Tonight’s round-up – which comes late (at least in terms of the local time), but better that than never, no? – is an entirely North American affair, starting in California and ending in Canada.
First up is a passionate cover of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” by a quite capable musician and gravely-voiced singer in San Francisco, Alex Cornell, which welds the sense of beauty and the feeling of hurt so closely together that a listener might lose track of where either begins or ends.
Next in line is an original song, “Running Like Hell,” by a duo in Montréal which calls itself simply You and Me (otherwise known as Valerie Giroux and James Lemay): their music is the blues, with the complement of instruments one would expect, such as slide guitars and harmonicas, all of which they wield with aplomb, while the vocals are pleasingly suggestive.
The last of the three tracks was uploaded a few days ago by an Ottawa sound artist who’s been featured here before, Beaucrat, and it’s called “Don’t Want This”; here he seems to announce that musically he’ll be veering off into darker, even more Siouxsie-like territories than those he’s explored hitherto.