I was thinking the same thing about the point you made about these bands effectively expanding the template of British indie .. the fact that they all sing in English is telling enough. The Belgians are particularly sophisticated indie chameleons I’ve always thought (Soulwax – AKA Too Many DJ’s seem to know more about British music than we do) though that track by the Tellers, doing their best to imitate an Arctic Monkey/Docherty accent wasn’t their finest moment.

I love Europe, as you know, for all it’s strong cheeses and the distinctive, uncompromising musical whiff they give off. It is interesting though, that you rarely see any discussion in young music circles of what ‘non-indie European music’ is about and where it’s coming from. It kind of gets palmed off as ‘World Music’ or trad folk. A musical museum piece rather than a vibrant scene that might actually represent a country. I guess it’s because that’s how it has been in the UK. I’ve always had a feeling that the reason the UK can create so much ‘new’ music is because fashion is the dominant religion here and our traditions are deemed to be generally embarrassing. Like with our national food, there’s always something to be gained socially by ditching the Brit-stodge and producing something exotically tinged with a foreign flavour, be it American jazz, blues or rock’n'roll, french accordions or recently, Eastern European gypsy music.

Maybe it’s a little reaction to the breadth of musical access we have to our globalised globe, but UK young’uns these days do seem to be embracing and evolving our traditional forms – compare growing up with Celtic Connections/Fence Collective to the Proclaimers in my case. Even America seems as preoccupied with it’s rich furrows of ‘roots music’ than with the future of rock’n'roll. It seems natural that at some point soon we’ll be genuinely interested in music where people speaking funny languages sing weirdly beautiful songs.

I listened to an entire toadcast today. For the first time.

I think it’s going to be my new thing to do at work – i usually have my mp3 player on anyway, and I never seem to have the time at home to listen to one end-to-end.

And this was really good. Some choices I wqouldn;t have made, granted, but a lot of stuff I’d not come across before.

Of course I could get into a bullshit one-up manship and go all “hey, what about this slovinian indie pop duo from the early nineties”. But I won’t. (Mainly cos I don’t know any slovinian indie pop duos.)

It surprised me that you didn’t mention Poland, though.

Okay, maybe it didn’t surprise me you didn’t mention Poland, maybe I just needed an excuse to talk about Iowa Super Soccer, as they’re fucking brilliant, would have fitted perfectly in your list, have their debut album out later this month, and may be coming to the UK later this year (I’ve been speaking to them about setting up some Scottish dates).

http://www.myspace.com/iowasupersoccer

That’s all.

Hmm. I wonder what toadcast I’ll listen to tomorrow?

Exciting times.

Sorry to be a moan.

Good stuff here. Just working my way through it all.

In respect of your football comment, here’s what I found on Wikipedia.

The closest I ever got to the Faroes was living in Shetland for some time.

Great podcast once again – thanks