Two Songs, Late Night, at Work

It’s the first warm night of the year and it’s getting late and I’m alone in the office. The most painful part of my job is done for another month and the window’s cracked so I’m breathing in some of the night air and it’s filling up my lungs just fine. Two songs are quietly making me very happy. One is old and one is new. Both of them have strong playful rhythms. One of them, the older one, has hauntingly weird echoing multi-tracked vocals. There are refrains but no real chorus or verse; it discovers its own shape as it goes along. The other one, the newer one, is downright majestic, its chorus a beautiful ship gliding from the darkness into the light of the harbour. Also there are childlike singsong verses. Both of them are covered with little doodled curlicues but they don’t sound busy because they have strong playful rhythms. They are quietly pleasing.

• Les Paul & Mary Ford, “Bye Bye Blues” (buy here)
• CocoRosie, “Rainbowarriors” (preorder here)