MOSS HEART

Patrick Watson - “Fireweed” Patrick Watson's Wooden Arms is leaps & bounds better than his debut and it is an album full of leaps and bounds. He is a pretty singer, and his lyrics lilt, yet it's the instrumental landscape that thrums, hums, brings the record shuddering to life. Tracks like “Big Bird in a Small Cage” are as lovely as bowls full of fruit, but the bounding-er, leaping-er tracks - “Tracy's Waters,” “Beijing,” “Where the Wild Things Are” - are the ones that carry this across a ravine from Cibelle, Tom Waits, Andrew Bird. I like Patrick Watson best on the threshold between chanson and Sigur Ros.

And “Fireweed” is bigger than the melody that Patrick Watson is singing. It is a song with geothermal wells, old crows, creaking schist. Watson dwells in it, rents a room, brings his friends to sit by the window and hum. But “Fireweed” has a sea that's separate from the Montrealer's croon; has crevasses and groves. There are forces tunneling under his feet, and travelling between the stars. There's stuff in the steam. [buy Wooden Arms]

Elfin Saddle - “The Bringer” Ramshackle and kind, Elfin Saddle might be the eeriest band in Montreal. They play a secret music, something from the underside of gardens, the bellies of hills. Ringing For The Begin Again, on Constellation, is twinned with Clues' debut - but it is a vastly different creature, painted in verdant greens and new shades of black. Hear it all in "The Bringer"'s grim, sorcerous crescendo: slow promises, Appalachian groans, memories of old, weird Japan. There's none of night's comfort, here. There's nowhere to hide. This is the fearsome creep of daylight. [buy]

- Sean Michaels