This article is very, very long – I’m warning you now. I was trying to cut it down, and eventually just thought fuck it, I don’t have an editor, why not leave it all up there, so I have. There’s a page break though, to stop it eating my entire front page, so if you want to read the whole thing then you’ll have to use the ‘Read More’ link thingy down near the bottom. I’ve also popped in some interview and live footage as well, although the audio on the interview is dreadful, because we couldn’t find a quiet enough spot. I bet the fucking BBC never has to put up with this sort of shit.

Anyway, when you first see Ritchie Young, live, whispering his way through the more delicate parts of Loch Lomond’s material you really worry that he’s going to have the strength in his lungs to force out the rest of the song. It even occurs that he might just apologise, cough weakly and slink off stage in terror. The first time I saw the band perform this weekend they were on the main stage in the midst of a general PA failure, and playing entirely without the benefit of microphones. I’ll be honest, I feared for him.

Then something strange happens. Loch Lomond songs tend to tiptoe along, taking stock of the ground on which they find themselves, before suddenly growing and becoming a bigger, more forceful beast altogether. The do this out of nowhere, too, much like an unassuming lizard that suddenly rears its head, bares its teeth and unfolds a brightly coloured ruff. It’s not terrifying and aggressive exactly, but it is clearly not the meek and defenceless creature you casually mistook it for. Similarly Ritchie will look almost timid and, unamplified, the seemingly disconnected meanderings of the band can sound entirely lost until suddenly, it all changes. The stray strands of instrumental come together to form a coherent swirl of sound, the volume and force of the song elevate noticably and suddenly Ritchie’s voice reveals several new gears. A pained whisper, or a delicate one, breaks out into accusatory wail, like he was suddenly using all of his lungs to push it out instead of just the air in a single breath. The song, put simply, suddenly gets big.

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I am not leaving the house this week. Instead I am going to be locked in my sweaty little internet den (or the ‘editing suite’, if you want it to sound a bit less grotty) beavering away at session videos. I couldn’t resist a little leak of one of the Meursault recordings here though, but that’s because the whole thing is coming together really nicely and I am just plain excited.

And the Festival ends this week as well. Would you believe I haven’t done a single show this year, not one. I mean, I’ve been to see Eagleowl and Broken Records, but then I’d do that anyway. Mind you, the whole fucking lot is getting so bloody expensive these days that this is hardly a disaster.

Monday 25th August 2008: Alex Cornish at The Village, Leith.
Alex is a a good friend, and a DIY champion in this era of record industry panic. He’s actually turned down the advances of proper labels in order to carry on making things happen on his own. Given that he’s an Edinburgh lad doing things his own way, so you’d bloody well all better show him some support when the new single comes out in September. More on that later in the week.
Alex Cornish – Scotland the Brave

Monday 25th August 2008: Clare & the Reasons at Cabaret Voltaire.
I know nothing about these guys at all, apart from the fact that they come highly, highly recommended by a good friend of mine. So highly recommended, in fact, that she’s emailed me about this particular gig three or four times already. Mad old bag.
Clare & the Reasons – Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Yes, that one.)

Tuesday 26th August 2008: The Raconteurs at the Corn Exchange.
I was so disappointed by their last album that I won’t be going to this, but the Raconteurs were blistering the last time I saw them, so if you liked their recent stuff and are in any doubts, just go. Jack White, in particular, is a virtuoso live performer.
The Raconteurs – Steady as She Goes (Acoustic)

Thursday 28th August 2008: Meursault, Sparrow & the Workshop & The Red Well play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.
Continuing their consistently excellent lineups, this one has to trump the lot, I think. Will I be there? Mwah ha ha ha, will fucking bells on I will. And to celebrate, here’s a little sneak preview from the forthcoming Meursault Toad Session, which will be posted this weekend. Why? Because I just couldn’t restrain myself, that’s why.
Meursault – Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues (Toad Session)

Thursday 28th August 2008: Punch & the Apostles play Henry’s Cellar Bar, along with Super Adventure Club, Rodent Emporium and Terra Surfa.
I would interested to see these guys actually, as their single on Lucky Number Nine Records, an excellent little DIY Glasgow label, was really rather good. I’d like to see them live, just to get a better understanding of their sound. Their gypsy blunderbuss sound might have slightly missed its window in terms of its fashionable status, but they still sound like a very good band to me irrespective of all that sort of calculating commercial bobbins.
Punch & the Apostles – The Engineers of Salammbo

Well from that loose London collective that begat Emmy the Great, Johnny Flynn, Laura Marling and Marcus Mumford springs the flagship pop band, Noah & the Whale.  They are the big label boys with the poppiest, most radio-friendly sound and even have a hit single to their names.

As an indie-snob, this instantly turns me off a band, and I have to remind myself that this is something that came to them, not the other way around, and a year or so ago I’d have been championing them as a pretty unsigned folk-pop band with a great knack for a hummable tune.  I don’t think I’m the only one who needs to keep an eye on his attitude actually, because I’ve seen a few people pull faces when I’ve mentioned these guys recently.  Maybe people just don’t like pop, or maybe they think bands shouldn’t try and write songs with a broader appeal than their own little clique. Then again, maybe when you spend so much time around bands that actually need you to pass on the word just in order to get the name out there, it can feel like a rejection when they push on to the kind of level where they just don’t need that anymore.

I should start talking about the album really, shouldn’t I, but I don’t have that much to say about it.  It’s very pleasant, with a few killer tunes, and lovely, gentle air to it.  The fiddle is really lovely on occasion, but for the most part I find this not to be quite up to the creativity of Johnny Flynn, nor the arresting immediacy of Mumford & Sons.  I suppose it’s a little mean to compare friends directly to one another like that, a little like announcing which is the prettier sister, but given the unity of that particular scene I guess it’s a little inevitable.

It’s not quite as obviously memorable as I’d hoped, but this is a lovely record, and I am still getting into it so I could easily warm to it yet more.  Don’t get over-excited though, because the nature of a pop record is just that little bit smoother and more broadly inoffensive than some of the more interesting things you can get into and this album certainly won’t be blowing you away.  Perfect for doing the cooking on a sunny Sunday afternoon though.

Noah & the Whale – Jocasta
Noah & the Whale – Rocks & Daggers

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

I’ve been waiting for this for a while, and it is bloody lovely.  Campfires & Battlefields, perhaps one of my oldest readers (in both senses), introduced me to Samantha Crain a few months ago, and I’ve been waiting for this to make an appearance ever since.

It’s quite an old album actually.  Samantha recorded it herself and made it available as a self-release a couple of years ago, but since she is now signed to Ramseur Records they thought a formal re-release would be a good thing.  Since then the band has stabilised a little and there are plenty of new songs raring to go, so hopefully it won’t be long before we are hearing even more from this particular neck of the Oaklahoma woods.

The record itself is an absolute beauty.  The music is basically a kind of gentle, bluesy rock ‘n’ roll, with a little bit of folk folded in there for good measure, but Samantha’s voice has a wonderfully graceful soul quality to it which is the absolute clincher for me.  I honestly could listen to her sing all day long.  She’s still finding her feet a little as a songwriter and evolving her sound as she does, but this sounds very mature.  Maybe it’s the voice, or maybe the slow, confident pace, but it does not sound like the first work of a fledgling musician.

I can’t wait for the new stuff, but until then this is five songs of true beauty, and there is plenty to keep us engaged while we wait.

Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Beloved, We Have Expired

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy From Ramseur Records

I sat down to review both Samantha Crain and Noah & the Whale for your Friday perusal and after about a sentence of each, I just couldn’t be arsed.

So here are some bits and random pieces for you. I got this email today:

Dear Matthew,

you didnt ask me for any advices, BUT I think anyone who loves music
should give brazilian music a chance.

I mean it.

P2P is out there, blogs as well, I dont need to teach you how to walk
your way home.

Perhaps a brand new world will be open in front of you. Perhaps not.

Take care
Heitor

And fair enough, he may be right. I just liked the way the email was worded, so I printed it. And imagine, using P2P to discover whole new worlds of music instead of just to rip off poor hard-working artists and to support communism! Who would have fucking well thought.

In other news, I am probably skipping gigs this weekend in order to sit at home and work with video. I’d sort of like to go to both Retreat Festival shows this weekend, but may end up attending neither. It’s also about time that instead of going to sleep at 2am with square eyes I considered spending some time with the lady to whom I have given my life. You know, to prevent a messy divorce.

We’re going out to dinner tonight actually, to one of Mrs. Toad’s favourite restaurants down at the Shore in Leith. Within a block there are two Michelin-starred restaurants, one transplanted former Michelin-starred one (you lose the star if you move the restaurant) and at least a dozen (maybe more actually) of the best restaurants in Edinburgh. There are also a good three or four brilliantly cosy little pubs. Leith is great.

When we were first going out, coming back and forth from Edinburgh to London every other weekend, we would usually walk down to Leith, fetch up in a restaurant at about five and then slowly eat and drink our way through to closing time, just chattering. On one rather memorable occasion we ended up in a fearsome row about whether or not a corporation deserved the same rights as a human being (of course they fucking don’t) but for the most part these were wonderfully romantic evenings. I really like that we enjoy spending time together doing not very much.

She’s a good lass, is Mrs. Toad. She even lets me out to play with you miscreants on a regular basis – what is she thinking?

I’m not sure there’s anything else, really. I still haven’t tidied the house yet, since the last Toad Session. And I found this website with a positively liver-curdling quantity of rather fine-looking gins. Have fun over the weekend. I will probably post some interviews as and when I finish them. Oh, and those two reviews I couldn’t be arsed writing today.

Songs with which I wooed her:

Bob Dylan – Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
Eels – Good Old Days
Clem Snide – All Green
And one I didn’t: John Prine & Iris DeMent – In Spite of Ourselves

I bought this for only one reason: Drowned in Sound have been going on about with such enthusiasm I thought I’d better give it a try.  And were they right?  Well they were right about something – there’s definitely something quite amazing going on here.  I don’t think I like much of it, but it’s fucking brilliant at the same time, if you get my drift.

It sounds like a deranged musical, somewhere in between Rocky Horror and Moulin Rouge.  The pirhouetting falsetto is so extreme that I spent most of the first listen waiting for the Serious Indie Voice kick in, which it never does.  As I listen to this the phrase ‘you have got to be fucking joking’ is never far from my thoughts.  It’s nuts – what the fuck are they trying to do?

I’m honestly flabberghasted.  Songs like The Devil’s Crayon are basically just brilliant pop songs, but most of the rest of it is so camp, so theatrical, so melodramatic it exceeds any scale I have for these kinds of things.  Again though, I think this album is brilliant, not because I am likely to listen to it – it’s a bit much for my conservative indie tastes – but because it’s just so bold and direct and shameless.  Who the fuck invested in these guys – what balls!  Not that I can’t see what he saw, in a sense, but in an era of so much conservatism by nervy record labels, something this creative must represent taking a hefty chance.

What an amazing record.  As you can probably tell, I have no idea what to make of it, but I can’t help but be impressed.

Wild Beasts – The Devil’s Crayon
Wild Beasts – Woebegone Wanderers

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

This is the podcast to accompany all the Portland and Pickathon things I’ve been slowly but surely writing up over the course of the last couple of weeks.  With all the video to edit it may take a while to get it all sorted, but just follow this Pickathon search and you’ll find it all.  My full review of the festival is here.

This is a musical journey through our trip, from the Shaky Hands and The Builders & the Butchers who got us out there, to Eef Barzelay who we saw in Portland, several bands from the Pickathon Festival and even a song from Ray Rude’s Gameboy pop outfit Operation Mission.

It’s rather shorter than usual, but that is part of a new strategy: shorter podcasts more often.  I am going to try and go for once a week, and make them a maximum of an hour long.  I can’t promise anything, but I am going to try, and I think this might be a better approach for all of us, frankly.

Toad’s Pickathon pictures | Toad Vimeo page | Other Pickathon Features

Toadcast #34 – The Portland Podcast

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01. The Shaky Hands – A New Parade (2.20)
02. The Builders & the Butchers – When It Rains (08.47)
03. Eef Barzelay – Numerology (12.21)
04. Operation Mission – Aqueous (19.30)
05. Lackthereof – Choir Practise (23.22)
06. Langhorne Slim – Restless (31.20)
07. Bombadil – Cavalier’s Har Hum (40.47)
08. Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Beloved, We Have Expired (43.26)
09. Oz St. Fossils – Jeweller’s Daughter (53.54)
10. Loch Lomond – Tic (59.49)
11. The Cave Singers – Cold Eye (66.34)

If you want to criticise Eagleowl it is relatively easy to do so – in fact it just requires one word: dirge. When I first saw them the flirted relatively frequently with this particular failing, although I don’t really think they ever quite succumbed to it.

Over the last year or so I think I can safely say that pretty much every performance has been a steady improvement on the last. Each time the morose strings seemed more frequently punctuated with lush harmonies, and each time the mood of the set fluctuated and flickered just that little bit more.

This particular evening was the night of their EP launch, which I’ll review in a day or so once I’ve got to know it a little better, and it was like watching a butterfly emerge from a coccoon. They were confident, absolutely in their stride, and even a little jolly at times. Their music is showing a lot more variation of pace these days, and this seems to have brought the disparate elements of their sound alive, bringing in the various components only when they are really needed to make an impact, rather than their previous omnipresence.

Bart’s growling, sulky guitar has its lighter moments (still not many of course, that would be just plain wrong), the bow on the double bass takes a rest from time to time, the uke brings a little cheekiness, and this all works beautifully well. Rob St. John made a guest appearance on harmonium here and there as well, which added to the depth of the sound. There’s even an appearance by some scratchy electronic textures on Motherfucker, which made me laugh out loud until the loveliness of the song promptly shut me up again.

The sound was gorgeous as well, and I don’t know how much was down to the high, vaulted church hall and how much down to Damon, the sound guy, but there was a richness and a warmth to Eagleowl that I haven’t heard at shittier places like The Ark. For my money, this was the best performance I’ve seen by a band who are steadily improving, and really look to be capable of producing some gorgeous music over the next couple of years. Exciting times indeed.

Eagleowl – Motherfucker

Eagleowl on MySpace

This is an oddly difficult review to write, not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because it seems to be a slightly silly statement to make in the first place. Basically, for all there are a lot of songs I love on this record I find myself not quite clicking with the album for some reason. No idea why.

Maybe the pace is a little more homogeneous their inspired Bows + Arrows from a few years back, maybe the raw bite of that record has been slightly dulled by slicker production and slightly gentler arrangements Donde Esta la Playa is brilliant, On the Water and In the New Year are just superb and then, just as you think the album’s tailing off, New Country and I Lost You make an appearance.

Maybe this is just indicative of being in the process of learning to appreciate an album. When I first heard this I heard a couple of good songs and precious little else. As I’ve listened to it more and more, however, more and more of the songs have slowly made themselves known – Red Moon is bloody gorgeous by the way – so maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll suddenly realise that I love the album as a whole, but for now it seems oddly less than the sum of its parts.

Leithauser’s voice is strained, but a thing of beauty nonetheless, and the low-fi, de-tuned sound The Walkmen seem to favour is frankly fucking brilliant, as far as I’m concerned. There may not be a venomous equivalent to The Rat on this record, but it is packed full of excellent nonentheless.

The Walkmen – On the Water
The Walkmen – In the New Year

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon (There appears to be some discrepancy between the US and the global release dates, which is fucking silly frankly because all that will do is drive people to torrent sites and cost sales. Clap clap clap.)

I volunteered to write this review for a few reasons.

Firstly, this was my first taste of the full Broken Records experience, my only other encounter with the band in a live environment being the Toad Session a few months back. Secondly, Matthew is currently up to his hips in a flood of digital media which he’s trying to collate into variously: the Meursault Toad Session, the Sparrow & the Workshop Toad Session and his personal take on the great American road movie after his adventures stateside. And lastly if I write this; I get to blame him for leaving my Zoom H4 digital recorder at his house, which we we’d planned to plug in to the sound desk and record the gig with. (If Matthew were to write this, I’d get the blame, don’t you worry!)

So, on to business. This gig was unofficially Broken Records’ triumphant homecoming after a summer of record label schmoozing in London and slaying the unwashed hordes in fields and farms across the land. As Jamie put it approvingly before he took to the stage: “Festivals, man!”

The Liquid Room had closed the venue’s balcony level for the show, but that didn’t stop Matthew and I sneaking up anyway after we decided the balcony offered the best angle for filming and taking photos. We were also far too hungover to stand in the middle of a sweaty crowd after Sparrow & The Workshop had kept us up drinking til 4am the night before.

It has to be said it was an impressively large and receptive sweaty crowd, too. Broken Records seem to building a properly devoted fanbase, judging by the number of people singing along that we could see from our elevated vantage point. During the more intimate moments, there were even a few dozen couples doing the official boy-and-girl-at-gig-together romantic dance thing. (You know; where the guy stands behind with the girl in front, kind of holding her around the shoulders and copping a crafty feel while they both sway in time to the music.)

And a properly devoted fanbase is no more than Broken Records deserve judging by the quality of this evening’s performance. Jamie’s voice seems to have matured after the band’s busy summer. Somehow he sounds even more assured in front of the mic than on the records and the Toad Session day – and that’s not to suggest there was anything shabby to be heard before.

The band are as tight and adventurous as one of Beth Ditto’s lycra catsuits, swapping instruments around with gay abandon, and with each change every member showing a confidence and proficiency to match the instrument that went before. I think five different people sat at the piano during the evening, at least three picked up the big Fender Precision bass, and they were each completely at home during their respective turns.

This is a band ticking all the boxes. The fans packing the Liquid Rooms were entranced, the tunes are spot on, the guys in the band seem to be delighted with the progress they’ve made this year. You can feel a palpable buzz around them. They say they’re struggling to find a single, but I heard a clutch of strong candidates for singles on Sunday night. There were a number of tracks where the crowd couldn’t help but dance and sing along – arms aloft and ecstatic. Perhaps Broken Records should use that as a guide.

I don’t know if any of the video we caught of the show will make it online, depends on the sound quality I suppose. (If only Matthew hadn’t forgotten that digital recorder!)

But don’t wait for that. Go see these guys the very next chance you get.

Buy their current singles here: Slow Parade & If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It.

Broken Records – Lies (Demo Version) This is also coming out on single in the next month or so – one of my favourite of their songs.
Broken Records – Wolves (BBC 6Music Session)