Song, by Toad

Scarlett Johansson Needs a Good Fucking Slap

Scarlett Johansson is making an album of Tom Waits covers, as I am sure you are all aware (I am not linking to it – download it illegally by all means, but I will be really pissed off if any of you actually part with any wedge for this garbage).  I haven’t really mentioned it that much on these pages because Tom Waits is an icon, and I am not sure that vanity projects like these particularly merit all that much attention to begin with.

But here it is, and it’s fucking dreadful.

Why Tom Waits, seriously? What does she think she is going to add by throwing a bit of pointless karaoke over someone else’s arrangements of songs that are so far beyond her that you almost marvel at the Olympic feat of hubris required to even consider the project.

Everybody knows Waits is a genius.  Lots and lots of people love his work, but this sort of nonsense is the equivalent of jumping up and down in front of the camera when someone is trying to interview a musician and shouting ‘Me too, I love him too, look at me everyone, see this really talented person, well I think he’s really talented, I do, me, me me me’.  We do not need to see Tom Waits through your eyes Scarlett.  If you’d sit down and shut the fuck up we are quite capable of operating a CD player ourselves.

I wouldn’t, of course, be feeling quite this hostile if the results had been any good, but they aren’t, they’re rotten.  Her video for Falling Down is here, and it’s woeful.  Apart from the joyless shoegazey arrangement – for which someone needs a very public buggering – the quality of her singing is just dismal, and herein lies the crux of the issue.  And funnily enough it isn’t just that these are crap Waits covers.  Let’s face it, there are plenty of sub-standard Waits covers out there, and homage is part of art.  This isn’t art though, it’s a vanity project.  If you have any doubts about this ask yourself one question: on its own merits, just a musical project, is there any chance that this record would be in the shops if Scarlett didn’t have the semen of half of Hollywood dribbling down the inside of her thigh?  Thought not.

What it’s really about is that for the good of the human race’s collective cultural soul someone, somewhere needed to say no.  And this is the problem with celebrity culture.  For some unfathomable reason people seem to think that being famous is something to be applauded, celebrated, envied and pandered to.  No-one ever seems to think to turn around to these pampered, preening popinjays and say ‘Sorry love, I’m sure the album would be interesting, but the fact is you’re shit at singing’.  It’s not in anyone’s interests of course, because some twat somewhere will make the thing, and having Scarlett whip her baps out a couple of times and flash that ‘If you like my record I might just blow you’ smile guarantees that the thing will sell.

Human beings’ capacity for deluding themselves that they are in some way special or talented is pathetic, quite frankly.  We are fucking average, almost every single one of us.  That, if you care to look it up, is what average means and no amount of inner-enlightenment, validation, vanity, positive thinking or toadying is going to make a jot of difference to the fact that we are all fucking ordinary.  Get the fuck over it.  The only thing Scarlett Johansson is any good at at all is having really big breasts.  What a towering achievement – she must be very proud.

This is how you cover Tom Waits:
Holly Cole – Falling Down
Holly Cole – Soldier’s Things
Still not a patch on the real thing though:
Tom Waits – Falling Down

Toad on Fresh Air

I’m sorry there’s a bit too much plugging going on at the moment and not enough actual music talk. I promise no more plugs for the rest of the week after this, but I thought I might remind you of my second show on Fresh Air, Edinburgh’s student radio station will be on tonight between 8.30pm and 10pm British Summer Time.

There’s not much to say other than that it would be lovely if some of you could pop along and say hello – there’s even a studio email address so you can heckle me mid-show, as the excellent Campfires & Battlefields and Drunk Country both managed to last time. This, given my newness and state of abject terror, was much appreciated, fellas.

So go to the Fresh Air website and click on the big green Listen Live button on the right, and you will be soothed to sleep by me blathering about, erm, well whatever nonsense springs to mind, really. And I will be trying to use naughty curse words either, or be too inappropriate, which might be a laugh to listen to.

As an enticer, here’s a track that didn’t make tonight’s playlist, although it was close:

Pink Mountaintops – Plastic Man, You’re the Devil

Toad on Blogfresh Radio

Bill has very kindly allowed me back on Blogfresh to talk about Modernaire and the whole intellectual property issue.  After seeing the enormous length to which that particular discussion unravelled I think Bill was placing enormous confidence in his editing abilities, to be able to get the inevitable rant down to a couple of minutes worth of intro.

It also gave me a chance to big up Modernaire again, after the slightly spiteful nonsense that ensued on that particular post.  I felt bad about that because I really like the band and I never really intended to slag them off personally.  To reiterate: they are an excellent group, they really should go places, and I think they are ace.  But also, internet exclusivity as a concept is just silly, and that particular policy is not only futile but potentially quite damaging to the initial word-spreading that they currently need.  Still, good luck to ‘em and let this be the last of it.

The Delgados – Accused of Stealing

Mrs. Toad’s Mile High Mobile Manners

[After unfairly raising my expectations with the saucy title, Mrs. Toad has lapsed into something of a furious rant about mobile phones. She walks it the way she talks it too - I can never get the old bat on the bloody phone when I need her. Anyway, she's erm, gone a bit mental and good luck to you...]

Mobile phones are useful. Even an anti social fuck like me has to admit that. However, they also have the unfortunate side effect of turning amiable people into annoying, rude fucktards. And that is why it fills me with dismay that mobile phones will soon be allowed on planes.

Mobile phone rudeness provokes me to the point of apoplexy. People sit in the pub with phones in front of them, peering at it and fiddling with it, holding up a finger to cut fellow drinkers off in mid conversation so that their phone can be answered, texting and chuckling at incoming texts mid dinner. Strangely, no-one hits them (though I am available for random acts of violence and children’s parties if anyone wants to outsource). Remember when even having a mobile (and before that the carphone) was the mark of a total tosser?

In public places, phones constantly chirp with loud, irritating ring tones; if 666 is the Mark of the Beast, the Crazy Frog is the Mark of the Cunt. This noise apparently lets the phone’s owner know that it’s time to stop dead in the middle of a busy thoroughfare like a crippled bovine retard and engage in long conversations that make Paris Hilton sound positively intelligent by comparison. The truly inspiring knuckle grazers also manage a muttered “fucks sake” or martyred look when the hordes behind try to push past them as they exchange their bons mots. I admit that, as a Blackberry addict, I am not immune from indulging in a form of telephonic twattery, but at least by obsessing over e-mail, I’m quiet about it and rarely park myself right in front of busy escalator in the mall to engage with my addiction.

Like a car, where the cocooned environment seems to provoke a “me versus the rest of them”, attitude in otherwise placid people, the mobile phone seems to inspire truly remarkable selfishness. People turning down or postponing the demands of a strident phone in favour of their human companions is the exception rather than the rule despite the existence of voicemail. The relationship between phone user and phone is needy, slightly anxious and immediate. For the truly afflicted, the phone constantly in their hands is a sad physical manifestation of their insecurity, like those sad fucks that used to leave the Hugo Boss labels sewn on the sleeves of their suits in the 80’s.

And now, even 30,000 feet won’t be far enough away from these mongers. I travel regularly on planes and already, without mid air usage, there are particularly annoying phone patterns associated with air travel. The Touch Down call – the people who are so important that the instant the planes lands, they must whip out their phones and make a call (loudly, otherwise what’s the point). The Terminal Bore – the men (usually) who strut up and down the terminal bellowing into phones, often on a Nathan Barley headset, checking to make sure people are watching them (FYI quickly belming or making a silver quick wanking gesture knocks them off their stride). The Telephonically Immune – the people who in, defiance of all the rules that render plebs like you or I un-contactable for 10 minutes, have the unique and god given right to make and receive calls in the security areas and the customs hall. I have actually seen one of these spanners do the finger holding up thing to a customs officer who asked him to terminate his call. Funnily enough, he got pulled aside for extra immigration checks and I do that hope KY and a vigourous rubber glove were involved. Actually, fuck that, I hope they were out of KY and let the day release trainee use meths and a wire brush to have a good root around his jacksie.

Will it be popular to use mobiles on planes? A hippy view might be that since it is so annoying to have other people make phone calls on planes, considerate people won’t choose to make calls themselves, in the advancement of the mutual good. Well, fuck the hippies. No-one seems to give a shit about the mutual good since it stopped involving sitting under bushes at open air festivals, whacked on acid and indiscriminately banging people called Leaf, Wind and Moonbeam. In fact, I suspect there will be more than a few former such hippies, now encased in Brooks Brothers uniforms, among the first to bray into their Motorola flips about the S&P as the seatbelt sign pings off.

And even if it is common, surely people will be discreet? Hmmm, no.

A former (and very slight) acquaintance used to have his mates call him and then hang up when he was in trendy bars in London. The purpose being that he could stand next to hot chicks at the bar and bark into the mute handset about holding out for another million, yeah, Noel and Liam are lined up and, yes, Kate Moss should be guestlisted but that that kraut boot Claudia can fuck off. This bellend actually worked for an insurance company in the ass end of the auto claims department (until he was fired for sheer uselessness). Now, there’s no fucking way that a total cocksmoker like that isn’t going to use his mobile on a plane and there’s also no way that I am not going to want to ram it up his asshole sideways before beating his face bloody on the back of the chair in front.

I am the avenging air marshall for those who enjoy dozily relaxing on an 8 hour flight, being served hand and foot and watching movies in peace and quiet. Be warned. I fly a lot. I might be on your plane. Think before you use that phone.

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone – Don’t They Have Payphones Whereever You Were Last Night?
Blondie – Hanging on the Telephone
The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone

[You know why I love this post?  Because I have been so busy all weekend with the Alela Diane session and Mrs. Toad took it upon herself to write a little something because she knew I would be struggling and I looked exhausted.  So a foul-mouthed old harridan she may be, but she's a sweet lass in her own way.  And I wouldn't be without her for anything, silly girl.

Oh, and she only touched on it, but there are monumental levels of Blackberry hypocrisy going on here which are really quite hilarious- T]

Live in Edinburgh This Week – 27th April 2008

No, I’m not dead, just insanely busy. We recorded the Alela Diane & Mariee Sioux Toad Session today, and it’s been a pretty bloody hectic weekend, so I am bloody exhausted.

Also, when I requested my slot on Fresh Air, Edinburgh’s student radio station, I looked at a couple of months of my diary and what do you know, hectic as hell but for some reason Tuesday was empty absolutely every week for about two months. Perfect, I thought, I shall request Tuesdays as it will never clash with anything and life will be beer and skittles.

Since they were nice enough to give me a slot on Tuesdays what has happened? Well this week I was offered a ticket for Manchester United’s home tie with Barcelona in the European Cup and there are two bloody gigs I want to go to in Edinburgh that night as well. Fucking typical.

Tuesday 29th April: The Low Lows & Eagleowl at Henry’s Cellar Bar.
I am so pissed off about missing this gig I could cure cancer on Tuesday afternoon and just not fucking tell anyone out of spite. Eagleowl’s morose folk and The Low Lows building, feedbacky Americana would have been the best lineup for bloody ages. Arse arse fucking arse.
The Low Lows – Raining in Eva

Tuesday 29th April: Isosceles & Eastern Conference Champions at Cabaret Voltaire.
I have no idea quite what the word angular means when applied to music, but perhaps abrupt, spasmodic indie pop with plenty of synth and style might cover it. That’s Isosceles anyway, and they’re excellent. Eastern Conference Champions are another very, erm, yoof-friendly sounding beat combo and despite this I really like them.
Isosceles – Isosceles

Thursday 1st May: Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms with Come On Gang & The Chap.
I’m not sure if there’s been a Limbo night yet that hasn’t been worth going to, but you know what, I’ve never once made it. This is unlikely to change this week unfortunately, but Come On Gang are supposed to be brilliant and The Chap sound decent as well.

There’s a couple of others, like Colin McIntyre (of Mull Historical Society) at Cabaret Voltaire and Zoey Van Goey and Crash My Model Car at Henry’s, but my interest in both of those gigs is kind of slim, so I go if you want but I won’t be making it. Maybe if they’d put them on a Tuesday instead…

I’m not listing any gigs as part of the 32 Music Live festival at the Three Sisters in Edinburgh because, for some incredible reason which I really hope goes deeper than my own simple stupidity, I can’t seem to find the fucking listings anywhere on the internet. The closest I could find was this on Bebo, with the only interesting bits of information being that it starts this weekend and is free. Go information superhighway!

Oh and Vampire Weekend are at the Liquid Room, but don’t bother – they’ve sold out.

I am now going to sleep the sleep of the recently deceased.

Paris Motel – Live, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Wednesday 23rd April 2008

I realised, when I saw that they were playing in Edinburgh, that I have been relatively quiet on the subject of all things Paris Motel for the last little while. I guess this kind of happens in a field where news, as much as anything, seems to be paramount. When I do take time out to reflect it almost always seem to be to swear about something, so reflecting on music I loved recently but haven’t taken the time to cosy up to for a bit always seems to be somewhat down the agenda.

Amy May is actually a professional musician. Not in the rock star sense, unsurprisingly, rather in the session, arrangement and live performance sense. As an example, having played viola with The Enemy (Toad begins to grind teeth) she has nothing but praise for them. To paraphrase, they really mean what they’re singing, they’re really nice, down to earth lads and they think about and engage with the world thoughtfully and sincerely. Hating their music like I do, it’s mildly confusing to hear them spoken of so warmly – can’t the world just be full of one-dimensional stereotypes, dammit!

This kind of career diversity kind of explains her attitude to her own band. It’s like a little oasis of free expression in a world full of crust-earning artistic compromises and consequently she refuses to be budged on anything – this is the one chance to absolutely and unflinchingly do the kind of music that she wants. “I sometimes wish I could write a pop song, sometimes people tell me I should, but it’s just not what comes out”.

Paris Motel’s mini-orchestra produce a wonderfully rich, layered sound on record, but due to the financial constrictions of travelling with a dozen folk, this evening is played with just Amy, Joe the drummer on autoharp and a guitarist they’ve barely played with before who happened to get in touch because he is a fan. They say this is pretty much normal – they basically have to generate a new arrangement of the songs for each tour, depending on who of their number is actually available at the time.

This evening, they’re struggling. The guitarist doesn’t know the songs that well, and he and Amy seem to approach these things differently. She’s on the verge of panic and sure it’ll be a disaster and he’s shrugging his shoulders a little – there’s not much you can do but go for it and hope for the best. It’s funny to see actually, because I can kind of sympathise with both parties, and as a fan I honestly don’t care – I have no doubt that the songs will carry the evening.

And they do, of course. Joe made the very wise decision to ditch the rather dominant bongos and play his percussion on the merchandise suitcase instead, which sounded a million times better. And Amy’s voice, when she remembers the words, is simply superb. The only issue really is that the guitar does little but keep the rhythm, and the percussion already does that. Because of the classical background of the band, Paris Motel songs are very textured things, and with a guitar doing no more than keep rhythm I find myself questioning the need to have it at all, but given he only learned the songs that afternoon it’s impossible to blame the guitarist for this.

Ultimately, what we’re here for is Amy’s old-fashioned, crystal clear voice, and the defeated sadness of her delivery. They have yet to entirely capture the peaks and troughs of the live performance in their studio stuff, but at least one aspect of that might be impossible: Amy May’s face. When she sings, her eyes look so woefully, sincerely, achingly sad that you’re drawn into the slightly magical , watery tragedy of the songs as if the heartache they sing of was genuinely your own. They’re eminently personal as well, apparently. For all the imagery in the songs is all very reminiscent of old fairy tales and nursery rhymes – a very English equivalent to the Brothers Grimm, perhaps – the actual stories are intensely personal.

As Amy herself puts it “It may be all fairy tales, but I know each and every one of those characters and everything that happens to them is something really important from my own life.” It is sincere, heartfelt music and it shows. If you ever get the chance to go and see them, do it.

Paris Motel – 071
Paris Motel – Catherine By the Sea

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DeVotchKa – A Mad & Faithful Telling

I suppose it’s pretty obvious to point out that gypsy music, or Eastern European folk at the very least, is to the noughties what Irish folk was to the eighties. That much, I suppose, is fairly clear but what I can’t quite imagine is gypsy stuff falling quite as out of fashion with my own ears as Irish folk music has. I know that this is the very nature of fashion – it’s such an instinctive thing, and so inconceivable at the time how things can drift so comprehensively in and out of favour – but it still seems odd to think of.

I say this because I adored the sound of Irish folky stuff back in 1990 at least as much as I am currently loving all the groups dabbling in the music of Eastern Europe at the moment. But listening to Irish folk-rock now it just sounds so incredibly dated, and I assume the same must happen here eventually.

Pointless waffling aside, of course, I have to point out that this is an incredibly good album. It’s less tinny than some of the early Beirut stuff, less frenetic than A Hawk & a Hacksaw and less pop than a lot of other imitators. They aren’t a straight up folk band by any means, of course, as their excursion into soundtracks with Little Miss Sunshine and their origins as a Burlesque band emphasise.

I don’t know quite to describe what they have that sets them apart from a standard carnival folk band, but there’s something deeper and weightier in the sound. Perhaps it’s something more grandiose or more cinematic, although it’s quite possible I’m only saying this because I know they’ve done film work. There also seem to be hints of Mariachi in there as well, although given my musical ignorance I don’t know if this is because there actually is some Mariachi in the music or if it’s just because they remind me of Calexico.

Anyhow, I reckon you’ve pretty much got the point by now. I’ve struggled slightly to get into their stuff in the past, but this appears to be the album that’s cracked it.

DeVotchKa – Along the Way
DeVotchKa – Undone

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Mrs. Toad on The Waiting Room

Yes, my darling Mrs. Toad, the acid-tongued misanthropic centre of my world, has put in a bit of an appearance on The Waiting Room this week. Needless to say we consequently had far too much fun, talked far too much and DC had to take the shears to our segment to make the whole thing fit. No discipline, these new UGC stars, honestly. It’s all covers in this week’s episode, and we put that splendid Richard Godwin in there, some William Shatner and a hillbilly reworking of Snoop Dogg’s Gin & Juice. Splendid!

The Waiting Room – Drunk Covers – Wednesday 23rd April 2008

Anyhow, as there was no time to throw in half the covers I know, I thought I’d post a couple here just for fun. Generally I refuse to post covers on this site because, for all many people do it with total sincerity, there is a distinct whiff of hit-whoring about it – sort of like constantly posting fucking Hot Chip and Radiohead remixes. Anyhow, time for a bit of an exception because I have three very good Divine Comedy covers, to go with the one we played in the show itself. I know The Divine Comedy have been both piss-poor and hopelessly unfashionable for quite some time now, but their early stuff was brilliant, and even now ol’ Mr. Hannon still produces the odd gem from time to time.

The Divine Comedy – Famous (The Magnetic Fields)
The Divine Comedy – Oh Yeah (Bryan Ferry)
The Divine Comedy – Radioactivty (Kraftwerk)

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

Slightly camp electro-pop? Me? With my reputation? Has no-one thought of the consequences? You’re talking to a man who barely, barely likes the Scissor Sisters for Christ’s sake. In fact, the Scissor Sisters are an instructive comparison because, despite the electro-synth genius of opener Time to Pretend, this is much more of a disco record than an edgy synth one.

The hype surrounding MGMT put me off to such an extent (ah right, another heavily stylised bunch of electro ponces from New York – wonderful) that I ignored the album, the buzz and the band for ages. In fact, it was only when I discovered that they are playing Edinburgh’s Liquid Room in a couple of weeks that I thought ‘Oh yes, them.  I wonder if they’re actually any good after all’. The buzz alone tempted me to go along and check them out, if just for the sake of it, almost in a collector’s sense.

So I heard Time to Pretend, I bought the album and I loved it, largely. I have to confess that I start to lose interest in the second half, so I can’t claim to love it all, and it may not be dark enough for me to form a close emotional attachment. But this is not an album that I approach on a thoughtful basis, it’s an album I approach on a maximum wiggle basis. And there is plenty of wiggling to be done when MGMT are playing.

MGMT – Time to Pretend
MGMT – Weekend Wars

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Sargasso Trio – Burnin’ Burnin’ Burnin’

Well I’ve come something of a roundabout route to loving this album, but love it I do.  From the sounds of it, this lot went a slightly roundabout route to becoming a band as well.  According to their MySpace blurb they met whilst playing salsa.  Yes, salsa.  What is the fucking world coming to, I ask you.

Myself, I found them on the exceptionally nutritious Boy Scout Recordings sampler handed out at last year’s (brilliant) End of the Road Festival, and approached the album expecting some unusually melodic but nevertheless gently pastoral folk pop.  This is not quite what I got, but once I adjusted I realised that I still loved it, however the hell you might describe the stuff.

Synth-folk is their own term, and I think that fits.  There’s a lot of sunny pop in there too, but for all they are playing what I guess you might term acoustic folk for the most part, this does indeed owe many a nod to the indie synth pop that is so popular at the moment.  There’s the synth flourishes themselves, of course, which although they are used pretty sparingly still make a fairly indelible impression on the ambience of the record.

The most unusual element of synthyness is actually nothing to do with synthesisers themselves, more in the vocal delivery that tends to accompany it.  That back-and-forth, slightly shouty vocal exchange that modern synth-pop groups seem to love makes a slightly unusual appearance on a couple of the songs here, surprisingly so, I’d find.

All three of the Sargasso Trio write songs, which seems to make a little more sense of these stylistic juxtapositions, but for all they are odd when laid down in black and white the surprises are all pleasant when listening to the album.  It’s a lovely, friendly listen, jaunty and poppy, but with enough of that folksy sadness to tinge the playfulness with pathos and give the album some real emotional grip.  Lovely.

Sargasso Trio – The Drum
Sargasso Trio – It’s Hot in Hell

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