tier Polyphonic Spree imitator. Months went by. And then in September I put on the CD because I couldn't find my copy of Hayden's Everything I Long For (I think someone must have stolen it, or I lost it in Outremont -- heads will roll!).

And good god - holy cow, - boy... oh boy. ShiShiMuMu is fantastic. Phantom Buffalo play a supple guitar-pop that falls into a constellation with Bishop Allen, Reindeer Section and the Presidents of the United States of America, that bounces along rainpuddle chords to smallscale fireworks. It feels so British to me, though, so dry in its happiness, so bright in its melancholy. (Of course typically, they're from Maine. And sometimes they're called The Ponys.)

One of the record's greatest strengths is the sequence of tracks, the way melodies hide in one-other, the way harmonies come a bumping out as one song fades into the next. It's a great album, not just a series of hoppin' songs, and so it's difficult to pluck one out and expect you to fully understand. But I'll try.

"Waiting for my Man" this ain't. Instead it's squiggles of guitar and cantering drums, vocals like a long drink of milk, a reassuring jingle to take us through to the epic album-closing finale, a breakdown with that guitar sound, you know the one, the one that shines blueflaming in the dark, that lets us simultaneously lift our lighters and jump dance jump, a furious getting-down to music that's not quite getting-down itself. Sometimes you need a song to leave you room to fill in the blanks with your own vicious dance-moves.

[ShiShiMuMu was released in 2002. It's available from respective UK/US sources for $12/£9.99. According to their blog there is a new LP on the way, and also I think an EP or two has come out since ShiShiMuMu, but I have heard none of these. I would very much like to. More info.]

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A terrific relaunch-with-redesign at Poptext. Abby's promised more writing, more frequent updates, and yes indeed lots more music. Yay!

I keep forgetting to link to Who's the Boss 2006, the second annual awesome-off coordinated by my old friend Ed. It's a tournament of Excellence, pitting random things against each-other, with only a small nod to rhyme, reason and common-sense. Merlin defeats Beetlejuice, Vonnegut takes down Tom Robbins, black forest cake knocks out Halle Berry. (Last year's final was Christopher Walken vs Death.)