Song, by Toad

Happy Christmas All. See You in the New Year

Well that’s it, I’m just about off.  I may have a secret special treat for you either late on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day itself, so come and check it out if you fancy.  Other than that I will be maintaining radio silence for the best part of ten days, as I do not intend to post over Christmas particularly, although I may pop in and say Hi from time to time.

In Toad terms, I’d like to thank you all for reading and commenting and arguing and mocking and generally making this blog great fun to write.  Toad turned one year old sometime in November and I kind of forgot to mark the day, but who really cares.  It’s been good fun, and it’s really nice when you stop by and say hello.  It makes a fellow feel appreciated.

It’s all different too.  Some people leave comments.  Some people link to my stuff.  Some people have sent me personal emails instead.  Quite a few have said Hello on last.fm or Facebook, which has been nice because it helps me picture my audience a little bit, including some of the quiet ones.  The week I didn’t really post because of the house shenanigans my readership dropped very marginally, but basically the same number of people kept on popping by every day all week, which was also a really reassuring thing to see.

So thank you all for an excellent 2007.  I have some top treats lined up for 2008.  I am thinking of inviting local musicians to participate in Toadcasts from time to time.  I have interviews with iLiKETRAiNS and The Young Republic to write up over the holiday, and Song, by Toad Records is in the pipeline as well.  Not a ‘record label’ per se, just a way of getting some like-minded people together and helping them get a bit of attention for their self-releases.

So plenty of things to look forward to in the New Year, but for now I am going home to see the family, eat well, drink well, play lots of music, sit up late and talk and all the usual things.  I make fun of them, but they’re a nice bunch you know.

Happy Christmas everyone, and I’ll be back before Hogmanay to say hello.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Right Now I’m a-Roaming
This is actually a version of Wayfaring Stranger, one of hundreds, but why he chose to call it Over Jordan I am not sure.  It’s a gorgeous recording though.  Papa M. – Over Jordan
Tom Waits – San Diego Serenade (KFKP Sessions Version)

Avoiding Doing Proper Work

As an adjunct to my other post about being well and truly ready to finish for Christmas and basically being unable to concentrate at work, I thought I’d let you know what I actually am spending my time doing: Toad sketches!  How come I can concentrate on these but not real work?  Well these are fun and something new and for me, I suppose.  And when I am supposed to be doing something sensible it’s surprising how fascinating even the silliest things can become.   Anyway, I’ve not coloured them in yet, but I thought I’d share these with you because I am finding this all rather enjoyable.

1. Toad playing with his records:

2. Toad has an accident with his gramophone.

3. Toad opens his Christmas present.

4. Toad makes time for his nearest and dearest.

5. Toad gazes rapturously at a picture of the lovely Mrs. Toad.

See, told you I’d been wasting my time.  Actually, I did most of those yesterday evening anyway, so it’s not too bad.  I quite like these though, now I just have to find a way to integrate them into the site.  Official Song, by Toad wallpaper anyone?

A couple of recent MySpace discoveries, with happy links:

Maxwell Panther I know I’ve only just posted about him, but I am really, really liking his rough demos.  There’s a really satisfying grumble to them, and the songs are superb.
Maxwell Panther – Down and Insideout

Jake Flowers You might remember my review of his EP with the Carol-Anne Showband earlier this year.  Well I loved that and by the sounds of it I am going to love his new EP Fireworks, which will be available in the new year.
Jake Flowers – There’s a Storm Coming

The Low Miffs Only just found out about these guys today, but they’ve got some Drowned in Sound love and been on Vic Galloway, so I appear to be a little slow once more.  Good though.
The Low Miffs – Cressida

Kottarashky Bulgarian dance music.  I kind of like this.  I have no idea why, because it really isn’t my kind of music, but it’s pretty cool I think you’ll agree. The mix of traditonal music with the dance stuff rather does it for me.
Kottarashky – Chetiri

Proper Fucking Jobs

Jesus fucking Christ almighty, please let it all end.  I am in the last two days of work before my Christmas break and I am so fucking booooored of having to do a job.  Honestly, I’ve refreshed my email and the Guardian football page and the Toad stats and the other email and the Teamtalk football page and Dispatches From the Culture Wars and usemycomputer.com and another email and just about fucking everything more times an hour for the last couple of days than I can bear to remember.   I’m done, it’s over, it’s the holidays, just let us go home please!

There was a study released recently about how the last week of work is basically considered a big skive by British workers.  I forget who conducted the research itself, but the Department of Bleeding Obvious seem like the most obvious candidates.  I have been firing on about half a cylinder for a fortnight, just waiting to be put out of my misery, put my feet up and drink a gallon of gin in half an hour.

It’s not that I dislike my proper job, I really don’t.  It’s about as enjoyable, challenging and engaging a job as I could imagine doing, it’s just been a really heavy few months in terms of workload, the house business has been wearing and I bloody well need a break.  I bet I’m not the only one.

I have a stack of CDs to take to France to see the folks and my little brother and I cannot wait for the chance to listen to them through, chattering about the music and various other things, and drinking gin into the small hours.  My brother and I have a ritual that involves sitting in the kitchen with the small, crappy CD player, supping gin and catching up.  We’ll talk until late, get heroically pickled and listen to all sorts of new music.  Most of it I’ll have already put up on the site somewhere or used in a podcast or something, so don’t feel you’re missing out, but this is one of the things I am most looking forward to about Christmas.

That and not thinking about work or the bloody house for ten days of course.

Yo La Tengo – (Straight Down to) The Bitter End
The Rakes – 22 Grand Job (Live At The Carling Weekend, Reading Festival)

The Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust

Either this is the easiest or the trickiest review I’ve ever had to write, which may be why it has taken so long.  Basically, The Raveonettes have produced another album that sounds a lot like The Raveonettes, one that splits the difference between the slightly too soft Pretty in Black and the occasionally too distorted Chain Gang of Love.  It is not in any way earth-shattering but all in all I think it’s probably a good thing.  I quite like The Raveonettes.

As to exceptional, well Chain Gang of Love was absolutely blinding in parts, although a little uneven.  Pretty in Black, which I was hugely excited about, was something of a disappointment as the 50s rock ‘n’ roll became, at times, a little too dominant in comparison to the scuzzy, growling garage guitars.  My Boyfriend’s Back and Love in a Trashcan are really pretty rotten songs, but as much as I don’t love it, I found myself slowly coming round to that album.  Now I would happily volunteer that there are some really, really good songs on it.

So while Lust Lust Lust is a welcome return to the more frenzied sexual repression of their early work, at the slight expense of the doo-wop (the whole album sounds like some outrageous pervert has slipped his hands up the skirt of the Grease soundtrack and had a good rummage) it still isn’t knocking me out.  After my experience with Pretty in Black, where the songs dropped into my consciousness one by one over the course of several years, I am loath to write this off however.  I love the sound of Sune Rose Wagner’s guitar – it sounds like he’s just deflowered your fifteen-year-old niece and is holding up her plain, wholesome panties as a trophy – and they manage to create a slightly malevolent, scummy and yet disarming atmosphere in their music.

It’s an unsettling mixture of the faux-naif old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll sound and the brilliantly snarling and distorted Jesus & Mary Chain guitars, and although I am not in love with this album, I am quite prepared to give it time to settle in.

The Raveonettes – Aly, Walk With Me
The Raveonettes – Dead Sound

website | hype | buy

Toad Top 10, 2007: 1-5

1. Grinderman – Grinderman

Oh yes indeed! While other artists fall away in their old age and run out of ideas, Nick Cave just gets worse, which generally means better. This is a snarling, strutting, menacing, virile beast of an album and perhaps the only hotly anticipated major record all year to deliver the goods like a sack of spanners. Guitarist Martyn Casey describes it thus: “It wasn’t consciously two fingers to maturity but I remember thinking, all the way through, “This isn’t bad for a bunch of old farts.”" No, Martin, it isn’t bad at all.

Grinderman – No Pussy Blues

review | website | buy

2. The Builders & the Butchers – The Builders & the Butchers

Ragged, ramshackle, raucous and fucking brilliant. Imagine shaking every last skeleton out of your closet and them all coming to life, burning down your house and dancing round the inferno, guzzling bourbon. I want to move to Portland.

The Builders & the Butchers – Bottom of the Lake

review | myspace | buy

3. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters

Imagine every stereotype of indie miserablism you can muster and this album is it: brooding, ambitious and intense. There’s no hedging their bets with face-saving archness either, just a collection of brutally emotional songs delivered with the kind of relentless wall of guitar noise that threatens to shake your house to pieces as you get drunker and drunker and turn it up louder and louder.

The Twilight Sad – Walking For Two Hours

review | myspace | buy

4. Mother & the Addicts – Science Fiction Illustrated

An amazing, hugely infectious record that manages to stuff funk, disco, new romanticism and a bit of glam into a brilliantly fuzzy indie album. A professional reviewer (I can’t remember who, sorry, or I’d give credit) said that this album could have been released in 1986, 1992 or 2003 and it wouldn’t have sounded out of place. This sums it up far better than I can. A total joy.

Mother & the Addicts – So Tough

review | website | buy

5. Elvis Perkins – Ash Wednesday

For someone who loves downbeat emotional music as much as me I can’t believe this is the highest placed album of acoustic loveliness on the list. Perkins manages to wield wistful, heartbroken melancholy in that wonderfully intimate way that makes even the most depressing of tales sound bravely hopeful. It’s possibly the least depressing album of unhappy music I’ve heard in a long time. Catch him live too, if you can, he’s superb.

Elvis Perkins – It’s Only Me

review | website | buy

Akron/Family – Love is Simple

First things first: what the fucking arse is that bloody stupid slash all about then?  Do you pronounce it?  Do you make some sort of corresponding sound effect, as in those idiots who named their band Chk Chk Chk and spelled it !!!?  Actually that question mark is part of the sentence, the band is just called !!!, (without the comma, either) which is just one of the many, many reasons why this habit is bloody irritating.

So, Akron SLASH! Family, then. Well I heard about this through Tim at The Daily Growl and I have to confess to sharing his confusion for how to describe it.  Folky, a little bit glam, a bit Worldy, and occasionally a little bit hippy, it’s just a gigantic mash of styles that barrels along with results as mixed as its roots.

I am going to leave you a couple of songs to sample here, but believe me, this is not a collection of songs, it is a whole album.  In this way, tracks that would be genuinely rubbish on their own actually do make sense, although the whole thing is still rather a lot to take in all at once.  The swirling maelstrom of medieval pagan folk prog pop indie craziness stumbles its way along, from epic eight-minuters to short sharp interludes.

There are times when you stick your head up from whatever else you might be doing and wonder ‘what the fuck have I put on here?’ and then there are times, when the whole thing seems to just about gather enough momentum to break into a brilliant indie folk song with more energy and momentum than many I’ve heard this year.  It’s baffling, but if you’re a music fan rather than just a passive consumer I really wouldn’t pass this one by.

Akron/Family – Ed is a Portal
Akron/Family – Phenomena

website | hype | buy

Today, I AM Indie!

Yes indeed, today I am the archetypal indie-kid.  The late 80s/early 90s student in a retro sports top with a big chunky cardy and trainers.  The only thing that betrays the fact that this is 2007 and not 1991 is the fact that the trainers are Converse, which weren’t all that popular back then, and the fact that I do not have an embarrassing first ever attempt to grow a goatee beard dangling from my chin.

The reason for all this?  Well, we have yet to get our wardrobe sorted out so for the moment I am dressing out of my sports bag, which is where my shitty old t-shirts go to die.  There are exceptions though.  I have a United shirt to play football in, and I also have the one I’m wearing now.  I can almost taste the breathless anticipation, so I’ll put you out of your misery – I am wearing my Dukla Prague away kit, O yes indeed!  I only ever use it for playing football in, so this is the first time it’s ever had a social outing, and I am feeling very much like my seventeen-year-old self all of a sudden.

Bit early for the 90s revival I fear, but who knows.  Inspiral Carpets, The Wonderstuff, Ned’s, Levellers and all the rest of them will one day be welcomed back with open arms, no matter how painful we think they are nowadays.

For those of you who don’t know Half Man Half Biscuit, shame on you.  This song encapsulates so much about a British childhood, such as that experienced by the likes of Adrian Mole for example, that anyone from these shores over the age of thirty will love every last line of it.  And how did I get into Half Man Half Biscuit myself, given my foreign upbringing?  I searched Napster for something by Billy Bragg and I downloaded a mis-labelled copy of 1966 and All That and was captivated.  And for those of you who haven’t read the book on whose title the name of that song is a play, shame on you.  Buy it here, and thank me later.

I’ve gone and posted another fucking Christmas song haven’t I.  Bloody hell.  Honestly, I didn’t mean to, I really am wearing my Dukla Prague away kit.

Half Man Half Biscuit – All I Want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit
Half Man Half Biscuit – 1966 and All That

Buy HMHB albums from Amazon.

Toad Top 10, 2007: 6-10

6. Richmond Fontaine – Thirteen Cities

Willy Vlautin is one of the most gifted storytellers in modern music. I have never known anyone so effortlessly evocative. This is a desert western classic, all beauty and rambling stories about drifters and losers, the normal and the ordinary.

Richmond Fontaine – The Kid From Belmont Street

review | website | buy

7. Monkey Swallows the Universe – The Casket Letters

Sometimes God is a bastard. These characters have gone on potentially permanent ‘hiatus’ just as I started to get all excited about them. The Casket Letters is one of the loveliest albums of gentle folk-pop you’re likely to hear, and then they go and pack in it. Swine!

Monkey Swallows the Universe – Down

review | website | buy

8. The Sequins – The Death of Style

Genuinely innovative style, boisterous and the very definition of infectious. Who’d have thought Coventry was so much bloody fun!

The Sequins – When the Flames Went Out

review | website | buy

9. Ray’s Vast Basement – Starvation Under Orange Trees

Beautiful, wistful and very old fashioned. This is an album of dust-bowl Americana with a sprinkling of loveliness, all based on the work of John Steinbeck which, on listening to the album, is no surprise at all.

Ray’s Vast Basement – California’s Gone

review | website | buy

10. The 63 Crayons – Spoils For Survivors

Electronic and relentless, always travelling forwards. The band Kasabian wish they could have been.

The 63 Crayons – The Squeeze

review | website | buy

Toad Top 10, 2007: 11-15

11. Shout Out Louds – Our Ill Wills

The first time I heard this album I thought it was mediocre.  Mediocre!  The next time I thought it was decent.  Now I think it’s an 80s indie pop masterpiece.  One of the most enjoyable records I’ve heard for ages. If you’re having a party with even slightly discerning guests put this on, loud!

Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave It

review | website | buy

12. White Rabbits – Fort Nightly

Piano driven rock ‘n’ roll brilliance. You know how if you really love something you sit there drumming on the table with your fingers and bobbing your head like a muppet?  Well this is that album for me.  Great, great stuff.

White Rabbits – Kid on My Shoulders

review | website | buy

13. Frightened Rabbit – The Greys

This album has the dubious honour of being the first ever freebie I was ever sent to review.  I felt so important and so happy.  And what a fine album it is too: discordant indie with howling, tuneless vocals and scrappy, jumpy guitar.  Scottish indie is alive and well, and it’s because of groups like these lads.

Frightened Rabbit – Music Now

review | website | buy

14. Loch Lomond – Paper the Walls

Breathtakingly beautiful chamber folk from that cauldron of indie brilliance: Portland, Oregon.  Sufjan Stevens meets the Decemberists and, this year, outdoes them both.

Loch Lomond – Song in ¾

review | website | buy

15. Alela Diane – The Pirate’s Gospel

Truly a work of hushed folk wonder.  I only found out about her because she’s on the same label as the Shaky Hands.  What fine noses those people at Holocene Music have.  Honestly, you could not find a finer album of bluesly, folky, old-time gorgeousness.

Alela Diane – Pieces of String

review | website | buy

Toad Top 10, 2007: 16-20

16. Bob Frank & John Murry – World Without End

It’s a deep, emotional and an amazingly harrowing record.  True murder ballads delivered with pathos, yet never shying away from their inherent horror.   Johnny Cash and Robert Fisher would be proud.

Bob Frank & John Murry – Joaquin Murietta, 1853

review | website | buy

17. Ice Cream Socialists – Belles & Missiles

Sheer, unhinged mental brilliance.  Imagine if indie, pop, rock, and at times even classical, country and hip-hop were let loose in the circus and sung by Kermit the Frog.  It may sound nuts but it works.  Sheer genius.

Ice Cream Socialists – Zagnut’s Revenge

review | myspace | buy

18. The Mabuses – Mabused

The indie band that kidnapped a couple of classical musicians and told them they were in a new band now, without ever explaining to them what indie music is.  It’s laid back indie pop, but the musical inventiveness lifts above just about anything else in this particular territory.

The Mabuses – Havana

review | website | buy

19. Paris Motel – In the Saltpetriere

I think I’ve described these guys as the band on the Marie Celeste and I don’t think I can better that.  Ethereal fairy tales, with a hint of the macabre, although I couldn’t find a single standout track for my Festive 50, the album as a whole is one of the best I’ve heard this year.

Paris Motel -  City of Ladies

review | website | buy

20. Donny Hue & the Colors – Folkmote

I’ll admit this didn’t seem that special to me at the time, although I enjoyed it very much.  There’s just something I find incredibly satisfying about it.  I couldn’t quantify what it is about this album, but it sits perfectly with me nonetheless.

Donny Hue & the Colors – Mountain Piece

review | website | buy