Song, by Toad

It’s been a while since the last Toad Session, but this one is a bit good and thoroughly worth waiting for. Meursault’s debut album is one of my favourite of the year, and their acoustic set is easily as good. This is the first session to be held in our house too, which brought its own challenges and then some. Mrs. Toad’s preposterous cat makes an appearance at one point, and the videos look very, very, erm… green? Blue? Whatever fucking stupid colour it is we’ve painted our living room.

Anyway, the recordings have come out really nicely, and I think the videos are good too. I’ve posted a few here, but the whole lot can be found on the Song, by Toad YouTube page. The photos turned out rather well too, so go to the Flickr page for the ones we liked. And, without further ado, here is the Meursault Toad Session podcast (the track listing is at the bottom of the page):

Toadcast #35 – Meursault Toad Session

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Here are the individual songs:

Meursault – The Furnace (Toad Session)

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Meursault – Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues (Toad Session)

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Meursault – The Dirt & the Roots (Toad Session)

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Meursault – Nothing Broke (Toad Session)

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And here are the videos, first the overall video and then the ones for the individual songs:

Meursault Toad Session

Toadcast #35 – Meursault Toad Session Playlist:
01. Meursault – The Furnace (Toad Session) (06.14)
02. Meursault – A Few Kind Words (09.33)
03. Eef Barzelay – Ballad of Bitter Honey (14.54)
04. Withered Hand – Religious Songs (18.22)
05. Meursault – Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues (Toad Session) (30.11)
06. The Postal Service – Nothing Better (34.29)
07. Meursault – The Dirt & the Roots (Toad Session) (37.52)
08. Tenniscoats – Baibaba Bimba (40.40)
09. The Cave Singers – Seeds of Night (47.11)
10. Samamidon – Wild Bill Jones (55.41)
11. Casiotone For the Painfully Alone – Young Shields (60.56)
12. Meursault – Nothing Broke (Toad Session) (68.49)

Right, it’s about time we had another reader participation event. This one is a good one too, and hopefully should be a lot of fun to take part in. The assignment? As follows:

I would like you to introduce us to your local record shop. Go in, take a couple of pictures, have a chat with the staff or the manager if you can be bothered, and write it up. Email me a post to put on the site, along with a couple of mp3s from albums you have bought there. It doesn’t have to be a great big clever post, just a little bit about a record shop which you think embodies the spirit of independent music that we’re trying to encourage here. And email it, don’t just write it in the comments, because that’s pointless.

Edinburgh folks will have to take first dibs in the comments section, because there aren’t that many record shops around here, so good luck to yez. I may pick somewhere in Austria because I doubt anyone else will pick that and I actually spent a lot of money on vinyl during my Vienna years.

Anyway, get writing, and get them emailed to me by the end of next weekend (the 7th I think) and I’ll post them all over the course of the week. And to commemorate the idea of great record shops, I hated the film and I think Nick Hornby is a risibly bad writer, but High Fidelity is one of the most sincere homages (it rhymes with cabbages so pronounce the fucking ‘h’ you barbarians) to the small record shop going, so here are a couple of songs from the soundtrack.

Smog – Cold Blooded Old Times
The Velvet Underground – Oh! Sweet Nuthin’
Bob Dylan – Most of the Time

Mrs. Toad is home, everyone! She’s been off in God Bless America all week and as much as she’s a moaning, high-maintenance, half-arsed, troublesome, bad-tempered pain in the backside, I really hate it when she’s away.

It seems like a good idea in principle, I get some time with no hassle, I get to play Championship Manager, edit video, eat pickles out of the jar and all the good things in life. But the thing is, hanging around with my midget companion is the greatest fucking joy in my life. She’s stroppy, she’s rude, she’s annoying, and she’s mine.  I am never so happy as when we are pottering around together – everyday banality was never so magical.

You just know when everything is right, and ever since we met I have been completely certain that this was as good as it was ever going to get, and I was right. For such a half-arsed, undomesticated lass she is oddly protective of me, and when she is gone – which she frequently is for work reasons – I’ll be honest with you, life is shit.

There’s just something drab and boring about the world when my midget companion isn’t here. She doesn’t do much, but she makes me happy, and every time she goes away I am just waiting for her to return. I am not me without her. So I sit around, I work, I faff, I wait. And then she’s home and suddenly everything’s fine again. She’s my girl, and I miss her like hell, and when she comes back it is a massive relief. Things are right again. My girl is home. That is all.

Billy Bragg – Wishing the Days Away (Alternate Version)
Elbow – Fugitive Motel

When you see a lot of bands who are unsigned, promising, vaguely decent, whatever you want to call it, then when you see a band who genuinely are the business it becomes really quite obvious. When you see two in one night, then you know you’re on to something good.

Basically, these two bands need to have much higher high points than being on these rather low-profile pages, and I am confident that they both will. Both bands are taking rather different approaches – Meursault had their fingers somewhat singed by the music industry quite early on and have decided to plough a distinctly DIY furrow ever since. They’ve done it with some success, and when their album is ‘officially’ released in the new year they should get the respect they deserve from the music press.

Sparrow & the Workshop, on the other hand, have had the world of music fly at them really rather quickly since they formed in January this year. Labels, promoters, managers, Toads, everyone’s been throwing themselves at them with a slightly disturbing fervour. If I’m frank, I don’t really understand it. They are an excellent band, there’s no doubt about that, and when you hear them, that mark of a band with something special about them is all over. But more so than other groups I could name? Well, I’m not sure. What both they and Meursault have is that they both have a very distinctive sound indeed. Both sound quite familiar, but when I look for comparisons I am stumped.

Whatever you say about it though, both bands were on form. Jill O’Sullivan, Sparrow’s lead singer, had The Rage in her eyes for some reason. There was real fire there, and that really showed in the performance, dwarfing their somewhat tentative first East Coast show at the Liquid Room a week ago. They were playing to an Edinburgh audience for pretty much the first time, and quite frankly, they rocked. They are very much the business, this band.

Their effect on Meursault was interesting as well. Meursault are a sensitive bunch, and they like Sparrow & the Workshop an awful lot, so after such a fine performance they clearly felt the need not to be upstaged, and it showed. Neil’s trademark howl was at its most unhinged, and although the uke and the banjo were somewhat drowned out by the electronics (Meursault are a swine of a band to mix, really they are) it was just a brilliant performance.

We’re lucky people. Scotland is a good place for music, and these bands are two of the finest we have.

View some photos here

Sparrow & the Workshop – Swam Like Sharks
Meursault – Salt Pt. 2

None of this really makes up a coherent post, so I’m going to throw out some mp3s for your consideration. Tonight is a sort of Toad Sessions Live gig at the Voodoo Rooms, with both Meursault (this weekend’s session) and Sparrow & the Workshop (next month’s session) on the ever-splendid bill at Limbo.

I am nearly finished my ’staring at a computer screen in my underpants’ phase, thank goodness. The Meursault Session is finished. Two of the four interviews from Pickathon are done, and a third is virtually finished. So all that remains is to edit the last Samantha Crain video, post that interview, and then start work on some Broken Records video, the Builders & the Butchers Interview and the Sparrow Session. And then anything we record at End of the R… oh shit. I’m not going to be out of my underpants until fucking Christmas, am I. Ah well, at least it’ll keep me out of the pub.

Actually, Matt from Bladen County Records had an intern when we were out in Portland to visit him. Mrs. Toad reckons we should get one – some poor unfortunate from one of the numerous private schools around us, studying something like media or something equally pointless.  They could help me stuff envelopes for Song, by Toad Records promo stuff, massage my shoulders when I am editing, fetch tea and biscuits – you know, the usual highly educational vocational training.

Actually, in all seriousness, it wouldn’t be a bad assignment for someone. They’d get to go to gigs, take photos, deal with the avalanche of post, maybe write a weekly post or something like that. And they’d be my bitch, which would be a privilege for any youngster. I wouldn’t even insist on a nubile young cheerleader, because they’d be fucking useless, so it would be perfectly, erm, safe, if you.. ahem. I’ll just stop there.

Inspector Tapehead: I saw them recently at a Trampoline event, and I was really impressed. I liked their three-song album sampler that they gave out then, and I like the three songs Chris has since emailed me through. Their album should be coming together early next year, which sounds like excellent news.
Inspector Tapehead – Sugar on Your Sheets

Maxwell Panther: I bloody love Maxwell Panther. There’s something of a rough quality to his recordings, to say the very least, and he reminds me of that really old school indie era where people recorded singles on tape players and put them out on vinyl in hand sellotaped sleeves.
Maxwell Panther – Three Miles of Expectations

Adam & the Amethysts: Well this is an album I picked up in Vancouver while I was there, and although I haven’t fallen in love with all of it, there are some wonderful moments to be found. They’re a Montreal band, apparently, although what that counts for, I don’t know. As a pretend Canadian, though, it always warms my heart that little bit to find a Canadian band.
Adam & the Amethysts – Bumble Bee

Flashguns: The label gentleman I discussed this band with said to me that they would most likely be releasing a single with them ‘once they’ve finished their A-Levels’, and I sat down and patted my growing paunch, ran my hands woefully through my slightly greying hair and consoled myself with the thought that at least I probably eat pussy better than they do.
Flashguns – Panama (Demo)

Absentee: These guys are an odd one. They’re sort of on the verge of becoming quite well known, and have been for a while. Whether or not they finally crack it is yet to be seen, but I wasn’t all that fond of their latest album, bar this rather excellent tune.
Absentee – Bitchstealer

Well I’ve been excited about this ever since the band generously donated a song to the sampler I gave out at the Song, by Toad Records launch party.  That song was Blanket, and it’s gorgeous, and so is this.

I’m becoming an increasing fan of the mini-album, EP, whatever you want to call it.  Three to eight songs seems the ideal length for something to hang together really nicely, without any filler or any temptation for the listener’s attention to wander three-quarters of the way through.

Funnily enough, if you did that here, you’d miss all the best bits, although at five songs long that just isn’t going to happen.  It’s odd for such a short piece of work to have instrumentals and little minute-long intro songs, but it kind of reminds me of their gigs.  Eagleowl’s songs are often not all that distinct – they sort of run on into another, with a melody or a verse emerging from a shifting sea of sound that moves very subtly about the landscape, remaining really rather elusive until you surprisingly find yourself humming something, without really having noticed that you were.

They’ve gone a bit pop here too – Motherfucker is a work of genius to exceed even Blanket – and the Eagleowl singalong bar is suddenly and surprisingly raised.  I am reminded of Rob St. John’s slightly shirty assertion that he does not play folk music, he plays pop music.  Due to the language I can’t imagine Motherfucker ever getting played on the radio, but it beats the shit out of 99% of the stuff that does make it.

They are a painstakingly slow bunch, these three, and it took a seredipitous meeting with a recording engineer they really liked to get them to suddenly fire out these songs.  Normally, this might have taken years of faffing, and this really does go to show just how important the actual human beings involved can be in this industry.  Whatever has caused it to finally happen, the emergence of this record is a bloody blessing for the lot of us.  It even comes with the ever-elusive Mrs. Toad stamp of approval: ‘haunting’, she called it.  Now me liking it is one thing, but that badge of honour is one bestowed on very few bands indeed.

Eagleowl – Motherfucker

MySpace | Buy the EP direct from theeir website

If there is a better name in rock than Eef Barzelay I have yet to hear it.  And just to be even cooler, I think the lady who sang backup on the first couple of Clem Snide albums was Shivaree’s wonderfully named Ambrosia Parsley.  That is pretty much the pinnacle of the entire history of nomenclature – you can’t top that sort of thing.

Eef’s previous band, the aforementioned Clem Snide, were one of my favourite groups.  Their heartwrenching ability to turn the screw during the saddest of songs was almost unparallelled.  Eef’s first solo album, The Ballad of Bitter Honey, was a continuation of that: almost painfully confessional, and unflinchingly introspective.

That this should be similar is no surprise.  Barzelay’s self-analytical nature almost reminds me of Woody Allen at times, in its relentless nature.  There’s none of the irritating dicking about that Allen seems unable to keep in check, but that same kind of fearsome urge to examine your every failure and failing in minute detail seems to harrass Barzelay at every step.

Some of his best ever songs seem to stem from this urge, not least the brilliant Make Another Tree.  It’s almost like he is accepting and embracing every minute catastrophe he has spent the rest of the album chronicling and surrendered himself up to the inevitability of his plight.

Unfortunately, there aren’t quite as many of these moments of genius as there usually are when Eef turns his mind to music.  For all the brilliance of Numerology, Make Another Tree, Take Me, and the growlier likes of The Girls Don’t Care and Could Be Worse, there are a few stodgy numbers on this album.  Somehow it doesn’t quite flow as perfectly as either Clem Snide records or Bitter Honey, and I’m not sure why.

The genesis of the album as a whole was rather difficult.  It was almost the next Clem Snide album, was announced as such, then vanished, then finally reappeared under Eef’s name and now here it is.  The flow of the record somehow seems to mirror this slightly stumbling path to release, but I don’t know if I could properly explain why.

Eef Barzelay – It Could Be Worse
Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

I really wasn’t keen on the last Wolf Parade album, but I like this one much better.  The first was released about the time that Broken Social Scene, the New Pornographers and various others were leading something of an explosion of Canadian bands onto the scene, and all the talk was of these loose-knit collectives which seemed to spawn endless musical projects with a variety of combinations of members.

Wolf Parade themselves came from situation in Vancouver that was lumped into a similar box, although despite comprising former members of Frog Eyes and Hot Hot Heat, I never got the impression that it was quite the same thing.

The sound is very much what I would describe as characteristic blog rock.  Yelping vocals, delivered with a bit of spirit, with a sort of crunchy, awkward guitar sound underneath, and a spot of synthy organ for good measure.  It’s not my favourite album of the year by any means, but songs like Call it a Ritual and California Dreamer really are excellent.  Others might not quite hit the spot as much, but there are a lot of things on this album that I really like.

Without meaning to be derogatory, I get the impression that this is a record that will provide me with a lot of fodder for mixes and playlists, without necessarily being one that I play in its entirety all that often.  I like it a lot more than the last one though, which seems like a good sign to me.

Wolf Parade – Call it a Ritual
Wolf Parade – California Dreamer

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

You know, I fucking hate iTunes.  I hate i-fucking-Tunes for much the same reason that I hate fucking Macs in general.  They are designed for people who don’t fucking know how to use Explorer, for Christ’s sake.  Or Finder or whatever the bastard is called on a Mac.

It drives me nuts.  If you import photos using iPhoto then you cannot find those files in Finder.  It’s fucking ludicrous.  You have to use the search function and then when it tells you where they are you can’t actually reach that path conventionally through Finder, it will only show you the bloody things through search. Basically, you have to use iPhoto, which I would frankly prefer not to do because then your old, imported photos end up in a different place from your new ones.  “Ah, but they’re all on iPhoto”, say the smarmy, gurning Macintosh twats.  Well I don’t fucking like i-fucking-Photo and I would like to be able to choose not to fucking use it.

iTunes is the fucking same.  It’s a spectacularly stupid program, and it refuses to let you organise your music properly.  It loses files, it won’t watch a folder properly, there’s no Explorer functionality in the left-hand sidebar, it’s fucking dreadful.  All my music in a great big long list, are you fucking joking?  Do you have any idea how much music I actually have?  I’ll get RSI in my bloody scrolling finger, you fucking turkeys.

The worst is the watch folder situation though.  Basically, everything I buy or I get sent to me goes into a folder called On Trial, which is always changing as things either get deleted or moved to another folder, for the keepers, called Music Library.  Winamp and Mediamonkey are both capable of keeping an eye on both of these folders and updating accordingly.  iTunes is incapable of doing that.  Most music fans like to organise their collections and keep things where they want them, but what use is software that can’t keep up with that.  Mediamonkey can’t be installed on a Mac at all, and I am raging because it’s brilliant software, and I want to use it.

Basically, Macs seem do be designed for people who don’t want to use computers and I fucking despise them.  I will organise my own files thank you very much, you fucking keep your playschool cartoon kiddie computer hands off the bastards.

Marc Carroll – Idiot World
Elvis Costello – How to Be Dumb
Close Lobsters – Just too Bloody Stupid

Christ, what a fat bastard. It’s lunch time and I am still full from last night. And it’s all Mrs. Toad’s bloody fault. She’s away for a week being important in God Bless America and, despite being the least domesticated woman in the universe, she always fears that on these occasions I won’t eat well. It’s an amazingly uncharacteristic instinct for her, and hence I find it really rather touching.

She may have a point, too. I eat just fine, but my diet tends to consist entirely of raw carrots and peppers because I can’t be arsed cooking, along with tins of sardines, pots of Middle Eastern yoghurt and jars of rollmops. See – that’s a balanced diet! Sort of.

Anyway, before she goes away for an extended period of time she tends to cook a big pot of one of her rather excellent stews, and I just graze on it through the week. I love this, because she is an extremely good cook, and they tend to be excellent. This week, however, she made a fantastic tortilla with loads of garlic and stuffed full of some wonderfully squishy Spanish black pudding. Fuck me it’s gorgeous. So needless to say, when I got home last night I started munching. And then went back for seconds. And then thirds. And Christ, I’m full – still. Mmm, but it was good though. And there’s still just a little bit left for tonight…

Sparklehorse – Little Fat Baby
Ben Folds – All U Can Eat