The Wallpaper’s Peeling

Friday Bridge “It Girl” – The music could easily pass for an early Madonna track, but the vocals are the radical opposite of just about anything Ms. Ciccone has ever recorded. The superhuman confidence is totally obliterated, replaced by a tiny, timid voice singing entirely in French, but the language barely matters because the singing is so soft the annunciation blurs into a vague purr. It’s a startling and surprisingly attractive contrast, yielding a final product that is cute and vulnerable like a tiny, wounded baby animal. (Click here to buy it from Friendly Noise.)

Of Montreal “Psychotic Feeling” – Of Montreal must be feeling very confident if they are willing to toss off a track as solid as this to a limited edition EP rather than make it the centerpiece for an entire album. Without seeming self-conciously retro, “Psychotic Feeling” has a lovely out-of-time quality, sounding more like the kind of late 70s/early 80s lost classic that you’d find on a Hyped2Death compilation than something from the mid-aughts. (Click here to buy it from Polyvinyl Records.)