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
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
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
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
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
Grinderman is rock!
Erm. Yes.
KEG PARTAY! KEG PARTAY! ARRRROOOOOGAAAAAHHH!!!
…fucking knuckle draggers…
Gindrinker, eh? Interesting choice. Personally not so much a fan, but I can see how they fit into the wider scheme of things & therefore remain an essential by default (for !).
Elvis Perkins agree with entirely. I was going to play a few’f'is tracks tonight but we cut them for a fraught selection from this week’s co-host that includes Gallows – yeep!
Essential for me, mate, most certainly. Have you heard the new song from the Bad Seeds album coming up this year? Im not totally convinced, but there’s no way I’m not buying it.
Glad to see the Twilight Sad getting their propers. Did I mention that I finally saw them play a few months back here in Washington, DC. A very small venue, about 50 people in attendance, and the boys were just sweet (there’s no other word for it). It was a Monday night and they seemed really grateful that people came out to see them. We gave them a nice encore and they were actually surprised and a bit moved I think. Apparently they hadn’t received many encores on the US tour. Strange, because they tore our fucking ears off. It was like being inside a jet engine.
I’ll have to check out the Elvis Perkins more thoroughly. I’ve only got a few songs so far, but I’ve liked them both.
I have missed them about three times this year too, but I did catch them once. Inside a jet engine is easily the best description I’ve read though. And did the guitarist look as bored when you saw them? There he was playing this ferocious, eardrum-shattering stuff and he looked like he was contemplating his washing routine for the day, it was bizarre.
James Graham, the singer, on the other hand looked like he was communing directly with the deity of his choice. Sideways.
Hooray for the Twilight Sad not being forgotten! May James Graham send good karma your way via the God to his left.
Funny you should mention. The guitarist was rather reserved as I recall, not bored looking, but just a bit casual and abstracted, at least for someone who was systematically melting the faces of the assembly. And the bass player went so far as to remove his shoes and stand there, Adam Clayton-like, in his stocking feet while pummeling away. The Hon. Mr. Graham also addressed us sideways, and did seem quite enthusiastic about his muse. I went with my friend James and we were both put in mind of Ian Curtis.
[...] what’s my point? Well, look at my Top 10 for 2007 (Part 1 & Part 2) and 2008 (Part 1 & Part 2), and the difference is huge. Grinderman are big and [...]