With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

Owen Young’s “Three” EP is like finding a worn, familiar photograph in an old box, only to discover the person in the picture is wearing a lampshade. It’s deeply personal, yet jarringly relevant to the world spinning outside my window. We are dealing with themes of impermanence, the kind that makes you check if the stove is off, twice, every time. You can tell...