Here we go folks: the first ever Toad Session, with local band and all-round Toad pals Broken Records. These sessions are generally going to take place in my living room, but seeing as these guys were quite keen to record one and their single release is imminent, it seemed sensible to rush things a little. So given my equipment has yet to arrive, we went down to Banana Row Studios and recorded four session tracks and had a bit of chat, and this is the result.

There’s a full podcast, mp3s of the individual songs, a Flickr photo gallery and couple of videos of the whole business, so there’s lots and lots of stuff to play with. I think in terms of workload I can possibly manage about one of these per month, so keep an eye out in the future.

Toadcast #26 – Broken Records Toad Session

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The mp3s include their forthcoming single If the News Makes You Sad Don’t Watch It, a couple of new tracks, Wolves and They All Fell Into the Sea, and a special Toad request, the truly beautiful Out on the Water.

Broken Records – If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It

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Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea

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Broken Records – Wolves

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Broken Records – Out On the Water

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The videos are all posted on the main Song, by Toad YouTube page. There are session videos of Out on the Water and Wolves, but the video of the whole session will be posted a little bit later. We’re new to this, so the video editing is taking a little bit of time. It should be up in two weeks’, hopefully, so you’ll have to gird your loins until then I’m afraid, but I promise to let you know as soon as it makes an appearance.

Toadcast #26 Playlist:
01. Broken Records – If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It (03.34)
02. Broken Records – A Good Reason (07.27)
03. Micah P. Hinson & the Gospel Of Progress – Don’t You Forget (14.33)
04. John Cale – Paris 1919 (24.32)
05. The Moulettes – The Cannibal Song (29.40)
06. Yann Tiersen – Comptine D’un Autre Ete – L’apres-Midi (39.07)
07. Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (40.21)
08. Beirut – Elephant Gun (45.24)
09. The Waterboys – Sweet Thing (52.11)
10. Broken Records – Wolves (63.23)
11. My Latest Novel – When We Were Wolves (66.34)
12. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Love Letter (72.39)
13. Broken Records – Out On the Water (83.16)

If I have one slight issue with these it’s that they’re a little too polished and sensible, really. Not enough of the rude, random style I tend to think gives this site its character. Maybe recording them in the house will change this, but then the recordings won’t be as good. Thoughts? Too shiny? Good like this? Let me know what you think.

It really, really pains me to write this, but this album is just dreadful. Given the patchy William Bloke, England, Half English and the dubious live shows with The Blokes I kind of new this was going to happen, but it doesn’t make it any more fun when it does.

Billy is one of my all time musical heroes. He has written some of the most heartbreaking love songs and direct unflinching political polemics of anyone, ever, but since Worker’s Playtime he has been getting more and more inconsistent and now I’m amazed to hear a song I like rather than vice versa. For years now the one-time legend has been producing music that is spongy, soft and limp. It has become the pipe and slippers version of Billy Bragg, and even though I know what to expect, I just can’t quite bring myself to not buy his albums.

There have been some good moments. Even England, Half English had some great songs on it – well, maybe a couple – but they are becoming fewer and further between. Old Clash Fan Fight Song, a vinyl single released a few months ago, got my hopes up, but the proper version of this album is just awful. The Blokes suck any life there is out of the music with their MOR souly plodding, so it is a blessed relief that a solo version of this record exists.

Listening to Billy play this material solo there are some redeeming features to be found. O Freedom is a decent song about the US’ rather Soviet habit of invoking ‘extraordinary rendition’ to simply kidnap people they don’t like without anything remotely resembling legal due process or international cooperation. I think terrorism is the term for this kind of behaviour, and Billy isn’t terribly impressed either. In fact, given the state of the global political environment at the moment, I would have expected more bile, more anger from this record. If even Tom Waits has been motivated to write a political song, then surely Billy must be fuming.

And I guess he is, in a sense. The lyrics frequently tackle this sort of material, but that glorious turn of phrase he once wielded so effortlessly has become an increasingly rare commodity, and very little of the anger he must be feeling is present in the music at all.

It’s shame, but we knew it must come to this. Artistic inspiration is simply a finite quality. No-one can go on forever, nor should they be expected to. Billy will always be a legend to me because of his earlier work, but despite his untouchable place on the Pantheon of Toad, it always makes me sad when new albums come out which are almost entirely devoid of the magic of old.

Billy Bragg – You Make Me Brave I like this one quite a lot.
Billy Bragg – Sing Their Souls Back Home But this is really rotten.
One from the solo record. This one’s good, at least.
Billy Bragg – O Freedom

website | hype | amazon

What’s happening in Edinburgh this week? Erm, well mostly bugger all actually. In fact, I can’t find anything that I’d really bother going to see this week, but not to fear for one of the first great live events of the year is upon us: The Fence Collective Homegame. But more about that later, because it isn’t in Edinburgh, whereas this is:

Thursday 27th March: Isosceles at The Voodoo Rooms.
Alright, I’m scraping the barrel a bit with this one, I admit, but I had to list something. The only reason I say scraping is because I know nothing at all about these fellows, and I am not entirely sure it’s my sort of thing, on first listen, but Billy from Spins ‘n’ Needles is going along and seeing as the missus is in God Bless America this week I thought I might pop along for sociable reasons. And what a fucking excellent song Kitch Bitch is.
Isosceles – This is Where it Ends
Isosceles – Kitch Bitch

Normally I find Bart’s weekly incursions into this thread to be something of a bane, because it invariably means I have missed something good, but this week I find myself pleading for his help. Is there anything good happening this week, Bart? Anything?

Well, now that’s over with, what’s all this Homegame business then? Well if you read this blog regularly you almost certainly know all about Fence Records. They are based in Anstruther on the Fife coast and every year they all return to the town, invite those of us lucky enough to snag tickets in the eight minutes it took them to sell out, and spend all weekend getting absolutely cabbaged and playing lots and lots of great tunes.

Bands you have read about these pages that will be playing include Down the Tiny Steps, Art Pedro, Rob St.John, Eagleowl, The Pictish Trail, Viva Stereo, Kid Canaveral and of course the two most famous ones: King Creosote and James Yorkston. So you see why I’m excited. A dozen great bands and a long weekend on the Fife coast with my charmingly indifferent flower of delicate beauty, Mrs. Toad. She just goes for the weekend at the seaside really, and doesn’t pay much, if any, attention to any of the bands. Which in a silly way I sort of like.

I didn’t just come for the Twilight Sad tonight, because two other highly promising Scottish bands were on the bill as well – Eagleowl and Make Model. As usual, promo company I Fly Spitfires pay attention to the whole lineup, not just the headline act.

Eagleowl I know a little about, seeing as a regular reader of mine, Bart, is in the band. I have heard some their dark, shimmering folk on their MySpace page of course, but I’ve held off writing about them since I found out that they were playing this gig. Music like this plays particularly well live. The deep, morose double bass and mournful, agitated violin play off against each other at a tortuously slow pace, counterpointed wonderfully by the interplay of Bart and Clarissa’s vocals. It’s dark music for the most part, but the vocals lift it really nicely, although something in me almost feels they should have played after the Twilight Sad, as we all wound down with a whiskey.

Eagleowl – Know by Now

Make Model were, unfortunately disappointing. They had a couple of catchy enough tunes, but for the kind of money that’s been thrown at them I was expecting to hear something more obviously special. Still, I’m sure I’ll hear them again so I may yet change my mind.

I knew exactly what to expect from The Twilight Sad, however. Menacing guitars that shimmer and grind, cranking up to one monumental wall of noise after another, all accompanied by James Graham’s anguished howl. Their album, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters was one of my favourite releases of 2007, and the only time I saw them play last year was one of my favourite gigs.

There’s something euphoric about this kind of thunderous blitzkrieg of a racket charging at you from the stage. I am not much of a mosh-pit monkey myself, I just like to stand about two-thirds of the way back and gently bounce and sway as bands like this thunder away at us. It’s not a physical experience in the exhausted, sweaty sense, more a spiritual one, in a profound stillness of experience sense.

There’s something quite fantastic about standing there doing little more than bending in the gale, like reeds in a storm, as the music swirls all around you. I came out the gig giddy and excited, buzzing and eager. Great stuff. The new songs sounded good, the old ones sounded great and all in all, this was one of the best gig nights I’ve been to in quite a while.  And as for the acapella intro to Cold Days From the Birdhouse, well… sheer spine-tingling magic.

The Twilight Sad – And She Would Darken the Memory
The Twilight Sad – I’m Taking the Train Home

The term ‘ghost’ in the name of this band is something of a clue.  This is a lovely little mini-album of ghostly, spectral folk tales, which twirls and wails just a little above where many of you may wish to go, but nevertheless I find myself rather enjoying it.

This is one of those instances where my disorganisation fails us all, because I have no idea who emailed their stuff through, and can’t tell you anything about the band, apart from the fact that they come from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I once spent some time in jail.  To find out how much I know, click on their MySpace page to read, erm, very little actually. If you want real information, complete with depth, research and knowledge then Obscure Sound is the place for you.

The music gets too close to the sort of high-pitched female arch-folkstress at times, but nevertheless I find myself liking this album.  Imagine a fleeting glimpse of two pale girls in white dresses as the grey Atlantic light seeps weakly from a pale sky.  Wind is blowing, curtains dance, and the paint is peeling from the front door.  It’s a house on a low hill facing the salt and the anger of the sea, yet at distance enough not to be threatened.  That house might be haunted by this album, leaping and flickering around it, the tin coffee pot, the worn floorboards, the damp walls.  It isn’t a malicious haunting really, just a vaguely threatening one; one that makes you nervous that should you upset it, then there is a dark and vengeful side to this album that as long as you don’t offend the girls, they need never turn loose on you.

I know that comes across as trying a bit too hard to be a proper writer, but that really is where Tasseomancy takes you.  I didn’t know they were from Nova Scotia when I first heard the album, but the bleak, isolated beauty of Canada’s Maritimes really does fit with the music.  It was an ‘oh yes, of course’ moment.  One that you will probably experience if you are kind enough to treat yourself to this album.

The Ghost Bees – Sinai

myspace | hype

The album comes out on 8th April, so the only purchase link I can find is on American Amazon here.

There’s only time for a real quickie this week as I am working my hairy little buttocks off on the Broken Records stuff at the moment.  Still, in your insatiable thirst for pointless, self-indulgent rambling I was sure you’d want to listen to something splendid in the meantime.

There’s no underlying theme to anything either I’m afraid, just me rattling on about some current and very interesting music, as well as a couple of confessions so shocking you may never come back here again.  Looking at the playlist, I’m sure you can guess which ones they are.

So good luck with this, and I am already looking forward to the next one.

Toadcast #25 – The Quickcast[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo25.mp3]

01.  The Futureheads – Broke Up the Time (02.02)
02. Tapes ‘n’ Tapes – Hang Them All (05.05)
03. Meursault – Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues(13.21)
04. The Byrons – Azerbaijan (19.13)
05. The Fire Engines – Candyskin (26.04)
06. The Close Lobsters – Firestation Towers (28.53)
07. Mighty Mighty – Law (34.21)
08. Kim Carnes – When I’m Away From You (41.14)
09. Meat Loaf – Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (44.32)
10. Dirty Summer – War is Bad, Bono is Great (50.02)
11. The Low Lows – Dear Flies Love Spider (53.40)
12. Sargasso Trio – It’s Hot in Hell (58.32)
13. The Extraordinaires – High Five the Cactus (63.11)
14. Modernaire – Distraction (69.40)
15. The Indelicates – Point Me to the West (75.47)
16. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Night of the Lotus Eaters(83.47)

Yes, you did read that correctly.  Meat Loaf.  Fuck off.

I’ve invaded The Waiting Room, DC’s show on Error FM, once again, with familiarly disastrous results.  It’s all quite British folky this week.  This is a movement I’m really, really enjoying at the moment, and have been for some time, so I thought I’d go all lovely this week in preparation for a bit of a departure next.  He’s even thrown on some of my favourite local bands, The Byrons and Down the Tiny Steps, as a peace offering for hating Billy Bragg.  It’s too late, DC mate, I’m going to hate you forever now!

So, if you’d like to hear me put my best foot forward, only to have it ungratefully stamped upon by that horrible Welshman and his drunken sidekick-du-jour, then head over here and have a listen.  Alternatively, listen here:

The Waiting Room, with English Folk From the Toad[audio http://crack.podbean.com/medias/web/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhMS5wb2RiZWFuLmNvbS8xOTkzL3UvMTkwMzA4Lm1wMw/190308.mp3]

Actually, I liked the one with The Woman of the House last week.  She was far kinder about my choices, mate, so can she come back?  And isn’t it annoying to be upstaged by your wench on your own turf?  Anyone who introduces herself with lines like: “Who do I have to fuck around here to get a cup of tea?” is alright by me.

Here are some songs I could have picked for this episode, but didn’t:

Jake Flowers – Take Me Home
Art Pedro – Hangover Blues

Imagine a slightly warmer Neil Young, with a bit more wit and playfulness and you might get quite close to what you’re about to hear.  Really, bloody lovely.  And I’m so late reviewing this album, his next one comes out in about a week’s time, so there you go.

Actually I came across him entirely by accident on this gorgeous, gorgeous sampler from Boy Scout Recordings.   There’s so much good stuff on that CD it took me a while to get round to buying his album and, once I did, it took me a little longer to quite realise how lovely it is.

He’s described as emerging from New York’s anti-folk scene, but that description is becoming a bit silly these days.  DC informs me that it emerged over ten years ago when Lach was summarily dismissed from thefolk scene for having too punky an attitude.  This doesn’t wash at all with Cody, if you ask me.  His music is lovely and, although the nimble lyrics are a little left-field at times, there is nothing ‘anti’ folk about this sound.

Actually it is just an old-fashioned folky album with a slightly more upbeat strum to it than your usual morose minstrel.  In fact the light, airy delivery is one of the most pleasing aspects of this record – you can almost imagine the jaunty angle of the eyebrows as he sings – ironic, yet cheerful.

There are times when the slightly child-like (child-like, not child-ish) delivery doesn’t quite square with me.  Ida Blue, for example, is just a little too toy-town folksy for my taste, but most of this record is just gorgeous.  Arch and wel-executed enough to be interesting and definitely lovely enough to be a really engaging listen.  New album anticipated with excitement, then!

Turner Cody – Forever, Forever
Turner Cody – Suzannah
Turner Cody – Abaraxis Foyer

myspace | hype | buy from tummy touch records

Well I mentioned that The Raconteurs announced the imminent release of their new album, bypassing all the media sorts who might throw our infantile notions of what is good, bad or indifferent into the mix before people have a chance to listen to the thing of their own accord. I didn’t really offer much commentary at the time because I was excited and, to be entirely honest, I thought I’d take the opportunity to be a news-whore for a change instead of a recalcitrant straggler.

David Bennum, writing for the Guardian, has changed my mind with what comes across as a rather sulky, childish whinge about the whole business. Some of his remarks, and some of the comments on that thread, bear answering because most of it seems to rather miss the point – not by a large margin, but by a significant one.

The most snide accusation, and the one where he comes across as a jilted teenager, is in the penultimate paragraph:

Only a cynic would point out that when a film is released without preview screenings for critics, it’s usually because it’s so dire that it overrides the dictum about no publicity being bad publicity. And only Bill Hicks’s hated notional marketeer would view this as a marketing gimmick in itself: “They’re going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market, they’re very smart.”

Would Sir like Sir’s toys back, perhaps? In terms of it being a marketing ‘stunt’, this may or may not be accurate. Either way it is irrelevant. A new Raconteurs album was always going to be big news, however it was announced. This is only an anti-marketing approach if you can’t see past the limited tools of marketing in the year 2002. Nowadays this is just sensible. More evidence that Bennum has missed more than one point in this particular area can be found in the following quote:

It’s a shame that it’s only really viable for an act which, including as it does Jack White, already possesses both presumed financial security and an existing audience. If nobody had heard of the Raconteurs, then without pre-publicity, they might as well shoot the album into space as release it to an oblivious public, regardless of format, date, content or the best of intentions.

This is almost one-hundred percent wrong. In fact, it sounds like someone who didn’t get the chance to write about the Radiohead release but was determined to use those arguments somewhere, regardless of relevance.

In fact, the scenario he is describing as not being viable for an obscure band makes perfect sense. Whether by ‘legitimate’ journalists or amateur hacks like myself, most music criticism and almost all music chatter is online nowadays. As Vampire Weekend demonstrated, buzz is a fickle mistress on teh internetz, and can be gone in a flash. Their buzz-o-meter pretty much peaked at around album release time, so by the time the thing itself was in the shops, the backlash was already beginning.

If you’re a small band, generating a few weeks’ worth of enthusiasm among music journos, amateur or professional, isn’t hard to do, compared with the enormous challenge of making yourself a household name. So why on earth would you want whatever small buzz of enthusiasm you manage to generate to take place in an environment where people can’t act immediately on it and buy the album. In fact, given how elusive a quality that buzz is, why would you bother trying to generate it unless you had an album to sell? If anything, Bennum’s argument is backwards: only the big groups can afford the luxury of teasing people for weeks and making them wait for the chance to actually act on their anticipation.

The other thing it might combat is this: when I first hear about an imminent release it is possible, whether or not it’s available in the shops, that I mind find it on BitTorrent. I’d rather buy the thing, and I don’t like using BitTorrent, but the temptation is frequently too strong – there it is, I can listen to it right now, all I have to do is click! The longer illegal means have the market monopoly, the more likely they are to be used, I would guess. This is only speculation, but I think it can only be helpful to have legitimately purchasable versions available at the same time as the dodgy ones are.

What this whole thing might actually be, as Bennum does quite rightly suppose, is an attack on music journalism, which is a profession none too beloved of Mr. White (pinching the links from the Guardian). Whilst I may take issue myself with accusations of laziness, in light of the recent Black Crowes comedy, music journalists are not in the best position to be self-righteous about this at the moment.

But seriously, what does Bennum think being a music journalist is? Music is about taste. No amount of qualifications or expertise or insider privilege will send me to read the work of a music journalist whose taste leads me down blind alleys – see Q or NME, for example. So if his Raconteurs review comes out a week after the album was released and he’s had a chance to digest it, then how is this a problem? Why do people come to the Guardian for information in the first place? If they were scoop-whores salivating for leaks they’d be haunting torrent sites and music blogs.

Surely the biggest reason for generating pre-release hype was always to make as big an impression on the charts as possible, in the hope that this publicity would then add to the snowball and you’d sell loads.  As the truly hilariously out of touch Billboard 2007 Album Chart shows, charts just haven’t caught up with the explosion in retail avenues in the 21st Century, so aiming for the charts is futile.  In that case what do the first week sales matter?  Surely what matters is to sell a lot of albums over the course of a year or so and hence provide yourselves with an income.  For now, the first week push is old-model journalism and old-model marketing.

There are perfectly reasonable allegations of pretension to be levelled at The Raconteurs’ press release, which read more like a manifesto, but not particularly serious ones. Their points about the sanctity of the album format and a preference for vinyl are perfectly reasonable, but I can easily see how they could come across as a bit pretentious, depending on the absolutism with which they might be voiced. But ultimately, this is just a fairly sensible, non-controversial marketing approach, and one that I think we should come to expect in the future. The only really annoying thing is that it thwarts people who are obsessed, either through habituation or privileged arrogance, with being One Step Ahead at all times. That is our hang-up though, for us to deal with, and it is definitely not The Raconteurs’ problem.

Elbow – Any Day Now
Tom McRae – End of the World News
Generation X – Ready Steady Go
Doug Anthony All Stars – The Sun
The Holloways – Fit For a Fortnight

I was on Blogfresh Radio this week, talking about Broken Records. I don’t know if I converted everyone there, but I certainly gave it my best shot. The episode is here, for those of you who’d like a listen. I like Blogfresh actually. It’s shorter than my own ramblings and they must get through an awe-inspiring amount of blog-scouring in order to find the stuff they like. So thanks Bill, and I hope this week’s episode goes down well.

In other Broken Records news, they have a single coming out in just under a month’s time. The launch party will be at the Bongo Club in Edinburgh, with a London night the following evening at the Proud Gallery. So you Southerners get to hear what they sound like when monumentally hung over – ha ha, fuck you! The single will the the brilliant If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It and can be pre-ordered from Rough Trade here.

In REALLY FUCKING AMAZING NEWS the lads recorded the first ever Toad Session this weekend just gone. Morgan and I are working our arses off to get the audio and the video assembled into something coherent for you all by the weekend, but I don’t want to make any promises. I’d rather it was done right than rushed, but what you should get will be something like this:
- A podcast with an interview with the lads, some of their song choices and the session tracks.
- All four session tracks in mp3 format.
- Either one or two videos of live session tracks.
- A movie of the whole day, including the interview and at least some of every song.
- Some of Dylan’s pictures from the session.

You may think you’re excited, but there is just no fucking way you’re as excited as I am! I’m desperate to offer a sneaky preview of one of the session tracks in this post, but I think I’ve just about managed to restrain myself – just. In the meantime, here are a couple of tracks that didn’t quite make the podcast and a preview of one of the shots from the session:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – There She Goes, My Beautiful World
Beirut – Postcards From Italy
Yann Tiersen – Ginette