TWO retro pairs of spectacles, two perspectives on life at odds with everything Bush and big brand in America, and two shared musicians in the two bands made for a wonderful double bill.

Your Heart Breaks is the nom de plume of Clyde, a shall we say androgynous sprite with rough-cut hair and roughly chopped guitar, a high Washington voice and a ridiculously high quotient of wit, wisdom and whacked-out romantic ideas.

In Shakespeare, the role would be the jester. In York, the role was to open for Laura Veirs with The Saltbreakers' Steve Moore on keys and Karl Blau on the most informal of drums, as Your Heart Breaks sang invariably of being in one space when wanting or needing to be in another.

YHB's latest album is entitled New Ocean Waves, affording a link with Veirs' newly released sixth opus, Saltbreakers, a form of ocean wave. Moore and Blau, switching to bass, were now joined by drummer Tucker Martine in outfits reminiscent of Gram Parsons's decorated Nudie suits to accompany Veirs, an altogether more serious, intellectual spirit than Clyde.

She has left Seattle for Portland and one relationship for another, leading to her best album yet, a record so consistently good, she played all 12 tracks, but not in order, save for the opening Pink Light and closing encore, Wrecking, the most magical of her ghostly, awe-struck chamber folk songs. The playing was relaxed, Veirs less so, but she summoned the elements as potently as Shakespeare's Prospero.