Along with most of the rest of the world of music, I've been confidently and rather pompously predicting the death of the single format long while. For me, this is a great shame as I look back on a misspent youth chasing handfuls of vinyl singles imported from the USA at ridiculous cost in the hope of finding some rare and perfect gem. There were home grown efforts too, not least the likes of Bristol's Sarah Records which despite shouldering a fairly hefty stereotype of anorak-pop for misty-eyed loners, actually managed nearly a century of mostly interesting releases. I can't complete my reminiscing without a mention for Seminal Twang too, without which I probably wouldn't be listening to much of the music I write about here at all. Recently though, I've heard a few singles - in the sense of a couple of carefully chosen songs which fit together as a release, rather than individual tracks for download - which have got me just as excited as I used to be when I heard a new band for the first time. Singles were always, after all, about a brief window into a band's world. So I thought perhaps it was time to attempt to share this excitement, and this occasional series of posts will be all about the curious survival of the single - and the delicious risk of making a judgement on just a couple of short songs. Of course it could go wrong and I could end up with copious quantities of egg on my face, but isn't that all part of the fun?

Poor Things - Innocence/18

Glasgow's Poor Things have been touted for some time by label-mates and ardent admirers French Wives, and it's easy to see why they're keen to introduce them to a wider audience. A frighteningly young trio who aren't ashamed to wear their influences fairly openly on their sleeves, Poor Things benefit from having spent a year playing live before committing these songs to record - and there is a genuine sense of impatience and desperation to make themselves heard evident here. "Innocence" kicks off with a rumbling undertow of distorted bass before spirals of joyous guitar join in. This prepares the ground for a triumphant chorus with soaring vocals and jittery guitars. The spirit of early 1990s US guitar pop haunts this track with it's undercurrent of melody and abrasive guitars - it's exuberant, optimistic and playful stuff - but it's also incredibly precise and clever. The flip side is "18", another utterly filthy bass riff underlies a chorus of breathy "oohs" which seem to have arrived directly from radio-friendly 70's classic rock. The lead vocal enters with the rather lovely "We move with the grace of forest fires..." and just a hint of local colour in the inflection. Strangely, for the last decade or so, Glasgow has done Americana better than the natives, and this is another example of just that - a tight, considered pop song filtered through the lens of Pavement or any number of bands on the Merge Records roster. It's a relatively simple construction in some ways, but has some tricks in store as open and guileless vocals echo around a sudden quiet moment while things build to a choir of disenchanted voices and a classic false ending. This dissolves into a full-on assault of grungy noise, powered by urgent drums with soaring swooping guitars. These two brief bursts of Poor Things do just what a single should, leaving the listener wanting to hear more, and intrigued to see where they take this sound next.

Poor Things - 18

You can purchase a physical copy of Poor Things single, or a digital download here at Bandcamp.

Edinburgh School For The Deaf - Orpheus Descending

Despite being interesed in hearing this band for a while, I managed to miss this release in the post-Homegame blues and financial embarrassment which typified most of May here. Unexpectedly, "Orpheus Ascending" shimmers in with nothing more than a delicate, Velvet Underground influenced guitar line, a quiet discordant scratch of violin and a shuffling tambourine. Having seen this band pegged as "the loudest band in Edinburgh" on more than one occasion this a something of a surprise, but behind this low-key instrumentation a slightly woozy and off-kilter, but utterly beguiling female voice sings quietly. The recording is distant, rudimentary and totally atmospheric, and the overall effect is mesmerising. Next, a deeply dirty, overdriven bassline heralds "Orpheus Descending" while a dry snare drum taps out a rhythm, seemingly in a completely different room. The band's two guitar sounds are used to advantage here, with a screed of angular noise sitting alongside a sweeter, chiming and distant counterpoint. But when both guitars erupt together the result is exhilarating, visceral noise. Meanwhile, as strangely formal and stentorian male vocals are half-sung and half-spoken I catch myself thinking about New Zealand, Alastair Galbraith and the wonderful tapes which the Xpressway label produced - as "Orpheus Descending" is a similar triumph of songwriting craft and sheer noise over recording technology. The chorus introduces the slightest fleck of organ and a female vocal foil and the result is a simply structured, but absurdly beautiful noise. Somewhere here the lead vocals soar and provide the concise but beguiling lines "take a candle/join my mass/chase a heart/of broken chapel glass" - and Edinburgh School For The Deaf become one of those bands you always wanted to be in. The entire single clocks in at seven minutes - and every second of it counts.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf - Orpheus Descending

You can download Edinburgh School For The Deaf's single from Bubblegum Records. Their album will be released on 13th June.

The second day of my unexpected weekend dawned with an early start, and a checkout from my comfortable warm hotel into a drizzly and grey Sheffield Sunday. The pedestrianised plaza rising from the station to the hotel which had been full of students lolling around in the warm evening was now empty. Still, it gave me an opportunity to grab a picture of 'What If?' - the poem installed in huge letters on the side of Sheffield Hallam University, written by none other than Andrew Motion - our current poet laureate. I'm no great fan of Mr Motion usually, but the impressive concept and the rather fine words struck me enough to make me curious - and indeed to spend a few moments thinking on the poem before I pressed onward, towards the station and inevitably, breakfast!

Today's itinerary, from a heavy rail perpsective, was gentle. The first train off Sheffield for Leeds, reversing at Castleford - and involving some required track. Then a dash up to Newcastle on a Transpennine Express service. Started strangely - with an unexpectedly busy service from Sheffield, many of the passengers apparently having not made it home from the previous night. A nagging door fault, resulting in the guard or driver needing to repeatedly kick the unit back into life, didn't delay things much and we rolled into Leeds a few minutes before time after a decent run along the final stretches. After a quick wander around this station which I get to far less often than I'd like, a bit of a platform farce. We were moved over the bridge onto another platform, then back - despite a silent and switched-off Voyager blocking our exit. A few minutes late we reversed, paused, crossed over and took the middle road through the station. More track I suppose, and hardly expected!

On arriving at Newcastle, descended straight onto the Metro, buying my day ticket and making my way via carefully researched escalator-free routes down to the platform. Covering the entire system wasn't a quick proposition - but it promised to be interesting, involving sections of purpose-built track alongside long chunks of former heavy rail routes. Started with a trip out to the Airport, before returning south to cover South Hylton and South Shields. Some freight action on the lines near Pelaw despite being Sunday.

Back under the city next to complete a circle of the coast, via the formerly rather grand stations at Whitley Bay and Tynemouth (home in fact to a rather interesting looking book sale). All that remained was a short stretch into St. James. All but deserted outside matchday, and oddly quiet. Not sorry to get going again to return to Central and surface in the station before checking into my hotel - tired, but pleased to have finally done this trip.

And so the business end of my Lost Weekend comes to a close, a wander around Newcastle - my first in a few years in the City Centre - noting the changes and exploring new parts of the city. Tomorrow I have the fun of a long run back to the south west to look forward to. Maybe I should do this kind of trip more often?

Last week I promised to help a friend get DSL up and running, but stumbled at the first hurdle as Windows NT4 did not even recognise the USB ports on the machine, let alone run any of the supplied software! I suspected an upgrade to Windows was required. It would have been great to think this was an opportunity to promote Linux, but in reality it wasn't the time or the place.

Having not installed Windows for six or seven years now, I didn't know what to expect from the shiny new Windows XP disk we purchased from the computer shop. The install took a long time, and seemed to load drivers for all kinds of esoteric hardware prior to beginning 'just in case'. Whilst it wasn't prepared to upgrade NT4, it sorted itself out in a way that left NT intact, along with all the data created with the previous install.

I was pretty impressed with the results - it seemed quite quick to learn, easy to use and nice to look at. Whilst it still suffers from some of the frustrations which drove me away from Windows in the first place, lessons seem to have been learned in terms of multiple users and security. A nice touch was the dialog which walked me through installing a virus scanner, firewall etc.

Ironically, the DSL install on XP took literally seconds and was so simple my friend could have done it unassisted! I don't think I'll be switching back to Windows XP any time soon but I'd consider a second machine with it installed just to play around with. It seems to have come a long way.

Went to see my nephew this evening. In the couple of weeks since I last saw him he has grown a great deal. Still seems unbelievable that its only five weeks since the desperate panic around his birth. He seems to be a contented little fellow too, quietly sleeping through the raucous attempts of my entire family to wake him up!

Arrived at Highbridge & Burnham to find my train home cancelled due to a failed unit. Suspect it may have been the ailing 143611 from yesterday, as the weekday evening service is usually the preserve of these units. Pleasant evening to wait around and relax, following an initially frustrating exchange of calls with Wessex Trains. Later, they became much more helpful, and about an hour later (but still 45 minutes before the next train) a large green coach appeared. I was the only passenger from Highbridge to Weston, so I chatted to the driver - who has a rather nice little business doing tours around the UK and Europe which he enjoys so much he doesn't want to retire!

Ordered a couple of books to get me up to speed before The Literary London Conference, although how I will find time to read them at the height of the appeals season is debatable!