Song, by Toad

Oooft.  It has been a heavy week, and oddly enough I am going to be taking the weekend as an opportunity not to drink, which is a bit backwards.  But then, that’s how these things go sometimes I guess.

The good thing about my current job, of course, is that I don’t have to be all that professional.  So instead of sitting at a desk trying to look like I’m being efficient this afternoon, I can put a movie on talk shite on the Friday Fives and fold Cold Seeds inserts.  It’s work, of course, and it does need to be done, but that doesn’t mean I have to make things hard on myself.

One nice thing about being in the house during the day is that we happen to live near just about the best butchers and the best fishmongers in the city.  So when I pop out for my lunch I can also pick up something extremely tasty for dinner as well.  I haven’t spent much time in the kitchen over the last couple of years, largely due to coming home and getting straight on the computer to do Toad things, so I have actually been quite enjoying getting back in touch with my inner housewife.

Anyhow, Fridays, as we all know, are de-lurking amnesties, where you the silent masses save me from the incessant chirping of my regular gobshites by answering five largely frivolous questions about nothing much in particular and then annoying your bosses by doing nothing at all for the rest of the afternoon except talk shite on the internet.

1. Weirdest foodstuff you have ever sampled.
2. Something you thought would taste horrid, but was lovely.
3. Something you thought you would enjoy, but was disgusting.
4. Tastiest food which is completely boring.
5. Hangover munchies of choice.

The Divine Comedy – A Seafood Song

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Grandaddy – Poisoned at Hartsy Thai Food

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Adam Balbo – Convenient Dinner

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Donny Hue & the Colors – With the Onions (from their series of free e-singles)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Eels – Hospital Food (Live at the BBC)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The only time I have met him, enigmatic, reclusive Scot Charlie from King Post Kitsch… no, wait sorry.  Actually Charlie did introduce himself at the Meursault album launch down at the Old Queen’s Head a couple of months ago, and enigmatic and reclusive he most certainly was not.

Apparently that’s turned up in a couple of reviews recently though, and in his everso gentle reminder to me that I had yet to actually review this EP despite popping a track on the podcast recently, Charlie sounded a bit nonplussed at the description, so I thought I might as well mention it here.  He is not enigmatic.  Or reclusive.  Okay? He just happens to live in London.

Maybe there is something to the enigma chat after all though, because this is an oddly constructed EP and no mistake.  Having hit you with a cracking pop song first off – the lo-fi, slightly old-fashioned, slightly Beatlesy Walking on Eggshells – it drifts into a sort of dream state with the stuttering, uncomfortable Portland Street, before drifting off into the odd reverie of the title track.  This last song sounds a little like a cross between Luna and Au Revoir Simone.

Anyhow, that sequence gives the EP an odd emotional trajectory.  It’s a bit like those sequences of junkies in Trainspotting, where you get the intensity of the hit, before everything drifts into some sort of out of focus trance-like state.  If I remember our conversation correctly I think Charlie has recorded a whole album’s worth of material, and in many ways this sounds more like a chunk out of an album than something which was originally supposed to be an EP, although maybe I just hear that because I know about the album to begin with.

Either way, there are really good songs on this EP, and it represents another step forward for someone I think has real promise.

King Post Kitsch – Walking on Eggshells

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | King Post Kitsch on Bandcamp (download EP here for free)

There is an awful lot of Stone Roses, and even a spot of Inspiral Carpets in here, although the overall effect is still overwhelmingly noisy and garagey, rather than all that Madchester.  There is still, however, a hint of an answer to the hypothetical question of what those bands might sound like if they grew a big, hairy set of balls, smothered them in honey and dipped them in a wasps’ nest.

And apparently, this is them sounding all polished.  I was talking to Anthony from God Don’t Like It recently and he said that their early songs were faster, angrier and more ragged than any of this stuff.

So you know what I am about to say, don’t you?  That this is rough, rowdy and fantastic and that it great to listen to music played with some fucking aggression for a change.  It seems somewhat contradictory, then, to say that I actually think songs like Franklin and Worse to Come are two of the most important songs on the album, because they are a lot less raucous than their neighbours. What they do though, is provide a bit of a cushion.

Albums which are just bash bash bash yell yell yell all the way through can get pretty boring, but for a band whose obvious signature is the boisterous venom with which they end up barging their way through their songs they’ve done a pretty neat job of changing things up from time to time.  This means that they rarely overdo things, and also that when those riffs hit they do so with real impact.

In short, despite a couple of minor moments where the momentum stutters slightly, this is a genuinely enjoyable, ear-to-ear-grin sort of album.

Male Bonding – Crooked Scene

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Male Bonding – Franklin

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

Given my love for Grandaddy and my total ignorance of Earlimart it has proved annoyingly easy for me to treat this as the next Grandaddy album, rather than the collaboration between the two bands that it actually is.

At times the collaboration fails to spark just a little.  I am, as I said, no Earlimart expert, but there are a couple of tracks on here which smack just a little of the later, more lacklustre Grandaddy songs.

Having said that, some of it is fucking great.  Most of it in fact.  I’ve rarely ever taken to a Grandaddy album immediately, and this was the same in that it’s only now I’ve heard it a dozen times through that I find myself having a little tiny celebration in my head when certain tracks come on.  The title track, Red Curbs, All Fucked on Beer and a couple of others trigger that response, not least the song which is probably making fun of this very review in advance: GNDN.  Retaliate first, as my old dad used to say.

More than the songs themselves, however, what strikes me most about this is the way that the collaboration seems to have invigorated Jason Lytle, whose later Grandaddy work was starting to flag a little and whose solo album a couple of years ago, whilst gorgeous in large parts, seemed to lack a little sense of purpose.  This doesn’t have that at all, it’s just as loose an album as they promised when they formed the group: relaxed, energetic and with a genuine sense of liveliness.

So it may not be my favourite thing the Grandaddy lads have ever been involved in, and apologies once again for my ignorance of Earlimart (eMusic here I come!), but this is nevertheless a really good album which highlights the really refreshing effect a well-judged collaboration can have on people’s creative spark.

Admiral Radley – The Thread

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Admiral Radley – I’m All Fucked on Beer

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

Well I will confess that my first thought when listening to Ace Bushy Striptease was that I hoped the name didn’t imply some novelty band.

It didn’t, which was nice, but that worry was obliterated on first listen and replaced with a resounding ‘what the fuck is this?’

It reminds me of the first time I heard the Wave Pictures.  Not that there’s any musical similarity, more that despite clearly being able to hear the bits which showed that they actually did know what they were doing, there were still plenty of places where I found myself wondering if this was perhaps the first time the band had actually picked up their instruments.

It’s like an odd mix of the Wedding Present and the Lovely Eggs, by parts classic indie, and by parts the hyperactive theme tune to a children’s television programme gone horribly wrong.  Perhaps like that proverbial hurricane blowing through a junkyard and spontaneously assembling a 747, although we happen to have stumbled in on it halfway through the job. In amongst all the randomly swirling mess there are brief shadows of what is being built, but an awful lot is still left to the imagination.

It’s also a very, very brief album.  Sort of like a firework.  The songs pretty much all explode and burn out in and around the minute and a half mark, except for the mental eight minute final epic, which squiggles its way manically through to the end sounding like a cassette being fast-forwarded without lifting the playback head from the tape.

By the time I’ve finished this record I invariably seem to shake my head, wonder what the fuck these guys are taking, and then go back to the start and play it all again.  It’s all over the shop, but it’s fucking brilliant too.

Ace Bushy Striptease – HM9 (Waterfall)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ace Bushy Striptease – Let Us Sit Quietly and Listen to Pop Punk

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Oddbox Records

This is one of those weeks where I think that I really haven’t got much on, but then I look at every single evening and they all look jammed full of jobs to do.  Gripe whinge piss moan etc etc etc…

Anyhow, as well as various other little crappy jobs, I have to collect our two Pioneer amps from the amp repair shop, which is good news.  We keep on burning these fuckers out by playing things far too loud, and so we’ve been without music in our house for the last week, apart from a shitey pair of speakers we plug into the computer.  These, whilst just about serviceable in an emergency, do not, frankly, cut the mustard, so I am delighted to be fetching the big bastard noisy ones again so we can turn shit up nice and loud once more.

Ours aren’t particularly expensive either, but apparently people go crazy for this Pioneer Silver stuff.  There are collectors and all sorts, and we saw a couple of very nice ones indeed changing hands on eBay for hunnerts of pounds.  One to stay well clear of whilst drunk, I think it’s safe to say.

Tuesday 27th July 2010: Dum Dum Girls, Jesus H. Foxx & My Tiny Robots at Cabaret Voltaire.

The Dum Dum Girls play slightly lo-fi indie pop, with an emphasis on the pop.  There are lots of ahh-ahh choruses and things like that, and the guitars are nice and growly.  Jesus H. Foxx are also coming out of hiding for this one, which will be a nice treat for us all!

Dum-Dum Girls – I Will Be

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 29th July 2010: Trapped in Kansas & Yahweh split single launch, with the Japanese War Effort at the Wee Red Bar.

Gerry Loves Records win at vinyl.  Their last release, apart from being a pleasure to listen to, is also a pleasure to own.  They put real thought into the packaging of the thing and make the whole object something you really, really want to own.  This is their second release, and given how the label go about their business I really, really hope it all goes well for them.

Saturday 31st July 2010: eagleowl & Conquering Animal Sound play at the We Sink Ships: Elements short film screening at the Wee Red Bar.

This kind of cross-media stuff doesn’t happen nearly enough around here, but then I suppose a straightforward gig with three bands and some beer is a lot simpler to slap together, whereas this kind of thing requires a little more thought, I guess.  Elements is, I think, a film put together by Sleepysoul productions using a combination of their own images and work by Heidi Kuisma and Neil Milton (who are We Sink Ships), but I couldn’t swear to it.  Whatever it is though, it sounds like a really good evening, not least because whatever the film is the two bands involved are really good.

eagleowl – Laughter (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[This week's Sunday Supplement is a personal message from Phil Quirie]

Hello boys and girls!

I’m not exactly sure just how to start this transmission off, so forgive me if it seems poorly structured, but I owe a lot of people some serious gratitude, appreciation, and thanks.

Why? Well, as a fair amount of you may know, there was an appeal launched recently called Let’s Buy Phil’s Guitar, which was an effort to raise enough funds to save my guitar from a very lucky ebay bidder. I guess I should write a brief background and overview as to how this situation arose.

I have been friends with Neil Pennycook and Meursault for a number of years – probably since around 2005. I was introduced to Neil via a mutual friend who Neil had met at art college (the living legend that is “Party Marty”). I was aware of Neil’s music, but had never listened. Then, a few months later, our mutual friend instigated a gathering of souls for his birthday celebrations, with the venue to be Edinburgh. That night, a two-piece Meursault consisting of Neil and Fraser played a show in Bannermans. I was utterly gob-smacked with what I saw and heard, and from then on became a proper fanboy, snapping up the debut EP, and frequently putting on shows in Aberdeen and inviting them up to play. My friendship with the band grew until I was invited to join the band, about two years ago. Initially, although hugely flattered (and confused – why me!?), I resisted because I was in a steady job in Aberdeen, along with great friends and family. Due to liquidation, I lost said job, and Neil then asked me to join the band again. This time, I couldn’t resist and I upped sticks to Edinburgh and officially joined Meursault. That was almost one year ago.

Given that Meursault were my favourite ever band, I was willing to take a lot of risks and work really hard touring with them and recording the second album. With this, came the realisation that I wouldn’t be able to hold down a full-time job and commit to touring. But I was still willing to put my heart, soul and money into Meursault. So I tried to strike a balance between temporary agency jobs and the band. This balance is very difficult to calibrate, as any musician will testify, and it eventually came to a head: in order to survive, I had to sell off any assets I may own. It just so happens that the only material possession of any value was my music gear, so the decision was made to sell my Fender Jaguar guitar. This decision did not come lightly, but heck, I have rent and tax to pay, as well as a stomach that seems to want food from time to time. So I put the guitar on ebay, and I received a call that night from Neil, claiming that “he and friends would raise the money”, so long as I agreed to take the guitar off ebay. As an overly proud individual, I tried to resist, but he was adamant that, as a friend, he could do this for me and that others are willing to help out and that “you’d do the same for me, Phil.” And he was correct. Thus, Let’s Buy Phil’s Guitar was created.

Now, I don’t know just who all were involved in the creation of this, but I owe Neil, Dylan and Matthew some serious handshakes and manly embraces for their part in this astounding example of community spirit and friendship. But most of all, I owe every single donor (regardless of amount donated) a large amount of thanks and gratitude. The fact that the guitar has been saved is, frankly, nothing short of completely overwhelming. Friends, Meursault fans, Debutant fans, and anyone else who contributed: I thank you with all my heart. You’ve not only saved me, but a part of Meursault, too.

As a thank you, I will record a digital EP consisting of a couple of acoustic Debutant tracks, a Meursault cover (would it be considered a ‘cover’?), and a cover of Red House Painters’ Song for a Blue Guitar, and every donor will receive the EP. This will only be available to those who donated. Expect it within a month or so.

Whilst I’m here, I would also like to thank all the guys in Meursault, who have welcomed me into the band like a brother and supported me. And, despite the heartache and struggle, it’s been 110% worth it to be in the privileged position of being able to play music with them.

Again, thank you.

This wasn’t particularly supposed to be all fuzzy and noisy, and in actual fact is probably isn’t, except for in bits. I have been listening to the Male Bonding album a lot this week, and then the split single from Thee Ludds and The No-Brainers dropped into my inbox, and then I became fascinated by the splendid mess that is I’llfinishyrfinish and suddenly I realised I had a podcast which was pretty much all over the place.

So I decided to embrace it, go for it and just appreciate the noise. There is some acoustic fuzz too, and a song by Grandaddy who can be fuzzy but often aren’t, but in general if you like your music to be played on a tape recorder down the back of the sofa in the next room, you should like this.

Oh, and we have the new Walkmen track and the new Cotton Jones one and all sorts. Aren’t we clever. Actually, who the fuck am I calling ‘we’, anyway?

Toadcast #132 – The Fuzzcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. The Walkmen – Stranded (02.20)
02. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge (09.02)
03. Male Bonding – Your Contact (16.19)
04. Navigator – Headless Horseman (The Microphones cover) (19.44)
05. Grizzly Prospector – Oh! Grizzly Me (Slow) (Live) (21.06)
06. Cotton Jones – Glorylight and Christie (24.09)
07. The Sound of the Ladies – The 40s Never Died (27.35)
08. Thee Ludds – I’m a Moron (34.42)
09. The Walkmen – Thinking of a Dream I Had (42.06)
10. Ace Bushy Striptease – I’llfinishyrfinish (I’ll Finish You) (49.32)

You know those coppers in police programmes who stop worrying about catching criminals and worry more about box-ticking, stats and generally keeping within the process and staying out of trouble?  For the last couple of weeks I have been the record label equivalent of exactly that.

For the last couple of weeks I have been going through two years of paperwork, trying to add up costings for releases, getting the overall accounts in order for my tax return, and even sorting out our domestic filing.  We are so shit with post that I found Christmas cards from 2008 unopened at the bottom of one pile – we just don’t open stuff, ever.  I’m not sure what we’re thinking; maybe that if it’s urgent someone will phone us eventually.

Anyhow, the label’s sums have been condensed down to one gigantic spreadsheet with a page for each release and a summary page of each year’s overall accounts.  I’ve got every receipt for everything I’ve ever spent neatly ordered into folders and filed away in a big old ring binder.  Even the stationery and boxes of stock in the office are stacked away neatly and clearly labelled.

Anyhow, as desperately banal as that little story sounds, believe it or not I feel brilliant.  I feel organised.  I feel ready.  A little like that copper I alluded to in the first paragraph, irrespective of the actual music we’re releasing, just being this ship shape and Bristol fashion makes me feel like a proper record label.  Yes, I know.  Sad, sad stuff.  I am off to iron my underpants just to feel better about myself.

So now that I have confessed to my dirty secrets there can surely be no reason to be shy about this week’s Friday Five, so please de-lurk and say hello.  As ever, once you’ve added your five feel free to talk as much bollocks as you please for the rest of the day.  Sorry to anyone running a company, but that’s just what Friday is.

1. What is the most ridiculously lame task from which you derive the most satisfaction?
2. And which one can you still not stand?
3. What is the oldest piece of unopened post in your house?
4. What giveaway sign makes you ignore a letter?
5. Which boring job do you guiltily always allow your partner/mum/colleagues to do, despite knowing that they hate it too?

The Detroit Cobras – He Did It

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Von Bondies – Shallow Grave

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ian Dury & the Blockheads – The Ballad of the Sulphate Strangler

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Liars – We Live NE of Compton

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Damned – Thrill Kill

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Regular readers of my distracted piffle will know by now that I drive a red van with a tape player in it. This has led to a few changes in listening habits, not least because I hardly have any tapes left at all.  A bit like what happened to my vinyl back in about 1995, my collection has been shoved in a box at the back of a cupboard, and I honestly didn’t think I would ever play them again.

Unlike my vinyl, though, my parents didn’t eventually get bored of having it lying around the house and then throw it in the fucking bin.  Yes, they did that.  To my vinyl.  Not that I blame them really, I’d copied it all to tape (oh wait…) and was a student at the time, so there seemed little imminent prospect of me ever having a record player again.  How times change.

Now not only do we have a tape player in the van, we have actually bought one for the house, too.  I bought it off eBay for about fifteen quid a couple of years ago when I first got my hands on the Japanese War Effort’s brilliant Snowbird album, which exists only on cassette.  So for a long while, that tape player was simply a Snowbird Playing Machine, and in a sense the album itself, far from the eminently reasonable two pounds I paid for it at retail, had ended up costing me nearer twenty.

However, the box of tapes in our house is actually still stuffed away under the stairs somewhere, so at the moment the van’s tape player is subsisting on a pretty meagre diet.  In fact, due to the fact that even the van tapes have ended up buried under a pile of old crap somewhere under one of the back seats, I have actually only been listening to one single tape for the last month or so, over and over again.

I made this tape towards the tail end of the nineties and I called it, with tongue somewhat in cheek, Let’s Bop With the Brits.  It is basically just a collection of British music which, for one reason or another, was starting to sound quite old-fashioned by 1996 or so.  There was some Morrissey, some Inspiral Carpets, some Wonderstuff, some Gene, one solitary Stone Roses song, a couple of tracks from Parklife, hopefully you get the gist of it.

Anyhow, yes, for some reason I have had that one tape on repeat constantly for the last four weeks and I now know the words to most of the songs pretty much off by heart, never mind the playlist itself.  With modern music libraries comprising thousands and thousands of files, I am not sure when the last time is that happened to me.

Morrissey – Certain People I Know

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Gene – Be My Light, Be My Guide

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Blur – End of a Century

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.