Angus and Julia are a brother and sister from Newport near Sydney. They performed independently for awhile, then they performed together, then they released a series of EPs, then people really started to notice. Their music rings sounds homemade and honest. But what does that really mean? It is simple and spare, and very moving. And in its simplicity is its charm and its perfection. Any one of their songs could be one that I might recommend.

Another favourite of mine is Julia’s cover of “Just a boy,” rebadged as “Lonely hands.” And “What you wanted” — the first song of theirs I heard will always be a favourite.

• Angus & Julia Stone, “Lonely hands” (2008)
• Angus & Julia Stone, “What you wanted” (2007)
• Interview on triple j TV (2008)

Josh Ritter knows how to break your heart. Here, it’s the tale of an ill-fated expedition into the north in search of new lands, in which an explorer destroys his ship, the only thing he loves. The imagery is cinematic (“one vast glassy desert of arsenic white”), calling to mind the wide landscapes of Bob Dylan’s Desire (an album which featur another ill-fated expedition: “Isis”).

The name of the ship, Annabel Lee, is also the name of Edgar Allan Poe’s lost lover in his poem of the same name, published after he died. The song expresses the same emotions of loss, but rearranges elements. Both talk of “The beautiful Annabel Lee,” and both are by or on the sea, and both employ the cold as the means of death or destruction. Both employ the same lulling anapaestic rhythm, and both repeat words: “But we loved with a love that was more than love / I and my Annabel Lee” (Poe), and “And the sea turned the color of sky turned the color of sea turned the color of ice” (Ritter). Both end with a stanza where the man and his Annabel Lee are together in dream. However, Ritter goes further. It is with the ill-conceived mission to the north that the explorer dooms (and then consumes) his Annabel Lee:

We talked of the other worlds we’d discover
as she gave up her body to me
And as I chopped up her mainsail for timber
I told her of all that we still had to see
As the frost turned her moorings to nine-tail
and the wind lashed her sides in the cold
I burned her to keep me alive every night
in the lover’s embrace of her hold

The ship was built for exploration so it is perhaps inevitable that this was her end. Does the explorer feel guilt for destroying the one thing he loves? He never says so, but his passive voice (“she gave up her body to me”) seems to hint that there is something on his conscience.

An earlier remarkable song of Ritter’s also needs mention: “The temptation of Adam” is the story of a couple hiding out in an ICBM silo and thinking about destroying the world so they can start over as Adam and Eve.

• Josh Ritter, “The temptation of Adam” (2007)

With the attractive, soporific rhythm of a passenger train and ethereal vocals, the whole experience of this song is a window-gazing daydream. Images (“A moment, a love, a dream, a laugh, a kiss, a cry…”) give way to passion, “songs of desperation: I played them for you”, and you are carried along on the journey.

The Temper Trap are from Melbourne, and include New Zealander Joseph Greer.

The video for “Love lost” from the same album is very amusing, featuring a Dickensian band of schoolboys on a running track. Do watch it.

• The Temper Trap: “Sweet disposition” (2009)

I was driving across town with Johnny yesterday, navigating the quake-damaged roads and the detours and the temporary fences, when he burst out with “This is it! This is it! This is it! What is it? What is it?” Naturally, I applied gentle pressure to the brakes and looked around for what it was I’d missed and what it was that it might have been. The what in question turned out to be the opening bars of “Sweet disposition” leaking through my car’s speakers. I was surprised that he didn’t know this song: I’ve been listening to it for some time now He had heard it some time back and been seeking it ever since — he even described the song to me one time, and I shrugged it off.

I have considered making some notes about music for some time now. I have put it off as really it seems the last thing that the Internet needs. However, perhaps it is just something that I need. So here it goes. Stand by for the initial gush.