Song, by Toad

eagleowl Toad Session from Song, by Toad on Vimeo.

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod
Audio: below

A large part of me thinks there should be an Eagleowl Interviewers’ Support Group.  They are some of the loveliest people you will ever meet, but getting them to talk is like trying to learn Kung-Fu in an afternoon.   I’ve been down the pub with these guys, so I know it’s not like they don’t have anything to say for themselves, it’s just that teasing it out of them with cameras and microphones present requires a black belt in interviewing people which I quite simply do not have yet.  Next time I will be prepared.  Possibly no more successful, but prepared nevertheless.

The music has come out beautifully, recorded by Neil Pennycook and Gavin Tarling, and mixed by Neil – eventually.  Dylan took the pictures, and I have a Song, by Toad set on our Flickr page, but Dylan’s full set can be found on his own site at Blueback Hotrod.  I’ve made videos of the songs themselves and there is of course the main video at the top of the page which gives a not-entirely honest and rather heavily edited impression of what the whole day was like.

The playlist for the interview podcast is at the bottom of the page and as per usual all the Toad Session recordings are available for free for you to download and generally do as you please with.  Hope you like it.

Toadcast #112 – eagleowl Toad Session

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eagleowl -Into the Fold (Toad Session)

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eagleowl -Blanket (Toad Session)

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eagleowl – Laughter (Toad Session)

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eagleowl – Sleep the Winter (Toad Session)

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Toadcast Playlist:

01. eagleowl – Into the Fold (Toad Session) (07.03)
02. Rob St. John – December & Whiskey (Live) (16.26)
03. Silver Jews – How to Rent a Room (19.31)
04. eagleowl – Blanket (Toad Session) (30.25)
05. Spokane – Proud Graduates (36.12)
06. eagleowl – Laughter (Toad Session) (49.21)
07. Adrian Crowley – Bless our Tiny Hearts (54.54)
08. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Willow Garden (57.34)
09. eagleowl – Sleep the Winter (Toad Session) (66.42)

I don’t know if it’s supposed to be taken this way, but this record is great fun.  The otherwordly falsetto vocals and slightly over the top guitar melodrama just give it an air of exuberance.

It also seems to have the right balance between self-indulgence and discipline; it may sound a mite proggy in places, but it’s all still pretty tightly put together, and there’s barely any freeform noodling.  A little like early Interpol and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the rhythm may not seem complicated, but it thumps away consistently through everything, anchoring the whole album extremely well.

Having listened to it a good dozen or so times through I still feel a little ambivalent about the second half of The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night, however.  It seems to lose pace and just a little bit of urgency.  There’s almost a sprightliness to the first half, despite the heaviness of the noise, but later on it seems to become a little leaden, wich is a shame, because every time I listen to it I feel like I am building up to absolutely love the album, only to sort of deflate half way through.

Over the course of an hour this album drifts from boisterous, somewhat epic indie rock to what I suppose I would call a kind of increasingly moody post-rock, if I were forced to try and put it into words.  And consequently it seems to lose its momentum, just at the wrong time.

The Besnard Lakes – Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt.2: The Innocent

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The Besnard Lakes – Glass Printer

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This is another of those reviews of a band with a large back catalogue and a hefty reputation, where I am somewhat out of my depth because I just haven’t really made the time to sit down and listen to their stuff before.

Hardcore fans might disagree with me of course, and I am in no position to argue, but this is a pretty good place to start if you’re going to investigate a band.  It’s bloody good anyway, whether or not it’s all that representative of their older stuff.

Musically, Sisterworld is a right mess; it’s a tight, impeccably controlled mess, but a mess nevertheless.  Awkward noises bristle along, only to be battered aside by an onslaught of dirty guitars and yelped vocals.  That rush of noise is hardly helter-skelter though, instead giving the impression of tethered aggression still barely on the leash.

Rumbling cellos snap in and out of this distorted swagger, giving it another thread of taut discipline, all brimming with threat and unease, and if it kept up like that all record this would be one of the best things I’d heard in fucking ages, but unfortunately it doesn’t.

Those breakouts into cacophony bring the threat of violence to the simmering glare of the earlier songs, as you know that at any point the glower might erupt into a racket of noise, but these moments are less and less vicious and rather less frequent as the album progresses.  This not only allows the momentum to dissipate a little, but rather emasculates the sense of threat in the quieter parts.  I suppose what it does is rob the emotional journey of the sudden twists in direction which had kept me on the edge of my seat for the first two thirds of the album or so.

Consequently, by the end I consistently find myself losing the sense of exhilaration which the first half of the record ignited, but I’d still say that this was bloody good and I am definitely going to get me some more Liars!

Liars – No Barrier Fun

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Liars – Scissor

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

[Click on the images to enlarge them, and go to Blueback Hotrod to view the full set.  I'd like to say a big thank you to Dylan for filming the interview and for letting me use his photos, both for this post and for the titles for the videos.]

It would be a total cliché to describe Willy Vlautin as a natural storyteller, but then again, sometimes the reason that things are clichés is because they are entirely and obviously true.  From the start of the  interview to the end of the gig it is obvious that Vlautin just rolls thoughts and ideas around in his head, around the conversation, just enjoying the process of building phrases and telling you things.

He is also one of the nicest, most unassuming people I have ever met – just a complete gent from start to finish.  I am far from an experienced interviewer, and his readiness to chip in, to participate, and to make the conversation worth everyone’s while turned what could potentially have been quite an awkward half hour into a genuine pleasure.  Maybe that’s why he’s such an engaging performer – he always puts enough of himself into the show to make the interaction worth his and his audience’s while.

Listening to Vlautin’s songs, they are brought vividly to life by what is an understated, but nevertheless phenomenal talent for finding the important detail which turns his broad-brush vistas into crystal-clear snapshots of people and places you can almost smell, they’re so real.

I wonder if it’s his genuine sympathy and interest which allows him to spot that kind of detail, and to communicate it so cleanly.  It’s hard to describe what’s so special about the way he does it, too.  He’s observant, and can be harsh, but never in a judgmental sense.  If ever what he describes comes across as harsh, he manages to do it in a sense that implies somehow that he still has great love for his characters, and it is simply reality which is mean-spirited.  Even describing a van he bought which clapped out five hours out of the lot he imbues the tale with a kind of pathos: “I don’t know what happened to that poor van. It liked me I think; it just didn’t want to drive any more.”

When he talks to me about how he builds his stories, he tells me that there may be a great deal of reality in there but it’s completely jumbled up, although you’d never guess it.  He doesn’t write to expose or to finger point, more as a way of imagining away the injustices and misfortunes of life either for himself or the people he writes about.

In fact, for someone whose stories can be so stark, and whose characters so intensely observational, he is at considerable pains to avoid either being voyeuristic or taking advantage of someone else’s misfortunes, explaining how he’ll exaggerate situations, extrapolate greatly from small moments to create the chains of events which provide the backbone to his plot, and break up and bury the literal observations under layers of new characters, new places and new consequences.

The catharsis, he tells me, is still the same.  Just because the feeling is caused by different circumstances and happening to a very different person, doesn’t mean that demon isn’t exorcised – as long as the heart of it is there, it’s still the same.

I was a little nervous going into this interview not to cross any lines by talking about Vlautin’s books or his music either too much or too little; preferring to try and let him define how much separation he wanted to keep between the two.  It turns out that boundary barely exists, however.

During the interview he tells me about how his latest book, Lean On Pete, was what happened when he sat down and started writing a story which had begun as a song which didn’t really work.  Songs like The Disappearance of Ray Norton from Thirteen Cities remained as songs, but ended up being spoken word because he just couldn’t get the story he wanted to tell to fit into a traditional song format.

As he chats his way through the gig it becomes increasingly clear that the clichés are perhaps still the best point of reference, at least to begin to understand Willy Vlautin.  He is, simply, a storyteller, and the medium is flexible.  What doesn’t change though, to expand on that cliché a little, is that perhaps as much as a storyteller, he comes across as a listener, and that’s probably why he’s so good.

The band have been together for fifteen years, and the obvious consonance between them as musicians seems to flow from that openness to other people, and the performance itself is full of that spirit.  I love an awful lot of Richmond Fontaine’s music, but there are definitely times when it’s not entirely my cup of tea.  Live, though, the generosity of Vlautin and his friends has so much impact that I found myself drawn in by the warmth they project and even loving the songs I hadn’t enjoyed as much on record.

It was a lovely evening in general, and the interview was so interesting that I am going to publish it in its entirety as a podcast in the next couple of weeks so you can all hear it for yourselves.  I’ll intersperse the conversation with the songs which get mentioned, and I absolutely defy anyone not to be captivated.

Richmond Fontaine – Moving Back Home #2

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Richmond Fontaine – The Boyfriends

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Welcome back to the Song, by Toad Fresh Air show, with the lovely Ruth.  This week we have Russell from Mammoeth live in session, although the poor bugger’s already done a brilliant session for us before Christmas which was unfortunately swallowed by the Fresh Air computers, which are a bit like a suspiciously special needs version of Hal most of the time.

Last week’s Session with The Last Battle can be found at the bottom of the page, in the form of downloadable session tracks, a podcast of the interview and session videos.  The sound is really nice considering there were six of them and we only have two microphones.

Live on Air 8pm-9.30pm – Listen live here.

I’ll fill in the playlist live below from 8pm onwards, so please come and say hello, shout mindless abuse or whatever else it is you internet people spend your time doing.

1. The Besnard Lakes – Chicago Train
2. Liars – Scarecrow On A Killer Slant
3. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse – Revenge
4. Bjork – Generous Palmstroke (Live)
5. Mammoeth- Scrambled Eggs (Live in Session)
6. Dirty Projectors – Two Doves
7. Mammoeth – Trigonometry (Live in Session)
8. Berzilla Wallin – Conversation with Death (Oh Death)
9. Sparklehorse – Heart of Darkness
10. Mammoeth – I’m Glad That I Died Today (Live in Session)
11. Mammoeth – Lap Dog
12. Fleetwood Mac – Honey Hi
13. Mammoeth – Wendy House (Live in Session)
14. Blur – Out of Time
15. Joanna Newsom – ‘81

Last week’s session can be found after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Basically, in terms of live music, this week revolves around two events: the (now sold out) Grizzly Bear show at the Queen’s Hall, and the Fencelicious Homegame Festival in Anstruther (final-ish running order announced here).

However, for those of you not coming out to Fife and unwilling to stump up twenty quid to see yet another band with Bear in their name, there is at least one gig  very much worth seeing in Edinburgh this week.

Before that, for those of you who missed it (which I presume includes everyone) I was invited to write a comment piece for the Scotsman this weekend, about what it would mean to small bands and labels to lose BBC 6Music.  The content will be pretty familiar to all of you from the post I wrote last week, which is how the article came about in the first place,

It’s on the site filed as a ‘Premium Article”, which makes me chuckle, so for those of you who don’t wish to sign in I have scanned the thing and you can read it here.  I suppose I am slightly not supposed to do that, but I don’t think I am being paid for the article itself, and I don’t think it’s doing much harm to let you see the thing if only so you can exclaim, like Mrs. Toad did on first seeing it: “Where the fuck did they get that awful picture?”  Bitch.

Friday 12th March 2010: The School, Allo Darlin’ & Django Django at the Wee Red Bar.

This is going to be a somewhat twee night of indie pop, with just a little darkness supplied by the Homegame-bound Django Django beforehand.  You owe it to yourself to have enormous amounts of fun at this gig if you aren’t going to Homegame, just to stick it to those of us who are.

Allo Darlin’ – Atlantic City

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[Alex Cornish (shown right on the Tom Robinson show) is an Edinburgh singer songwriter and a good friend of mine.  He has helped us out with contracts for Toad things for free, for no more reason than generosity and, although he may not be that well known in the alt-folk spheres inhabited by most people here, he has actually achieved considerable success, including being playlisted on Radio2, all using entirely DIY methods and entirely off his own back.  He wrote this on his own site recently, and gave me permission to re-post it here as part of this week's Sunday Supplement.]

I know everyone is writing about 6 Music being axed, but here is my viewpoint as an artist who works in a very DIY way and has first hand experience of sending out unsolicited CDs to producers at radio shows.

Once you have written and recorded the ‘masterpiece’, it’s time to decide who is likely to play it. This is all inapplicable if you have a wad of cash to pay a radio plugger, I didn’t, so I did it myself. Anyway, there’s no point sending out promo CDs to people who don’t play your sort of music and there’s no point sending it to the wrong address or the wrong producer. There’s also no point in sending it to the majority of commercial stations (XFM down south excepted). You need to spend a long time doing research on the old internet. After I had recorded Until the Traffic Stops first time around I spent said long time on the internet and the telephone (one of the great things about the BBC by the way is that if you telephone the switchboard they have to tell you who the production team for a show is, including the right box no. etc.). At that time, and this was before I had ever been played on the radio, I found that XFM Scotland might play it, so I sent a CD to Jim Gellatly for his new music show. I was also a massive fan of the Tom Robinson show on 6 Music, which at the time was on Monday – Thursday from 7pm to 9.30pm. There was also Vic Galloway’s Radio 1 Introducing show. So, out of all the radio stations, in general terms I had 6 Music, XFM and BBC Introducing on Radio 1. Now XFM Scotland has closed that leaves 6 Music and Radio 1 Introducing. If 6 Music closes it’s the introducing shows on Radio 1 as the only champions of new music, and to be honest they would rarely play my sort of music.

There are two reasons why 6 Music is so important to me:

- the first is that Tom Robinson and his producer picked out my little unsolicited package, which led to it being played, then a session, then someone at 6 Music handed it up to Radio 2 and a year later I got on the Radio 2 palylist. The same thing happened with Jim Gellatly, he picked it up and from there it led to other things. Without those massive leg ups I wouldn’t have had anywhere near the level of the exposure that I have had. There are obviously people at Radio 2 and Radio Scotland who have taken big chances in backing me, but I wouldn’t have got to them without those intial acts of support.

- the second is the new music I have discovered as a fan – I remember hearing ‘ The Ride’ by Joan as Policewoman on 6 Music and buying it right away. There are lots of occasions when that has happened.

So, as a musician where does that leave you? Well, there are obviously blogs and they are great, and I send stuff to blogs already, but as a reader or listener on a blog site you have to be active i.e. you have to actually read and listen to the material on a blog. With the radio, it is more passive – it is on in your home and when you hear something new, you stop, check out the tracklisting online and buy it from itunes or whatever. 6 Music closing is going to leave a massive hole for both those that love discovering and supporting new music and for those musicians trying to reach those potential new fans. I’ll never forget the first time ‘This One’s for You’ was played on the Tom Robinson show – first radio play. A huge thrill. It’s a fucking shame.

[This week’s Sunday Supplement has been provided by Euan ‘Steinberg Principle’ ‘Kays Lavelle’ ‘Trampoline’ McMeeken, and turns Matthew’s own review of an important local release on its head. Don’t forget if you’d like to see a Sunday Supplement of your own published here, just email us at sunday(at)songbytoad.com. All contributions welcome!]

Before you all get a weird sense of déjà vu, no, you are not caught in time warp.  You’re not going back to the future.  You’re simply reading my review of ‘The Winter of Mixed Drinks’ by Frightened Rabbit as opposed to Matthew’s review that he wrote the other day.  We spoke about this idea the other night and thought it’d be an interesting thing to do: I’d be reviewing this record for my blog anyway so we thought, if my opinion varied greatly from his, it’d be interesting for me to write a review which, in a way, responded to his.

I should make it clear that in undertaking this exercise I’m not just looking for a fight.  I personally think Matthew is one of the most engaging and best music writers out there in Scotland at the moment.  That’s the main reason that I continually read his blog and shun the lifeless and soulless drivel published in many music magazines these days.  However, at the end of the day, what makes music, and indeed a music blog, so interesting is when a piece of music can divide opinion so greatly.

Unlike many on the blog the other day I point blank refuse to pat Matthew on the back for his review of this record.  Sure, it takes balls to say what you think, but I’d expect more from him than “this is awful.”   I think, and hope, what he meant by that statement was that, in the context of Frightened Rabbit’s previous 2 albums, and what his hopes were for this record, this record is awful.  Not that he genuinely thinks this record falls into the awful category because simply put: this album is far from awful.

But is it good?

My answer to this is, in terms of song quality, yes it is.  ‘Things’, ‘Footshooter’, ‘Not Miserable’, ‘Living In Colour’ and ‘Yes, I Would’ are as good as anything that they’ve done before in my opinion.  I believe there’s enough quality songwriting on this record to justify a much more positive review than it received from Matthew earlier in the week.  With the exception of ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’  – which I do believe is awful commercial garbage –  this is a really good record.  It feels more like ‘Sings The Greys’ in terms of style and, for me, that can only be a good thing.  Whilst The Midnight Organ Fight captured the hearts and minds of most people who love this band, it’s their debut that still makes me smile most.  The frantic pace and rawness of that record is, at times, just sublime.  And there are moments on this that remind me of that record.  The ending of ‘Skip The Youth’ echoes, in a way, the end of ‘Square 9’ – Matthew, if you don’t hear that then please play them together and realise your wrong about this tune.

Sure, there’s a much lusher sound to this record.  A much bigger production.  But really, what do you expect from a band on their 3^rd album and with the resources available to them?  Of course more money will be spent.  Their music has always lent itself to a sweeter, lusher sound – just compare albums 1 and 2.  I would have preferred if this record had the rawness of their debut as it is what got me hooked into them in the first place but the same applies to TMOF.

Anyways, I’m determined not to let production affect my opinion of the record.  It’s not something I ever used to bother about – until I started reading this blog actually – and it ruined my enjoyment of the Broken Records album, even though the quality of songs on that record clearly speak for themselves.   I guess ultimately everyone has personal taste when it comes to production and it’s easy to let the production of a record distract you from the overall quality of the songs.  It is important to many, I’m not denying that for one second, but, and I never thought I’d say this, I completely agree with Rampant Chutney Consumerism (it really does hurt to say that) in that, if the songs are good then they are good and will shine through no matter what.

There are no instant hits on this record, like there were on The Midnight Organ Fight, but as a piece of music I genuinely think it’s a good follow up and a strong record.  It’s certainly not awful.  I guess at the end of the day you can’t please everyone though.  They didn’t please Matthew.  They have pleased me.  Like he said though, I’m sure they don’t care either way.

[There were a couple of songs to be included in this post, but give I already have two tracks from this album available for download I didn't think I could include these - don't want to give too much away for free, sorry - Matthew]

Well in all the chatter about the Beeb this week I was strongly considering ignoring it completely in this podcast and giving everyone a welcome break from the wailing and gnashing of teeth… but naah, that was never going to happen, was it.

So there’s a lot of railing against the Beeb and the threat to 6Music and yaddah yaddah you know the script don’t you.  Sadly, and somewhat ironically, we spend so much time talking about the state of the Beeb and the loss their support of small bands will represent, that we actually forgot to talk much about the small bands we ourselves put on the bloody podcast.

Toadcast #111 – The Beebcast

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01. Ballboy – All the Records on the Radio are Shite (03.21)
02. Love is All – Bigger Bolder (13.02)
03. Fredrik – Vinterbarn (15.53)
04. Exrays – Everything Goes (27.16)
05. Phil Ochs – Automation Song (34.33)
06. Ghostkeeper – By Morning (37.26)
07. The Light Footwork – Carlsbad Irrigation Project (47.54)
08. Mondrian – Rise and Fall of a Golden Boy Seen by a Porn Star Using No Sextoy (50.21)
09. The Leaf Library – Losing Places (ISAN Remix) (63.00)

In case any of you wondered what it really means being an independent record label, it is shown in these pictures (click to enlarge).  This is the Trips and Falls album He Was Such a Quiet Boy carpeting our floors.  We hand print two colours onto the sleeves, apply two different stickers to the front, then fold up the box and insert the CD and the inlay card.  Then we do it again, two hundred and ninety-nine more times.

Still, looks fucking lovely doesn’t it.  Chris from Meursault  and his brother Mike did the artwork under the guise of their new graphic art powerhouse-in-indie-slippers enterprise The Brothers Grimm.  They also did the artwork for the new Meursault album, which is looking fantastic as well, so a big thanks to them both.

It’s times like this that being a record label is really fucking cool.  You can pre-order the album from here, if you want – out on 22nd March.

Trips and Falls – How Do You Do…

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Trips and Falls – And in Real Life He Wears Corduroy Pants

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