Yes, another one. Mwah hah haaa. Lock up the kids, Campfires & Battlefields, because the Song, by Toad musical cuss-o-rama is back on air for more blethering, swearing, slurring and first class tunery.

Actually, I don’t think this one is anything like as good as the first, if I’m honest. It’s a bit over-long at fifteen songs so I think in future I’m going to limit myself to ten or twelve at the most, not least because my shitbox of a computer starts having a panic once I’ve stuffed that many audio files into a single project. So, fifteen songs then, with a bit of an emphasis on late 80s jangly indie guitar and containing one of the most brilliant ever drunken fuck-ups about three-quarters of the way through. Beware the horrors of letting your children turn into indie kids, people! So a bit too long, and occasionally too much inconsequential chatter, but we live and learn and the next one will be better, I promise.

Toadcast #2, the 80s English Indie One

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1. My Teenage Stride – Terror Bends (01.00)
2. Honeytrap – Let’s Do Naked Dancing (03.37)
3. The Mutton Birds – The Queen’s English (09.38)
4. The Veils – The Wild Son (17.38)
5. The 63 Crayons – Devils (21.40)
6. The Smiths – I Started Something (26.05)
7. Honeytrap – Death Before the Silver Screen (31.03)
8. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Morning is Broken (36.14)
9. The Indelicates – New Art For the People (41.57)
10. The Indelicates – Stars (45.51)
11. MJ Hibbett & the Validators – The Lesson of The Smiths (50.32)
12. The Specials – Guns of Navarone (55.02)
13. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (57.20)
14. Honeytrap – Mussolini’s Son (66.06)
15. Frank Turner – Heartless Bastard Motherfucker (73.25)

I don’t know if the news that Fopp are shutting down makes my earlier post about small record shops complete nonsense or all the more poignant.  It’s bloody shit, whatever it is.  Bye Fopp, thanks for everything.

Apparently they say their chain of shops is still profitable, which seems strange given it was a refusal of their creditors to ‘extend working capital’ that finally did for them.  I would imagine it is related to their purchase a few months back of around 60 or 70 Musiczone stores that has over-extended them, although I don’t know anything about the details.

Rumour currently has it that a few of the shops may re-open once the administrator has sniffed about for a bit.  I hope so, Fopp has always been just about my favourite record shop and it would be a crying shame if they vanished for good.  HMV are struggling too apparently – profits are down a pretty hefty 73%.  High street music sales clearly are not where it’s at right now.  Sad movies, yahoos, sad movies.

The Stills – Love & Death

Hmm, I’m not sure what I can tell you about this, in terms of recommending a purchase. It is part of the Picket Fence series, released on a monthly basis by Toad favourites, Fence Records. You have to subscribe to Picket Fence which costs you 50 sheckles so I don’t know, it’s a bit of a risk and might just be for the musical adventurers and those bent on supporting independent music – ie fucking all of you, obviously, I should bloody well hope! Either way, you pay your cash and you get what you’re given, so it’s a leap of faith and given the rather eclectic nature of the Fence fellows it can be a bit of a lottery.

Art Pedro (myspace here) released February’s Picket Fence this year and it’s one of the brilliant ones. A little odd, perhaps, but really good. Beats and a constant electric hum fade in and out of gently plucked guitar and rolling piano which creates a lovely atmosphere – it’s entirely unsurprising to hear he’s living in Cornwall at the moment. There’s loads more going here as well – toy town honky-tonk in Joanne, for example, and a gorgeous piano track called Sommeil Noir Froid.

The most striking, and potentially off-putting if it’s not for you, aspect to the music is the vocal performance. I don’t know if Art Pedro can’t sing, or if he just doesn’t. Either way, there’s no hiding it with a poor vocal performance, instead he makes a virtue of it and almost talks his way through the songs, the rhythm of the vocal and the music seeming to part company entirely from time to time, but they always come back together again. I think it’s superb, but it is a bit unusual, so just be warned.

If the vocal is for you, then the real beauty of this album is its variety – from playful to warm to wistful to introspective and all brought down to earth with a rather heartbreaking thump in the gorgeous closer You’re a Twat.

Things like this little 10-song gem are why I subscribe to the Picket Fence series .

Art Pedro – All I Want
Art Pedro – Joanne

Gosh it’s multi-post bonanza of obsessive lunacy on Song, by Toad today. I know this is far too many posts for a sane human being, but honestly the news today is bringin’ the crazy and there’s no way I could let it pass without a round of applause.

Item No1: Paris & the Mystery Meat
Everyone’s favourite talentless whore has been released and gave an interview to CNN in which she described her meals in the Big House as containing “mystery meat”, which she then rather perplexingly described as “really scary”. Seriously. Anyone here remember the last time Ms. Hilton had any sort of difficulty wolfing down mystery meat with all the glassy-eyed enthusiasm of a sedated Alzheimer’s patient? No, me neither. At least true to form she’s still talking about god, albeit in slightly different context than usual, playing that time-honoured Get Out Of Jail Free Card that the American public never seem to tire of falling for.

Rufus Wainright – Old Whore’s Diet

Item No2: Tom Cruise: Verrückt und Verboten!
Or, bonkers and banned, as we’d (vaguely) have it in English. Apparently he has been banned from filming his latest movie in Germany – allegedly about Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler – because they think he’s just a bit too mad. If they’re worried about his inability to accurately portray sensitive historical material then fuck me, how are they not attempting to extradite Mel Gibson for public tarring and feathering? Honestly, I’ll be gutted if they ban Scientology. Scientology is easily the coolest religion in the world – a great big fuck you to people who believe in the preposterous things that infest every religion. Walking on water? Resurrection? Virgin birth? Chicken feed! That’s primary school make-believe, that is. Try great big fucking flying spaceships and alien beings and volcanoes, you pussies! It really makes the other religions look like they just weren’t really trying when they came up with their creation myths.

Also, it’s like a great big finger of deranged lunacy that points helpfully at every single one of its hilariously credulous followers reminding us all to point and laugh every time they raise their heads above the parapet. Fucking idiots.

Ballboy – Essential Wear For Future Trips to Space

Item No3: Best Oddly Not Good Enough
Real Madrid, having won precisely bollocks all of any import for five years have finally won the league title in Spain. Fabio Capello, the man who guided them to this momentous triumph, has needless to say, been sacked immediately. Now, they didn’t win it in style, and Barca may have imploded spectacularly to clear the way, but sacked? Scolded, maybe. Told to do better, perhaps. But the first title in five years and he’s sacked – are these people on drugs? Well, high on their own galactic levels of vanity perhaps…

Midlake – Excited But Not Enough From back when they sounded just like Radiohead.

Item No4: Beware the Ghost Ducks
Yes, seriously. 30,000 rubber duckies were washed overboard when a particularly enthusiastic storm hit their container ship in the middle of the Pacific back in 1992. Due to the vagaries of global oceanic currents they circled, as a group, around the North Pacific for years until a misadventure with Arctic pack ice spat them out, bleached a deathly white, into the Atlantic early in the new millennium. After flirting with America’s Eastern Seaboard they are now caught in the Gulf Stream which should bring them en masse to the shores of Ireland, Cornwall and the Southwest later this year. Christ, you’d think you were mad, wouldn’t you. A 30,000-strong fleet of ghostly rubber duckies approaching your shores – it’d be terrifying!

Crash Test Dummies – How Does a Duck Know?

Makes all that boring shit about people dying in Iraq by the thousands and the increasingly militant stance of the Russian government and the slippery avoidance of any sort of accountability by Dick Cheney seem like no more than the hum of a distant bee, doesn’t it.

The Local Heroes hail from a part of Scotland that is actually not in Scotland, but should be. Back at university I had a pal who was from Cumbria but used to insist until he was blue in the face that he was actually Scottish. We used to call him Mr. Pretend Scotsman and ever since then I have always kind of felt Cumbria to be a sort of Scottish protectorate somehow. Blame Colin.

Musically The Local Heroes are perhaps more of a piece with Scottish indie as well, I would say. Fey, literate and prone to telling touching but borderline-surreal stories, they also employ that Scottish mainstay – the rambling, introverted inner monologue. Used by everyone up here from Belle & Sebastian to Ballboy, My Latest Novel and James Yorkston it brings a sort of bizarre confessional to music that is often already quite wide open and brittle.

Imagine if early Belle & Sebastian had been fronted by Isobel Campbell instead of, as was more frequently the case, Stuart Murdoch. Imagine a painfully fragile Saint Etienne. Reading through their influences on MySpace this hardly a surprise – nourished on the splendid Lloyd Cole, Cinerama, The Mountain Goats and of course Belle & Sebastian themselves. Rachel’s voice is a treat and the sparse backing complements it perfectly.

They have some heavy-hitting friends adding their weight to the CD-R demo I received, Gordon from Edinburgh indie heroes Ballboy and M.J. Hibbett from M.J. Hibbett & the Validators both make contributions, so these guys clearly have the support of the industry. A single is due out in mid July on Cloudberry Records (scroll to the bottom of the page) and although I haven’t heard the title track, I can vouch for The Years to Come, which is gorgeous.

They’re looking for a label to release their debut album on too, so if you like what you hear, get in touch with them, record people.

The Local Heroes – Hands in the Air
The Local Heroes – Circle Line

website | myspace | cloudberry

Well I’ve just not bothered posting this one, and I’m not sure why.  Partly, I suppose, I don’t lurrve The New Pornographers.  I mean, Neko Case induces a certain, ah, Gentleman’s Inconvenience, if you know what I mean and the music is definitely pretty good, and occasionally brilliant.  But by and large I like them rather than love them. Except for Neko – eminently strumpable little ginger pop pixie that she is.

So here’s the teaser song from their new album, due out in the middle of August some time.  As per usual from this lot it’s a pleasantly jaunty little bit of indie power pop.  But does it make my little heart skip a beat in breathless anticipation of Challengers?  No, not really, although I’ll probably end up buying it anyway.

For those keener than I, you can stream the whole thing immediately right now as of this very minute by pre-ordering from Matador Records.  Click here and follow the on-screen instructions – you want the second one down, the Buy Early Get Now version.

The New Pornographers – My Rights Versus Yours

Ears like Golden Bats produce sounds like golden honey. There’s an uncomplicated beauty to this album which really gives me a warm, happy feeling inside.  Occasionally some of the songs can be a little too even to be quite catchy enough, but in general this is a superb album.

The benefit of the 80s revivial, apart from the angular New Wave resurrection and the comedy dance floor cheese, has been the re-interpretation of the late 80s jangly indie guitar music we’re starting to hear more and more of.

I draw the line at anyone trying to resurrect Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (90s really), but when your tunes are steeped in the kind of stuff the black-clad, misunderstood outsiders loved in 1987 then you are barking very directly up my tree. The guitar, vocal and low-key Moog-a-like backing of My Teenage Stride remind me of the classic indie bands of this era like The Smiths and The Cure and it’s excellent to see people poking around in this particular box of tricks again.

Where it differs from these groups is in having a generally more laid-back atmosphere – it’s generally less angsty than The Cure and less miserable that The Smiths. People who were actually in the country and not being forced to listen to David feckin Hasselhoff in Vienna when this stuff was first popular will be able to give you far better comparisons than I can, but it is definitely of a piece with the jangle-pop guitar bands of this era. I’ve been more than a little bit slow on the uptake with these characters, but I’m glad I got there at last.

My Teenage Stride – To Live & Die in the Airport Lounge
My Teenage Stride – The Genie of New Jersey

website | myspace | emusic | amazon

Apparently the last White Stripes album wasn’t terribly popular, and it’s easy to see why. The uneasy experimenting didn’t quite make for a great rock record, but I didn’t dislike it as much as either Jack White or the general public seemed to.

Well he’s found his guitar again and dredged up some bile, which should assuage the purists, but he hasn’t exactly dropped the experimentalism and has hence launched another slightly eccentric, off-beat record at his devoted public. There’s bagpipes and the odd tuneless screech, and some bizarre rhythmic lurches, but ultimately the core of the White Stripes has always been Jack’s venomous guitar. Here it is once again delivered with virtuoso control, but the same kind of feral snarl that we love him for.

What there isn’t on this album is an obvious crowd-pleaser. I can’t really hear a Seven Nation Army or a Hotel Yorba anywhere, but that’s fine. Ultimately he seems to have managed to splice the drive of Elephant with the adventure of Get Behind Me Satan. Splendid. At last a big record that seriously delivers the goods. It’s not FM friendly (the bagpipey one is bit weird) and it isn’t entirely consistent either, but generally it makes me want to turn up the volume and fill a bucket with gin.

And you know by now, Toadlings, that this means it is good.

The White Stripes – Conquest
The White Stripes – Catch Hell Blues Nein!! Verboten!  Der Toad ist schlimm, sehr schlimm.  Und auch ein Englisher Schweinhund, verdammt noch ‘mal!  Filesharenderschnitzelwurst!

website | myspace | amazon

Once again I find myself reviewing a record I was turned onto by Rich from Cable & Tweed, proving that his Tweedar is active and as sharp as ever (he’ll kill me for that – sorry Rich!).

If you like your indie steeped in stories to fill the music with meaning, then Sleepy Horses are for you.  Having recorded Somewhere Out West… front-man Nic Goodson was found as good as dead in a hotel room late last year.  Although he was later revived in hospital he was told that the nerve damage to his right leg was so severe that he would never walk again.  Moving back to Texas, Goodson set about defying his doctors and the recent re-forming of Sleepy Horses as a three-piece with two of his close friends has proved full vindication of his stubbornness.

While we await the new material this revitalised line-up produces, there is still their earlier album Somewhere Out West, Lonesome For You, that finds itself somewhat overshadowed by the events since its release.  The music is a sort of epic desert alt-country which will be familar to Toad readers from its resemblance to Richmond Fontaine and even some of the recent Willard Grant Conspiracy or Calexico output.  Sleepy Horses overlap with them at the dusty, desolate Americana end of their spectrum and then pull away into distorted shoegaze at the other end.

Their music seems to be layered, with the introspective, angsty guitar overlaid on a constant base of South-Western Americana.  Towards the end of the album the guitar work gets more and more tense which perhaps drags this record away from the sort of thing that you’d play all the way through at a dinner party.  Let’s face it, some faceless Norah Jones fan is bound to start pursing the mouth as the guitar solos slowly get more drawn out and emotive – never raucous, just intense.

Given how well this takes its place in the pantheon of dusty Southern Americana I am amazed Rich had to get in touch and personally demand that I listen to it.  I’m bloody glad he did though.

Sleepy Horses – Lubbock Love Song
Sleepy Horses – Floods

myspace | cdbaby

Yes, I’m afraid so my Toadlings. I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back so at the moment I am shuffling about like I’ve just shat an angry porcupine.

It is, believe me, excruciating. I can’t even find a comfortable position to lie and watch telly, so god knows how the bloody hell I’m going to sleep tonight. Mind you, there I was feeling sorry for myself when it occurred to me that The Band had a splendid song called Up On Cripple Creek which, assuming a certain enjoyment of tasteless and slightly black humour (and let’s face it, you wouldn’t still be here otherwise), seemed rather appropriate.

The Band – Up On Cripple Creek
The Raveonettes – My Boyfriend’s Back Not the greatest song, but that ambiguous apostrophe was just too good to be missed.
Tom Waits – Walking Spanish If that’s what you want to call it.
Jackson Browne – Walking Slow
The Lemonheads – No Backbone