So why is a free downloadable single such a significant item? 

Because it’s not just a cheaper snapshot into an artist’s work. It can be an Instagram into an imaginary, lush and extraordinary world. The single worships the song itself, transforms it from one more song in a sequence (as with a CD or LP) and one more song in a set, and draws the song into greater, more concentrated focus.

Which means, when you hear something labelled a single, if it’s an old single, like from before the 1990s, you really do have to imagine the new owner playing the song over and over.

Melbourne-via-Perth power-poppers The Golden Rail have released this as a taster to their forthcoming album. With a cv that includes playing with Header, The Rainyard, The Jangle Band, DM3, The Palisades, and Showbag, you could suspect it’s going to be good - and it is.

“Oh My!” Is lilting jangle-pop with with a sweet chorus reminiscent of a Robert Forster song. Written by the band’s creative core of Jeff Baker and  Ian Freeman, it sounds like it dropped right out of the sky during paisley pop’s mid-‘80s heyday...right after the Go Betweens had seeded the clouds. 

The advice doesn’t come often around here but when it does, it’s always free. So here’s a dose: If you see a record with The Dahlmanns’ name on it and you’re into powerpop, buy it. The same goes for Andy Shernoff (but you probably knew that already). This one has both so how can you go wrong?

The Dahlmanns are wife-and-husband, Line Dahlman and Andre Dahlmann, plus a bunch of other Norwegian Dahlmanns, currently Otto, Jan Erik, Magnus, and Pål. Shernoff is the songwriting genius behind The Dictators (R.I.P.) and his own solo work. Andy wrote both songs and duets with Line on the A side.

Punk turned Americana country bluesman Peter Blast occupies a musical space vacated by Nikki Sudden and contested by a string of similar-minded outriders. This two-song CD single gives a glimpse of why the others are mostly pretenders. 

He might look like his late friend Johnny Thunders’ Chicago cousin and Blast shares his plaintive vocal stylings, but the soulful music he makes is all his own. “Population Zero” is sparse, country blues dressed in a skeletal arrangement and spooky lap slide. Herein lies the Nikki Sudden comparison. 

Imagine if the West Coast Flower Power era had happened, not in the City by the Bay but in the middle of England. Within spitting distance of Stonehenge. Only it wasn’t so trippy-dippy and folkish, and had a nasty streak to its sound. Cue: The Neighbourhood Strange and this, their second double A-sided single.

UK-born, American-based Dan Melchoir is a longtime Holly Golightly and Billy Childish collaborator and his old band, The Broke Revue, had a string of albums out on Sympathy for The Record Industry and In The Red. 

He’s not as prolific as Childish but he’s not far off. How he got to record in Queensland with two members of Australia’s Ooga Boogas (Richard Stanley and Perl Bystrom) is unclear. I'm willing to bet it came of paths crossing at one of those underground gatherings in the US like Gonerfest.