Herman Düne - "The Wrong Button". Minus André, Herman Düne are a shade of their former selves - over-saccharine, too impulsive and eager to be liked. But "The Wrong Button", from their soundtrack to Mariage à Mendoza, hits the notes that made Herman Düne, for a time, my favourite band in the world. Clumsy and sweet, but more than anything else that loud, overdriven guitar solo, a solo too electric for the rest of the track, throwing everything off-balance, unsteady, like a leaning turntable or a crooked road, a lovesick swoon, a punch to the chin. [buy]

Luke Abbott - "Modern Driveway". Something so addicting in this weave of beats and clicks, these swells of notes, like ten million tiny lakes. When I have not been listening to jazz, or to new albums by Suuns and Young Galaxy (which I will share with you when I can), I have been listening, these past weeks, to Luke Abbott's song "Modern Driveway". These are not new sounds that he is using, or new ways of laying them next to each other, but something in the wistful heart of this track is just the right measure of lovely and confused, hopeful and frightened, trusting and lost, and I listen to it over and over again. [buy]

(photo by Thomas Barbèy)