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Welcome to paradise
Song of the Day: Perhaps the ultimate number for an absurdly cold, cloudy British Easter Sunday, also this year falling on April Fool's Day, therefore so ironically and self-destructively bleak it's almost uplifting
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The Distance comes from Cake's second album, Fashion Nugget (1996)
Song of the Day: Following Kraftwerk and Yello, we return to the road. Or do we? Is this classic by the Sacramento rock band about an obsessive racing driver, or something else entirely?
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Stephin Merritt and friend
Song of the Day: 'Love is ...' here perhaps less a song, more a poetic, wry, extended metaphor, but still a lugubrious bit of loveliness from The Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple album 69 Love Songs
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Cat Power aka Chan Marshall
Song of the Day: Following Go-Kart Mozart's wonderfully chirpy songs about doleful poverty and adult depression, we turn to a aka Chan Marshall's song addressed at a teenager feeling down from online bullying
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Go-Kart Mozart's Lawrence, a genius at upbeat-downbeat indie pop
Song of the Day returns with two gloriously upbeat numbers with downbeat titles by Lawrence, formerly of Felt and Denim, from his brand new 17-track album Mozart's Mini Mart
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David Byrne
Song of the Day: That's not my beautiful house! Or is it? Today we may find ourselves comparing two sublime songs, two houses, one brand new and a classic from the Talking Heads Remain in Light album of 1980
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Ezra Furman never fails to be entertaining on stage
A beautifully upbeat, mischievous, wistful, passionate number from the new album, Transangelic Exodus by the Chicago indie rock singer-songwriter, in which "the past is the past, but the present's nothing without it"
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Field Music's 2018 album Open Here
Song of the Day: How to create a value system for modern life? Just as this is hard to quantify, it is equally difficult to categorise the musical style of the Sunderland band, whose latest, sixth album, Open Here, addresses a variety of contemporary issues
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Ty Segall's new album, Freedom's Goblin
Song of the Day: It's time for an upbeat number for Friday, and so let's enjoy a great new cover version by the American garage rocker that stands up the original, but also resulting in a situation where everyone is indeed a winner
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Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet – musician, artist, visionary.
Song of the Day: With the recent passing of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and all the songs, tributes and stories that have followed, it now seems only appropriate to follow up with music Smith loved by one of his major influences
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Mark E Smith 1957-2018
Song of the Day: With the sudden news of the passing of Mark E Smith, how can we choose a song to exemplify this force of nature, this difficult genius, this guttural great, this prince of post-punk lyricists inspired by HP Lovecraft, William Blake, Wyndham Lewis, Gene Vincent and krautrock
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Super Furry Animals single cover for Northern Lites
Song of the Day: After Renaissance, let's turn to the innovative Welsh band, here adding a catchy dash of Caribbean calypso, steel drums and brass into a song written years earlier by frontman Gruff Rhys
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Laura Gibson
Song of the Day: Continuing from our last entry, by Aldous Harding, another vocalist with a special form of melancholy, with work from the American artist's fourth solo album, Empire Builder, 2016
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Aldous Harding
Song of the Day: Another sublime voice, and here two songs from the New Zealander, whose voice coils out in a still, acoustic guitar and piano, and reveals raw, intimate emotions awash with melancholic black humour
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Dolores O'Riordan
Song of the Day: Another music star death prompts today's choice, and a shock one at that – the 46-year-old Dolores O'Riordan, whose passion shines out in this 1994 number from the album No Need To Argue
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Jeff Buckley in full swing
Song of the Day: Following yesterday's Massive Attack song Teardrop, sung by Elizabeth Fraser, another work of soaring power and passion, and also tragic portent, by the man with whom she had an intense relationship
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Tindersticks
Song of the Day: Following yesterday's Prince of Tears by Baxter Dury, let's move onto another deep-voiced, orchestral-backed song of wonderful melancholy by the Nottingham band from their second album in 1995
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Baxter Dury … a different chip of the old blockhead
Song of the Day: Sounding uncannily like his dad Ian in the speaking department, but producing entirely different music and his own, more relaxed style, the opening and title tracks from his 2017 album are deeply personal and still laced with aggression, irony, self-loathing and dark humour
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The mischievous Weaves
Song of the Day: How do you create music that's brilliantly clever but also accessible, deeply meaningful but tongue-in-cheek shallow? The indefinably wonderful Canadian band seem to have the recipe
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Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold
Song of the Day: Moving into new fox territory, let's enjoy two powerful and emotionally charged tracks spanning the career so far of the Seattle indie folk band that exemplify their distinctive vocal harmony style
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