Song, by Toad

If you thought The Last Shadow Puppets were a bit swingin’ camp-O-rama for me, try this lot.  This is an album from the year I got to spend in Holland as part of my Master’s degree.  I met a couple of really good blokes while I was there, Andy from Middlesbrough and Andreas from Sweden, and I pinched loads of good music from them, but this album probably stands out from that era due to sheer silliness.

The high camp swinging drama of this stuff, apparently entirely sincere, is so utterly, guilelessly exuberant that there is just no way not to love it.  Seriously.  And apparently they’re still going too.  Given that I spent most of that year listening to Echo & the Bunnymen, Supergrass, Blur, Finley Quaye, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and The Verve I have no idea how I managed to find myself adoring this utter silliness, but I did, and because I never took a copy of it when I left this music is now irreversibly associated with that crazy year of drink and fornication in Groningen.

Ironically enough, Mrs. Toad’s best friend lived there at the time (I’m pretty sure, and heartily relieved, that I never shagged her – now that would have been uncomfortable) and apparently Mrs. Toad visited her there on a couple of occasions at the same time I was there.  That was about three years after we’d last seen each other and six before we’d fall in love at first sight, eventually, about five years ago.  So some say we might have saved ourselves six years of inadequate relationships and just got things over with then and there.  Myself, I think it might have been a disaster – as the Dutch apparently say: this marriage isn’t ready yet.

Oh yes, and, erm, Weeping Willows.  They’re still going apparently. And as for this album, well it’s completely preposterous, entirely ridiculous and utterly fucking brilliant!

Weeping Willows – Under Suspicion
Weeping Willows – I’m Failing in Love
Weeping Willows – Eternal Flames
Weeping Willows – Louisa