I stumbled upon Roommate's song RP (Forget The Metaphors) on Salon.com awhile back. The lyrics sound like a letter, a really good letter, or a story a friend would tell you in the middle of the night after one too many drinks. It popped into my head today, so I looked up Roommate's website. I was at work, listening to completely different music - old, mangled, funky reel-to-reel tapes from Belize - and I stood in the server room, which was very cold, to listen to the song again through tiny, lo-fi G4 speakers. (Ironically, my Mac is not hooked up to the gigantic monitors that dominate my office). I had to listen to the whole song again. The sweet piano, the tender voice. A little sad, a little nostalgic, a little cold, a little raw.

I'm a little behind the times:

Postcards From Italy from Beirut's Gulag Orkestar

the beats = antithesis of the subway bucket drummers
the vocals = hints of Rufus Wainwright

Plus, I have a deep abiding love of mariachi horns.

From Music Has the Right to Children (from the 2004 US reissue on Warp Records)

For it's tenuous yet deeply satisfying melodic resolve, and for the seagull sample that aurally mashes the real and imagined, Happy Cycling by Boards of Canada. It really sneaks up on you.