Since the Friday Five is - *sniff* - still on Meme Vacation, I'm gonna replace it with another equally inspiration-less post and talk about the four songs that've been big in TrashWorld (TM) in the past couple of days. Oh, deal. There might be a decent post come along one of these days.

N-Trance, Set You Free (last night, the big club in Birmingham)
One day, historians of the future will look back on the early 90s and revel in the quality of its music. They will focus specifically in their studies on this particular song, with its lift-your-arms-in-the-air choruses and exactly timed floaty pause-y bits. And these historians? They, too, will have glowsticks.

Ladytron, Playgirl (this afternoon, hangover's making my brain feel like a peachstone)
I love Ladytron, and I specifically love this song: it manages to represent the exact midpoint between Saint Etienne, clunky techno, and pervy sleaziness. And it has handclaps. And despite what anybody will tell you about me, my handclaps are amazing. Leave me alone.

The Divine Comedy, Come Home Billy Bird (all week, mostly)
So yeah, The Guardian - ace British newspaper - didn't like it at all. But then sometimes I do like shit things (Danny: "You just like really weird music, really, don't you?") and this is endearingly rubbish. It's got baroque chamberpop, sugary choruses featuring the phrase "international business traveller", and a faith in human goodness and agency that's as uplifting as it is cheesy.

The Magnetic Fields, I Can't Touch You Anymore (tonight, dreaming of summer)
This song reminds me of a specific time and a specific place so much I can almost reach out and touch it. It's summer, 2001, and I'm just back from Oxford visiting an old friend and buying this (annoyingly hard to get) triple album. And I'm sat on the grass, and it's sunny, and I'm about to go home lie in the bath for a couple hours take it all in. And this song's so simple, so astute, that it makes me smile and my heart break a little bit at the same time. And then hide in the corner because I realise I'm being impossibly pretentious.