September 13

Grey-haired Australian singer-songwriter Stephen Cummings is the very definition of a cult success: his is a name that is only known in selected circles down under, and despite investing more than three decades in the business, he has not achieved any sort of significant commercial recognition. This is a terrible shame, considering that Cummings's songs are candid, elliptical narratives of everyday life in Australian inner suburbia, about the joys and travails of falling in and out of love in such a grimly humdrum environment. It's no overstatement to state that Cummings's works are small, quiet musical miracles that hold up remarkably well even after countless listenings. Check out 'September 13', a wonderfully oblique ditty from 1994 that takes a somewhat surreal and peculiar look at a rapidly disintegrating romance, and the effects from its fallout. The rather disturbing video clip is set entirely in a frozen-meat locker, portraying a tied-up Cummings struggling desperately to set himself free before the onset of hypothermia and subsequent death by freezing.