The Easy Gramophone - March

1. Say Hi - Northwestern Girls
Here's where mope turns into desperation, frustration into shout. Say Hi used to be called Say Hi To Your Mom - the name must have changed because Eric Elbogen ceased being interested in someone's mother and instead fell in love with the beautiful and vapid girls of the American northwest. He's trying to beat it, trying to shake the obsession, but in the meantime there's this, like if Snow Patrol never figured out how to score the chicks.
Download at: http://www.sayhitoyourmom.com/music.htm

2. Phosphorescent - A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise
Phosphorescent turns moan and jangle into something life-affirming; sorrows as spirits you can drink and laugh to. This is American freak-folk without the freak, just haunted and Yankee and smelling of winter.
Download at: http://www.deadoceans.com/artist.php?name=phosphorescent

3. Hologram - Mommies
A beautiful and sickly rock song, like one of those nights out at the club when everything's both bad and good. Melodica, recorder and xylophone team up with a swirl of a woman's voice, the cling-clang of an electric guitar. Do you remember that band Helium? This is them on roller-skates.
Download at: http://www.myspace.com/hologrammm

4. Queen Victoria - When The Lights Go Out
A one-man-band of doom and gloom, like a fellow who's been left too long at the back of an attic and has turned a little grey. The name Queen Victoria might suggest something a little more old-fashioned, a little more jaunty - but instead you should imagine the queen's portrait on a cameo, the necklace 'round a sad and pale girl's neck.
Download at: http://deadoceans.com/mp3.php

5. Professor Murder - Dutch Hex (Trey Told Em remix)
Wobbly synth-stabs underline this New York original, The Smiths and Crass quoted amid breakbeating jump-skips. Girl Talk's Gregg Gillis is like the dude who won't let the party calm down: he's standing on the dining room table and playing the candlesticks against the ceiling.
Download at: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/48713-professor-murder-dutch-hex-trey-told-em-remix-mp3