Dog days, please smile down upon us...

This follows from a post I added last year, Soothing Music for Days That Bode Ill, which apparently still has resonance with others judging from the number of times that post has been visited in the last couple of weeks. It is no secret that I often still feel the same way too and, while I can recommend those albums no less a year later, the world has not stayed the same.
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan have since released Sunday at Devil Dirt and the remainder of the lyrics are here. As one of 'The Gutter Twins' Mark Lanegan has also released an album with Greg Dulli, which is another that I would like to hear but either the music, or merely my appreciation of it, has expanded again.

Empty dish is still sitting where I'm gonna leave it.
This lamp hasn't been lit in quite a long while,
The wick doesn't reach what's left of the oil.
And the rain is coming and I'm overcome.

These bad newspapers they pile up unread
Dogs gaze out the windows, I know how they feel.
Adventure! adventure! Or sit by the door?
Open, open sesame! I'm overcome.

Figurines, dripping faucets, laundry and dust,
I hate to leave this a mess but I must....

Keepsakes can be anchors and anvils and such.
Like pianos and pets and the people we love.
I can't change the world from this place on MySpace
Spiders tag walls with their names in this place.

Figurines, dripping faucets, laundry and dust,
I hate to leave this a mess but I must...

Oh its never a clean break when you're trying to leave
But song birds need homes in live oak trees.

Maybe I've just not got the right idea about what I think they might be but I can't yet figure out the lyrics for the two lines that follow:
I hate to leave this a mess but I must...

Can anyone help? The song remains however, despite the time I've spent trying to figure those lyrics, one of my favourite album tracks of 2008 and it is 'Overcome' from the album Anchors and Anvils by Amy LaVere.

Leaving that topic aside for a moment, here is another album that rather appealed when I read about it. Some might say that it is slightly twee folksy Americana and had I simply invented that which follows, just to amuse myself this evening, I know that you would not have believed me.

The thing is that I didn't tell fibs - indie label Static Caravan released it - and it is VAN161.

It is of the most improbable heritage. The two acts that combined to produce this met on MySpace. Neither of them come from America and, at least at the time of its release, never the twain had met!
One of them, Phelan Sheppard, is a Londoner signed to Leeds-based The Leaf Label best known in this blog as the home of Parisienne Colleen (Cécile Schott) and her beguiling ambient/electronica, while the other half of the equation is moomLooo in Tokyo.