Well OiNK appears to be about to bite the dust. For those of you who don’t know, OiNK is a filesharing site where people share pre-release copies of albums for nothing. There is a minimum quality, so you know you’re getting a good product and you are ‘invited’ to donate to the site, but not compelled.

Ultimately, I am completely unsure what I think about this sort of site as, I get the impression, are most people who aren’t either avaricious music industry parasites on one hand or some sort of self-absorbed teenager with a ridiculously overinflated sense of entitlement on the other.

Basically, there are arguments for and against unrestricted filesharing, but I still find it difficult to get my head around the idea of sharing high-quality copies of an artist’s work without them receiving a penny for it. Don’t tell me that people make their money from touring nowadays because, whilst that may be true for Radiohead or other groups big enough to generate their own publicity, it is definitely not true for small bands. I can’t emphasise this enough: they have told me this themselves, and for now it just doesn’t work like that.

Ultimately though, free-flowing filesharing can be very helpful to artists in many ways. I am also acutely aware of one of the central issues of this debate: can it ultimately be stopped? So in terms of unlimited filesharing I get the impression that monetising rather than simply trying to extinguish these things is going to be the way forward for the music industry. I know this is hardly a startling conclusion of course, so I am not pretending to have made an insightful statement here. All I’m saying is that I am not in principle against that side of OiNK’s service, but the fact that they aren’t paying artists a penny, despite anyone’s free-flowing information protestations, bothers me.

Deep down, it is the actual content of the material swapped on OiNK that bothers me – pre-release copies, unfinished and leaked versions – all of it basically shows utter disrespect to the artist and the integrity of their art form. ‘Oh, fuck it Mr. Da Vinci, you’re nearly finished, just hand it over. It’s pretty obvious it’s just a picture of a woman sat there smirking anyway’.

This sort of service could be great if it could be done in a manner that respects both the artists’ intent and their financial entitlement. Yes, I said entitlement. They spend years of their lives making this shit and if we want it, they deserve money in return. That is the way the whole world works. Ultimately, OiNK was just piggy.

Ben Folds – All U Can Eat
The Beatles – Piggies

If you want to read the view of someone I really probably agree with about pretty much everything, but have somehow managed to come to an entirely different conclusion from, try this from The Rawking Refuses to Stop.

Sorry about the pun. Good though, wasn’t it! And thanks to Wendy for spotting both the picture and the excellent piggy noise.

My friend Morgan has decided that he is going to make it his mission to take me to gigs I am not going to like. Frankly you lot should be sponsoring him because anything that breaks my whining indie kid tunnel vision is surely going to be a benefit to your reading experience here at Song, by Toad.

Having treated me to the glorious experience of an hour spent gazing at Regina Spektor’s wonderful breasts last year, this year he has even more treats in mind, commencing with the sonic assault that is Battles. I may be new to this lot, but I imagine most of you aren’t, given they’ve been talked about in a rather breathless fashion by an assortment of music press for some time now.

Seeing them live, it’s easy to see why. To begin with one of them wanders on stage and begins casually twiddling knobs until he’s set up a slightly reverby guitar loop. One by one the other member of the band join him and so it grows and grows. By the time all four of them are playing you get this wall of sound being generated that you have to simply let wash over you as you bask in the noise.

There is no such thing as lyrics, as they use the voice pretty much just as if it were any other instrument, but it nonetheless brings some welcome variation to the intense atmosphere they create. If there’s one thing this kind of noodling needs however, it’s a solid base, and Battles certainly have that. In amongst the driving guitars, echoing loops and random punching of the keyboard they are anchored by their superlative drummer John Stanier. He is formerly of Helmet apparently – although this means little to me – but his stamina is amazing though, and it is his amazing performance that really impressed me most about the evening.

I have no technical knowledge, so I am in no position to judge talent or any of that, but I’d say it’s worth going to see these lads just for him. By the end of the show, much as I’d enjoyed it, I was losing my fascination with their relentlesly swirling ambiences, but watching him drum like a fiend was something I was happy to do all evening.

This isn’t pop music, this is experimental performance art – almost sonic theatre. As such it doesn’t make for an easily assimilated listening experience for those of us, like myself, who have become so habituated to the four minute pop song with a catchy chorus, but there’s no doubt these lads are good. So I won’t be buying their records, I don’t think, but what a phenomenal gig!

Battles – Atlas
Battles – Tonto

website | hype | amazon

I can’t in all honesty say that I have been swept away by any of these three EPs.  They do all have bits on that I have really liked though, and as they are all by small groups I thought it only fair that I pop them up here and let you guys decide for yourselves.  I sometimes wonder what to do with things like these. I never want to have a go at new and emerging groups because I think that’s a bit harsh, but if I’m not entirely convinced what do I do, especially if there are good bits?  Mind you, with the samples being available, my opinion is largely irrelevant anyway – you can listen to the songs and decide for yourselves.

Newspapers – Lakeview There are traces of 50s rock ‘n’ roll as well as straightforward indie on this one.  It’s probably my favourite of the three, and I think it’s the guitar that does it for me.  Barely a single track fails to have a memorable bit of guitar work on it, no matter how subtle, although a couple of them may lack a little as overall songs.  And guess where they’re from?  Yup, Portland, Oregon.  Where else.

Newspapers – Devil’s Dance Blues This is superb – just listen to that guitar – brilliant!

myspace | hype | buy from cdbaby

Cloud Atlas – No-one is Sad Up Here At their best these guys can remind me of The Indelicates, with choppy boy-girl interchanges and slightly glam guitar surfacing from time to time.  It can be a bit close to the bog-standard indie template, but there are some very good things here and there.  The EP can be bought from them at gigs, and if you get in touch via MySpace I’m sure there should be some way to figure out an internet purchase.  Paypal is your friend, people.

Cloud Atlas – Cigarettes & Apricots

myspace | hype

House of Brothers -  Deadman The title track off this sugar-sweet slice of pop lushness is really rather good.  As for the rest, well I suggest it slightly loses its zip a little but I get the impression more than a couple of you will like this one.  The CD is available to pre-order though, so if you like what you hear you know what to do.

House of Brothers – Deadman

myspace | hype | pre-order the EP here

It’s difficult to describe this album without sounding at best a little blasé and at worst dismissive, but believe me that is not my intention. The problem is that the sound occupies such entirely familiar territory, especially for my regular readers, that it would be easy to say ‘ah yes, another one of those albums’.

Imagine a lounge jazz songstress with splashes of country and blues, a luscious voice and a tendency to sneak a little cabaret macabre in there from time to time. Yep, told you so, I’ve talked about a hundred of these albums before. The Tom Waits influence is slapped on the table early on (pianist Linford Detweiler sounds like he could actually be a Tom Waits character, no disrespect intended) with Don’t Wait for Tom, a clattering homage* to the great man. It is liberally sprinkled with either direct quotes or paraphrases from his own songs and, most tellingly, that gorgeous spiralling clarinet that this particular genre uses to such great effect.

It’s odd actually because after that songs two and three are much more country influenced and really nothing like as good, for my money, so I can imagine tuning out a little at this stage, but Trouble, I’m on a Roll and Nothing is Innocent are superb. Ultimately it may be an easy pigeonhole, but it’s a really good example of a style of music I tend to like an awful lot, and I really would recommend this album. It’s not brilliant all the way through, but it’s better than 90% of its neighbours in this particular part of the musical landscape.

Over the Rhine – Don’t Wait For Tom
Over the Rhine – Trouble

website | hype | buy the album

*If any – any – of you pronounce this “o’marge” I swear to god I am going to find a cute little kitten and stamp on its head. It’s fucking “hommidge“. Look it the fuck up if you think I’m wrong – dictionary.com, Oxford English Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary (click ‘show phonetics’). O-fucking-marge for fuck’s sake. That come from the artistic community over-emphasising the Frenchness to sound more sophisticated and we have all picked up on it and sets my teeth right fucking on edge, so it does. Yeuch.

Right, disclaimers first. Apparently Sasha Frere-Jones is a respected music critic, so presumably this implies that he is not this bone-headed all the time. Also, given I’ve only read one of his articles I am in no position to judge his general output, but his recent excretion ‘A Paler Shade of White‘ is just bloody thick. He manages to shoehorn needless racist divisiveness, outdated stereotyping and a truly impressive ignorance of indie music into one article which is about… yes, the racial compartmentalisation of popular music.

Generally when people write nonsense like this they defend their idiotic statements by describing it as a ‘thought piece – intended to provoke reflection and debate’. The problem I have with this is that it is possible to justify pretty much any cretinous rubbish on this basis, no matter how infantile, shallow, facile or ignorant. This is not a thought piece, it is lazy and intellectually vacant, and were it not for the fact it happens to be in the New Yorker it would merit no more than a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, perhaps accompanied by a murmur of ‘fuckwit’ or some such similar response. Read the rest of this entry »

My good god what a paedo-gig this was!  Fucking hell.  I felt positively creepy sneaking in, with my grey hair and my burgeoning squishyness around the middle.  They very kindly gave the dinosaurs a bracelet signifying that we were really quite old and thus should be allowed into the bar area.  Christ I needed one, but quite why they thought it was a good idea to let an inveterate old pervert like myself drink in the presence of so many teenage girls, all hell bent on proving their maturity, is anyone’s guess.  It would have been far safer to let them get pissed and keep me sober, honestly.

‘Won’t someone think of the children!’
‘I was officer, that was largely the problem.’

Erm, anyhow, the gig.  Yes, not bad at all actually.  I came along  primarily to treat myself to some live music after my rotten last two weeks at work, where I’ve been completely overloaded and stuck in the office all day every day for a fortnight.  Six quid, I thought, was an excellent price for three up-and-coming buzz bands about whom I have heard great things.

Sky Larkin – These lads started us off, and although I missed their first couple of songs I really liked what I heard.  Their punchy, spiky pop songs carried a tune very well in the live setting and Katie, who does most of the chat, came across as charming and witty.  She can bloody sing too.  They were by far the most traditionally indie of the lot – by which I mean a certain style of guitar band, rather than a strict description of the label they are on – so maybe the ones I most expected to like.  And so it proved.

Sky Larkin  – Summit
myspace | hype | buy their new single here

You Say Party! We Say Die! – Fucking punctuation in band names should be bloody outlawed, grumble grumble.  Not entirely my cup of tea this lot, but that’s a comment based on taste, not quality.  They gave a terrific live performance and the lovely Becky Ninkovic was an 80s indie goddess par excellence, ably foiled by the relaxed and amusing Derek Adam on guitar and the slightly mental Devon Clifford on drums.  So their music may not be my scene entirely, but the do a great show and I would definitely recommend you catch them if you get the chance.  Assuming you like their tunes of course.

You Say Party! We Say Die! – Opportunity

website | hype | buy records

Los Campesinos - The biggies, the main headline act, the highlight of the evening.  I don’t know what the term is for this sort of guitary male/female indie spunk-pop but it is a definite movement at the moment, and not one that overlaps with my own taste an awful lot.  It does in places though, and Los Campesinos!?#@** are as close to Toad territory as anyone.  As with the other bands on the evening, they gave a top show and, although I don’t love the music especially, I ended up with a real liking for the band.  Maybe I am too entrenched in my traditional verse-bridge-chorus ways to appreciate this stuff properly, but I am definitely enjoying it when I hear it live.  Either this is a product of a slowly changing mind, or perhaps the energy of the genre gets the better of my resistance to the music in a live setting.

All in all it was an excellent evening’s music, and six quid very well spent indeed.  I like getting slightly out of my comfort zone from time to time with live stuff.  Often just being part of other people’s euphoria for these new things helps you understand better what all the fuss is about.  Ultimately I will probably only end up pursuing Sky Larkin on record, but I’d heartily recommend seeing the other two if you are even slightly that way inclined.

Los Campesinos! – The International Tweexcore Underground

website | hype | buy records

What a lovely, lovely podcast this is.  No Mrs. Toad this week (yeah, yeah, I know, fuck off the lot of you) partly because she is away in the States being important and businesslike and so forth and partly because you are all a bunch of cunts for liking her best, you shower of ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, needless alienation of one’s audience aside, I am a little tired of doing themed podcasts.  Nothing particularly pressing leapt to mind this month so I thought I’d just throw on a pile of stuff I was really enjoying and sod having a coherent theme – that’s for the professionals anyway.  So it’s just a big old mish-mash of stuff I’m enjoying at the moment, but I think it’s quite a good playlist for all that.

There are actually a couple of songs chosen for other women in my life!  Oh shock horror! One is our reception lady here at work who revealed a surprisingly excellent vinyl collection when a few of us went round to her place after a staff night out recently, including Pavement and The Pixies.  Who would have thought it!  The other lady song is from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, after I was entirely charmed by the niece of our next door neighbour who apparently used to go out with their keyboard player.  She is trying to move to New York at the moment actually, where there are plans to play fiddle and harp on the new Au Revoir Simone album, which is splendid news.  Apparently this one is to be more folky than the last, which bodes very well indeed.  So go Ruth!  I can’t wait to hear it.

Better stop talking about ze laydees now of course, before I get skelped by my lovely lady.  Not one of of ‘em a patch on the sparkling gem that is the delectable Mrs. Toad of course, not even close!  *ahem*

Toadcast #14 – Total Self-Indulgence

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01. The White Stripes – 300mph Torrential Outpour Blues (03.04)
02. Rachel Unthank & the Winterset – Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk (12.34)
03. Jonquil – Lions (18.58)
04. Misophone – The Sea Has Spoken (20.46)
05. The Pixies – Where is My Mind (29.25)
06. The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning (36.09)
07. The Monochrome Set – Tomorrow Will Be Too Long (39.37)
08. iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist (44.10)
09. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Over and Over Again (Lost & Found) (50.23)
10. Ringo Deathstarr – Starrsha (55.00)
11. Babyshambles – UnBiloTitled (57.02)
12. New Pornographers – Adventures in Solitude (64.29)
13. Phil Ochs – Here’s to the State of Mississippi (75.18)
14. The Mabuses – Bonus Track (82.46)
15. The Real Tuesday Weld – Waltz For One (86.49)
16. Kenneth Williams – When the Toad Came Home (88.40)

I was listening to the latest episode of The Waiting Room (get well soon Hope) and I was genuinely bowled over with amused delight by the second song in – Pirates of the Heart.  It’s a sort of comedy sea shanty which is mostly, but not entirely, tongue in cheek.  Inspired brilliance, I thought, who on Earth are these loonies?  Well it turned out that these loonies were Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra which, by sheer coincidence, was the very album I was at that precise moment unwrapping from its padded envelope for a bit of a listen.

These coincidences seem rife when I listen to The Waiting Room.  This week it wasn’t just Ethan Lipton, but also Johnny Flynn, Emma Pollock and Amy LaVere.  So all the best to the malingering Ms. Hope Eternal for a speedy recovery and please do tune in this week for more.  Their podcast can be found here, and they’ll be live on Error FM at about 10pm tonight.

Ethan Lipton, on the other hand, can be found here. I can’t really think how to describe his music I’m afraid.  Imagine a chilled out version of the Squirrel Nut Zippers mixed with a little bit of Richard Cheese along with the likes of the quite brilliant Uncle Moon.  I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the album exactly, which sounds rather mean, but isn’t intended to.

There are some truly inspired moments, such as Old People Don’t Whisper and the aforementioned moment of utter genius Pirates of the Heart, but all in it’s a little patchy.  For every Bossy Man there’s one that doesn’t quite grab me.  Lounge country describes a lot of it and perhaps 30s jazz raconteur the rest, and there’s some terrific stuff here, but approach with caution as I can’t honestly say I think the inspiration is maintained consistently.  One to have a poke around though, for sure.

Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra – Pirates of the Heart
Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra – If Devils Can Slow Dance

Buy the album on the new & improved CD Baby

[Long post alert - much ranting and a full reprint of someone else's article here, so approach with caution. There, um, is a song though, if that helps]

Alternative medicine almost, but not quite entirely, pisses me off. Basically it is a loathsome industry based around selling people meaningless rituals in lieu of real and frequently much-needed medical assistance. It absorbs vast quantities of cash and exploits people’s fear hope and ignorance to make enormous profits for its peddlers. Truly disgusting, disgraceful and possibly one of the only industries in the world capable of making Big Pharma look honourable.

I don’t trust the major pharmaceutical companies any more than the alties, before you get all excited. I have done a lot of work for them and the only thing they care about is indeed money (as a whole) and looking good in front of their superiors (individually, as with any large company). But ultimately, the sheer deceit of the alternative medicine industry makes me sick. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s rhetorical. The answer, presumably, is yes. Richard Hawley is an odd man to be slowly turning into an indie hero, but it appears that this is just what he is doing.

Spells playing guitar with The Longpigs and Pulp add indie heft to his past, but it is definitely as a songwriter that he has slowly but surely made a pretty significant mark on the music world. Mrs. Toad spends a lot of time ferreting about on the Guardian website and she assures me that the Graun writers froth over the man with an enthusiasm bordering on indecency. Micah P. Hinson covered one of his songs on his last UK tour, which I thought was really odd for a tortured Texan troubadour. How on earth had he come across Richard Hawley?

Then here I was listening to an Arctic Monkeys song which popped up on my randomiser and what do I hear but tones of Richard Hawley’s unmistakable 50s guitar sound. The Sheffield scene is buzzing at the moment, with the likes of The Long Blondes, The Arctics and Milburn in recent years all adding to the rock solid cred of legends like The Wedding Present and Pulp. That said, although the indie rock scene is well represented, I was considering doing a bit of a post on the likes of Hawley and the brilliant Monkey Swallows the Universe to highlight the slightly alternative side to this boom in Steel City music. Wrongly, it appears, I got the impression that everyone thought Sheffield was rock and that these more interesting groups were not quite being given their due.

It appears I was a little out with that assumption and, rather wonderfully, there seems to be a growing interest in genuinely eccentric music that makes a real effort to follow its own course. Music that isn’t railroaded into the classic indie 3-4 minute guitar track with as good a hook and as catchy a chorus as you can write. Not that I don’t enjoy a lot of the radio fodder, but it is really nice to see The Arctic Monkeys paying homage to Hawley and not vice versa and reflects well on both bands. Viva iconoclasm!

Arctic Monkeys – The Bakery
Richard Hawley – Just Like the Rain
Monkey Swallows the Universe – Sheffield Shanty