There’s something strikingly pensive about the infinity-interrogating spirit shown on both The Long Sleep and Jenny Hval’s preceding release (as Lost Girls with Håvard Volden), Feeling. Her meditations are not precious (nor above preciousness) and frequently bemused about embarrassing, natural garden-variety human mess.

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The sophomore album Puff LP: In the air without a shape by Toronto dream weavers Bernice deals in understated wonderment. Frontwoman Robin Dann’s lyrics often recall and indulge in the big, lush joys of childhood, while her tempered vocal delivery grounds those flights of fancy. With an unassuming demeanor, Dann will make reference to the amazement of a sun-bathed aircraft (“Passenger Plane”), frozen lemonade and bowls of watermelon (“One Garden”), or a lunar inamorato (“He’s the Moon”).

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After a while, you forget it’s summer. You don’t remember what the morning is. After a while, you won’t remember what summer is or its happiness that with summer has long since merged into a fading white light, when that morning had awakened and ceased. But here you are, now in it immersed. Your eyelids flutter to alight upon the dawning of world, as dreams with memories mingle, tangled together as are your legs with soft linen sheets.

More about: Mary Lattimore

A little mouse twitches its whiskers, opens its tiny lips, and squeaks forth some prospective pop that scuttles, bumps, hides, seeks, hacks, hurls, seesaws, and tee-hee-hees all the way home.

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I always viewed Frog Eyes through the lens of “Claxxon’s Lament,” a song that existed for years before finally seeing official release by the band on Carey’s Cold Spring.

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