Song, by Toad

Toadcast #30 – Alela Diane & Mariee Sioux Toad Session

Hello and welcome back to the Toad Sessions. I was a little drunk when I noticed that Alela Diane was playing in Edinburgh as part of the Triptych Festival, so the idea of emailing her label and inviting her to do a Toad Session didn’t seem quite so preposterous. In the morning, I thought I was mad and would be laughed at, but amazingly they agreed, and now here it is.

This one was also recorded by Nick at Bananarow and he’s done another amazing job – the songs sound absolutely gorgeous. Dylan’s pictures can be found at the Flickr page, and we have some more videos at the Song, by Toad YouTube page. Here’s the interview podcast, with the tracklisting at the bottom of the page.

Toadcast #30 – Alela Diane & Mariee Sioux Toad Session

Here are the sessions tracks themselves. The Cuckoo is a traditional song, and Dry Grass & the Shadows is from Alela’s new album which should hopefully be out later this year. Mariee’s songs are Flowers & Blood from her recent album Faces in the Rocks, whereas the gorgeous Icarus Eye is an old song from a home release.

Alela Diane – Dry Grass & the Shadows

Alela Diane – The Cuckoo

Mariee Sioux – The Icarus Eye

Mariee Sioux – Flowers & Blood

Here are the videos, all hosted at the YouTube page. Again, the interview is going to have to go up later because I seem to have entirely lost Morgan, my resident editing expert, so I’ve had to cobble these things together myself. I am going to work on the interview movies as best I can, so they should hopefully be available in a week or two.

01. Alela Diane – Dry Grass & the Shadows (Toad Session) (04.51)
02. The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life (08.36)
03. Johnny Cash – I See a Darkness (11.45)
04. The Holy Modal Rounders – Hesitation Blues (20.42)
05. Neutral Milk Hotel – The Communist’s Daughter (24.10)
06. Mariee Sioux – Flowers & Blood (Toad Session) (26.07)
07. Hem – Half Acre (32.29)
08. Bonnie Prince Billy – No Bad News (41.41)
09. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Twistification (46.05)
10. Vashti Bunyan – Glow Worms (53.35)
11. Mariee Sioux – The Icarus Eye (Toad Session) (58.10)
12. Alela Diane – The Cuckoo (Toad Session) (62.56)

Well I hope you like these. The next session is going to be with local band Meursault, and will be the first one to be recorded in Toad Hall. Very exciting!

The Common Toad. Common?

Hannah from Modernaire rather kindly sent through this George Orwell essay which I rather like, especially the bit about the Toad (I assure you there is no such thing as a ‘common’ Toad, whatever George may think).

Maybe we should all step away from these pernicious computer machines, and go and lark about, carefree in the springtime lushness.

The excerpt was from ‘SomeThoughts on the Common Toad’ and whilst I object to his scurrilous accusations of lower class toadery which, as a species, we vigorously refute, it makes a nice read. Orwell may have been a stodgy novellist, by which I mean that his intellectual achievements as a writer outsrip the actual enjoyment of reading his fiction, but he was a truly excellent essayist. Anyone who is yet to read “The Decline of the English Murder” should do so immediately. But this is not really a literary site, so let’s leave it to George, shall we:

“Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenom¬enon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of Left-wing newspapers call a class angle? There is no doubt that many people think so… People, so the thought runs, ought to be discontented, and it is our job to multiply our wants and not simply to increase our enjoyment of the things we have already. The other idea is that this is the age of machines and that to dislike the machine, or even to want to limit its domination, is backward-looking, reactionary and slightly ridiculous.

I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer. I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and – to return to my first instance – toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader-worship.”

There’s not a lot of music related to Orwell that I can think of, although I assume there must be loads out there. Animal Farm and 1984 have entered into the popular imagination such that people use metaphors from these books all the time, even if they have no idea where they came from.

For Animal Farm (tenuous, these two):
Cocorosie – Animals
The Beatles – Piggies
For 1984:
Alanalda – There is Always Someone Watching
Tina Turner – 1984
David Bowie – 1984 (Live)
For Down and Out in Paris and London:
The Divine Comedy – In and Out in Paris and London
There must be some more though, surely? Help me out here people.

The Young Republic – Live, Cabaret Voltaire Edinburgh, Sunday 25th May 2008

It’s been a great year for The Young Republic.  They’ve gone from three years of constant gigging through their university years, to being signed to a small but fairly upwardly mobile record label in End of the Road Records, to a well-received debut release, to touring across the States and the UK.

But despite the shiny exterior there have been hiccups, and recently rather a lot.  They parted company with their flautist, which led to the somewhat acrimonious departure of the drummer, although they don’t really want me to go into the details on either of these things so that’s about all I can tell you.  The move from Boston to Nashville brought another casualty: pianist MJ just couldn’t settle and has also packed it in.  The disruption and unpleasantness seems to have shaken the group a little.  They’ve been playing together for quite a while and I get the impression they regard one another as friends rather than colleagues.  Julian and Chris, who I spoke to at the gig, still seemed upset about it all, despite their determination to make the new lineup work.

To make matters worse, the replacement drummer had to be found at such short notice that there wasn’t time to properly sort out his UK visa and he was turned back at the border.  Such preparations hardly make for smooth sailing, but the guy who eventually took charge of the pots and pans has played with them before, so they were confident going into the show.

But was it over? Was it bollocks.  They broke a string in the soundcheck, Chris broke one on his bass guitar within the first song, every guitar needed tuning pretty much every song and eventually Julian seemed to break his acoustic guitar as well.

They themselves can’t have been happy, but it made for an excellent gig in an odd way.  They dealt with the adversity confidently and never lost their humour.  Julian is a truly excellent front man: relaxed, engaging and a really good laugh, he never seems fazed by anything and keeps the evening rolling over really nicely.  Given the recent turmoil and the technical nightmare, The Young Republic come out of the whole thing looking very much the business.

Musically, it’s interesting.  The pruning of instruments seems to have given the others a little more room to breathe.  Kristin Webb delivers an amazing violin performance, from the Scottish reel she played to introduce the show to the demented classical interludes in some songs, to the long slow sad parts in others.  Bob on guitar also seems to have a little more room to make his mark on songs, and does so to excellent effect.  It’s possible that this could turn out to be a very good thing for the band.

Currently working on two new albums, there was a lot of new material in the set.  Given my familiarity with their back catalogue it’s surprising how few of the songs I actually recognised.  More familiar tunes like the superb Girl From the Northern States, Girl in a Tree and Paper Ships were there, as were the usual covers (Tom Waits this time – yikes!), but it was the new songs that caught my attention the most.  Basically, for all I have no idea what they were called, they were pretty much all brilliant.  They’ve lost none of their genre-related ADD, leaping about from one style to the next without ever pausing for breath, but it was strangely coherent despite this.

It sounds to me like the next two albums should be ones to look forward to – this really was an excellent show, whether you feel you need to consider the circumstances or not.

The Young Republic – Isis
The Young Republic – Girl From the Northern States
The Young Republic – Paper Ships

Website | More mp3s | Buy From End of the Road Records

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Forever Ago seems like an apt title for this review, given how long I’ve had this album.  In terms of critical froth, this has been about as well received as anything for a long time, with five star reviews and breathless exclamations of otherworldly beauty and so on, but I just didn’t get it.  Honestly, I’ve listened to this over a dozen times and am only now starting to like it.  I don’t know why it took me so long, but sometimes these things take time.

I still wouldn’t elevate it quite to the pantheon of instant greatness that many have thrust upon it, but it is nevertheless an extremely good record.  The ghostly, plucked acoustica sways from atmospheric alt-folk into slightly more ethereal rhythms which border on electronica.  The atmosphere has a lot in common with the likes of Bonnie Prince Billy in places, but there is more underlying tension to Bon Iver.

I am not sure about the vocal delivery, personally.  I like it now, but it’s very much an acquired taste and perhaps that’s what made it a little difficult to get into.  It’s sufficiently high-pitched that the music can come across as being somewhat akin to what you might have listened to in the eighties to show that you were sensitive, but perhaps that’s being harsh.  Also, it’s often not the most obviously melodic album in the world, so perhaps lends itself less to the first few listens.  Either way, I have come to like it now, and I get the impression that this will just improve with greater acquaintance.

Bon Iver – Wisconsin
Bon Iver – Skinny Love

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Song, by Toad Records Launch Party

Yes indeed it is finally that time, and we are about ready to kick off Song, by Toad Records.  Click on the flyer (right) for more details.

Basically we’re going to have a silly great party at the Meridian in Leith (basically head down towards the Foot of the Walk, and it’s on the left in that run of low red buildings) and I’ve invited some of my favourite bands to join in the fun.  I’m also going to be giving away about twenty or thirty free Song, by Toad compilations to the first arrivals, with sampler tracks from our own label as well as hopefully some contributions from Toad pals like Bear Scotland and Fife Kills.  Basically, it will be a bloody good CD, and I’ll do a nice cover for it too.

Celebrity Chimp are coming up from London, partly because Andy is also in Nightjar, which will be our first release.  Meursault are playing because a/ they’re fucking brilliant and b/ we’re looking to do a 7″ release with them later in the year.  And last but not least The Byrons are playing because, erm, well just because they’re fantastic really.

We’ve got the bar until 1am too, so there’ll be plenty of good music.  I’m going to try and steer clear of moaning indie rock too, however cutting edge, and ask a good friend of mine to make a Motown compilation, I’m going to ask my old mate JC from The Vinyl Villain to put together a rarities and oddities compilation, and there’ll be some good old circus mayhem music as well.  We may even get sensible later in the night and play some normal party music, but I kind of doubt that somehow.  Where’s the fun in that, eh?

So pass this on to your friends and please do come down and support us on the 14th.  It’s going to be tremendous fun, and I can’t wait to see the Chimps live.

Celebrity Chimp – Swingers
Meursault – The Dirt & the Roots
The Byrons – Azerbaijan

You Fucking BEAUTY!!

Fucking YESSSSSS! Get in! Result! Cover me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians! Your favourite inebriated amphibian has been working the refresh key on his computer harder than even during last night’s porn festival, but Tom Waits tickets have been scored for his July gig in Edinburgh.

I’ve seen Tom once before, during the Mule Variations tour in Boston, and the very fact that I happened across those tickets at all was something of a coincidence. He played London a couple of years back and I couldn’t even get through to the box office before they announced that they’d sold out ten minutes after opneing.  So I ended up missing out but I did nearly, nearly shell out £400 for a ticket on eBay, before bottling it at the last minute.

So this time, two dates in Edinburgh, I was refreshing my page frantically from 9.54 and managed to snag a couple of tickets for Sunday 27 July. Fucking brilliant! That’s my achievement for the day, I am just going to sit back and try and recover from the adrenaline.

I know there were a lot of Toadlings in that particular queue – how did you all get on?

Tom Waits – In the Colosseum
Tom Waits – I’ll Be Gone
Tom Waits – Altar Boy

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Pilgrim Road

I took the chance to chat to Robert Fisher about this album after his recent show at the Queen’s Hall, just to try and get a little perspective on the album, and to catch up since his last visit to Edinburgh.

The album to which this is the natural successor, Regard the End, is the record that got me into the Willard Grant Conspiracy to begin with.  There is a raging grief about much of that album, which is replaced by just plain raging in the follow up, Let it Roll.  Fisher never saw Let it Roll as the direct follow up to Regard the End that he intended Pilgrim Road to be.

So from a death-facing album to one that looks square at spirituality.  It’s not the religious record many have described it as, and Robert seems quite irritated by this particular description.  In his own words, it’s about spirituality – about that need most of us seem to have in us to believe in things other than those we can see with our own eyes.  Songs with titles like The Great Deceiver make it pretty obvious that for all it uses a lot of religious language, this is not a Lord, I Bin Saved record at all, but on that contains all sort of stories of divine dislocation and the slightly warped relationships people seem to have with their gods and their beliefs at the moment.

Musically, much of the ferocity of Let it Roll and the wrench of Regard the End has been replaced by a richer, more glutinous sound.  This sound is the result of a collaboration with Scottish composer Malcolm Lindsay and is Fisher’s first work that involved arranging an entire orchestra.  Embracing this new way of working is something he clearly feels is important, in order to keep him refreshed and challenged and to stave off that middle-aged atrophying of the musical bones that claims so many great songwriters.

There’s an interesting digression we nearly get into, were it not for time being short, about how you stay fresh as an artist and how you keep the intensity inside you that produces intensity in your art at a time in your life and career when most people tend to be doing to opposite.  This may have to wait until an Autumn Toad Session, which he rather surprisingly suggested he might be interested in doing.

There’s something slightly choking about this album.  My drunken co-interviewing interloper (a fan who insisted on staying and joining in – it was quite funny actually, and fortunately he wasn’t really a pain at all) compared it to Mojave, a really early WGC record, and I can see that, just about.  It feels like death in many ways, that slow constriction of the airways and dreamlike drift into an eerie, mysterious place.  Like those dreams where you can’t move quickly and darkness closes in, but your brain still maintains a sort of detached, struggling awareness of the increasing failure of the senses.

I doesn’t always make for the most enjoyable listen, funnily enough, with songs like Miracle on 8th Street being slightly overwhelmed by the grip of the music, something of which it never quite breaks free.  At other times, on tracks like the absolutely brilliant Painter Blue, it leads Fisher into some of his most creative song arrangements yet.  I still don’t know about this album, if I’m honest.  There are some really great bits, and some bits that don’t quite seem to take off, but what I would a I say about the album as a whole?  That might take me six months to decide.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Painter Blue
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Vespers

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Sparrow & the Workshop

I spend plenty of time prattling on about the health of the current Edinburgh music scene, but that has a lot to do with the fact that it tends to be underrated by pretty much everyone.  In defending Edinburgh, of course, I seem to have ended up somewhat neglecting Glasgow although I suppose that’s slightly inevitable coming from an unheralded cousin.

Anyhow, time to put that right: have a listen to Sparrow & the Workshop.  At time this is brilliant if you ask me; a cross between twee-pop and slightly scruffy stuff that flirts with both rockabilly and dirty blues.  And Jill O’Sullivan’s voice is an absolute bloody treat.  If I were to dig out a criticism it would be that just occasionally the songs can be a little bit one-paced, but for the most part this is truly lovely.

Songs like The Gun could have issued from Monkey Swallows the Universe, whereas there are times on MyCrime when the slow, oppressive beat could come from a Smog song, although that is dispelled the second Miss O’Sullivan’s lovely vocal makes an appearance.  She’s got just a touch of the Natalie Merchants about her at times actually, although much more tremulous and uncertain and with none of that dingy MOR sludge to which Miss Merchant was prone.

Percussion is pretty strong in this music as well.  I guess when you have such a skeleton band, one of whom is a drummer, then that’s kind of inevitable, but it keeps the music feeling faintly primal.  It’s not shiny pop music this, by any means.  For me the only question is whether or not they have the ability to maintain the necessary variation in their songwriting, but after only five songs that’s hard to tell.  I await future developments with excitement.

Sparrow & the Workshop – Grizzly Bear
Sparrow & the Workshop – Giant

Live in Edinburgh This Week – 25th May 2008

It’s actually fairly quiet this week, prior to the commencement of the Leith Festival next week, so I may take the opportunity to spend some time with my lovely lady wife and do nice normal bonding things like going for walks and sitting in the garden with a cup of tea. This instead of the more usual and rather less satisfying recent habit of her sitting on the couch reading a book and occasionally looking up at my back as I frantically try and get things sorted for Song, by Toad Records, mix a demo EP for a friends of mine and edit the latest session videos.

You really would forgive the lass for being far, far less tolerant of this sort of behaviour than she is.

Tuesday 27th May 2008: Broken Records & Jyrojets & Root System at Cabaret Voltaire. Cancelled, sorry!
Broken Records? Who? I haven’t seen much of these guys since they started gadding about the country being famous, but this week I will certainly be catching either this show (which is free, by the way) or alternatively their acoustic set at the Voodoo Rooms on Thursday.
Root System – I Know

Thursday 29th May: Vetiver & Adrian Crowley at Cabaret Voltaire.
What I know about Vetiver could be written on the back of a postage stamp, but people I trust (i.e. Bart & Euan who you probably know from the comments section) are very excited about this one, so I’ll defer to their judgment. Adrian Crowley is well worth seeing as well: a slightly broody, atmospheric songwriter who gets lumped in with folk sorts but not, as far as I can tell, because his stuff especially resembles folk music.
Vetiver – You May Be Blue (Live)

Thursday 29th May: Broken Records (Acoustic) & Y’All is Fantasy Island at the Voodoo Rooms.
Apparently Broken Records are bringing everyone except Gill, their bass guitarist who has been given the week off for good behaviour, so acoustic it may be but don’t expect it to lack their customary clatter. I’m intrigued by this set actually, so of the two shows this week I might forgo the free one and pay for this instead. For Broken Records acoustic stuff, try a Toad Session recording of their debut single:
Broken Records – If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It (Toad Session)

Saturday 31st May: The Byrons & Sara & the Snakes at the Hive.
I love the Byrons: Sam batters the living shit out of his drums and Ed breaks his guitar. In fact I think they’re that ace that I’ve invited them to play the Song, by Toad Records launch night on the 14th June. The recorded stuff is really nice too, but a definite departure from their current live setup which is much more raucous.
The Byrons – Anglais

Fucking Women and Their Shitty Fucking Music

I know, I know, there are plenty of women who visit this site with absolutely excellent taste in music.  And some of the best music blogs out there are written by women.  But the title of this post is not to criticise all women, it is aimed at a very particular sort whose relationship with music makes me want to set fire to cute little bunny rabbits, and in particular a song that, no matter how incognito they try and remain, always roots the old boots out in any situation.

Specifically, it’s women whose response to ‘that song is fucking dreadful and makes me want to burst my eardrums with knitting needles’ is invariably ‘oh don’t be so boooring’.  Or ‘just relax and have fun’.  Or something equally deserving of punishment by breast cancer.  ‘Having a good cry, sweetheart?  Chemo getting you down?  Fuck’s sake cheer up – don’t be so boooring.’  Just relaxing and having fun is not an option when this shitty Radio 1 Party Mix is playing.  No amount of relaxation, even to the point of a coma, is going to be sufficient to not fucking detest Dancing in the Moonlight by that curly-headed cunt and his baldy-dwarf-shagging cohorts.

Why so bitter about this in particular?  Well there is a very specific reason.  Firstly, the ‘don’t be so boooring’ defense has irked me since school.  People always used to respond with this stinker when you didn’t want to dance, and they had things completely fucking backwards.  Having a pleasant conversation with one’s friends is not boring.  What is boring is spastically hopping about to some fucking woeful Glenn Medeiros number in a desperate attempt to assert your social conformity.  How the fuck is choosing not to do something I don’t particularly enjoy boring, you silly tart?  And why is it always, always the most unimaginative, lifeless, one-dimensional, ultra-conventional dullards who use this particular gambit?  Sometimes I like to dance, sometimes I don’t.  Go.  The Fuck.  Away.

But more specifically this is about that one song: Dancing in the cunting Moonlight.  Unspeakably awful it is in the first place, but the sort of vapid, bovine old slappers who embraced the bloody thing back in about 2001 or whenever it was made it even worse.  You’d be in a bar and that teeth-grindingly awful intro would play: doodn-do-DO-DO-DOO! and whilst you tried to find a door in which to slam your penis in hope that the pain might distract you from the song, invariably the most depressing, largely unattractive, not as young as they pretend they still are, slightly overweight old heifers in the place would give an incoherent little shriek of delight and start, in the unusually large herds in which they tended to move, doing that little epileptic black woman’s Jerry Springer head movement, whilst stepping back and forth in the exaggerated style that is meant to say to everyone ‘Yeah, I can move.. yeah, I’m out with my friends… yeah, I’ve actually got friends, despite what you may think… yeah, in my herd I can gain some tiny measure of fucking self-esteem back from my completely unstimulating existence and comfort myself with the fact that however much I disappoint myself my friends are all equally mediocre and in this dismal company I don’t feel quite as inadequate as I do when I compare myself with the rest of the world.  Yeah!’

‘Oh can’t you just relaaax and enjoy yourself.  Don’t be so boooring.’
‘Do not tell me to FUCKING RELAX!  No amount of fucking relaxation can make this festering, white-boy  cod-soul by one of the most punchable cockmonkeys on the fucking planet anything less than three minutes of brain-melting, utterly inhumane mental fucking anguish.  Boring?  BORING?  If your capacity to appreciate art is so FUCKING STILLBORN that you are capable of anything other than pathological loathing for this steaming, god-punishing excrement then it is very much not myself who needs to fucking well consider whether or not they might be a little boring.’

The depth of the bile represents the hatred of the song, I hope, rather than any particular misanthropy on my part.  *Cough cough*

Anyway, can you imagine my horror when, at my housewarming party in Cambridge, I heard that unspeakable doodn-do-DO-DO-DOO! emanating from my fucking stereo and all the spastics started to twitch so immediately that I couldn’t even turn it off, although I did consider jamming one of their kids’ fingers in an electrical socket – power failure or poignant punishment: a win-win situation really.  Not only that but one of these tired old mares even had the temerity to say, on hearing this aural abomination in a pub six months later: “I’ll always associate this song with your lovely housewarming party”.  Is there a statement in the world more likely to drive me to suicide?  Or spontaneous combustion?  I doubt it.  That fucking song.  My House.  Please god, no!

I hate that fucking song.  Can you tell?

The music I do associate with that house would be far more along these sorts of lines:

Howe Gelb – Pontiac Slipsteam
The Pernice Brothers – Our Time Has Passed So Quickly
Badly Drawn Boy – Stone on the Water I don’t care how shit the rest of it’s been, this is still a good album.
Doves – Here it Comes
Grandaddy – Miner at the Dial-A-View
Lambchop – Nashville Parent