Toad Festive Fifty: 24-36
Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50
The next installment of late year list-o-rama brings us up to date with the first half of the Toad Festive Fifty. Slightly more, in fact, because I’m gearing up for a top ten, so I’ve cheated slightly on numbers here are there. For those of you who want to make your own lists, see this post for the rules, and get stuck in. The more who take part the better.
One of the things that struck me with this part of the list is the inclusion of a song from the Broken Records Toad Session. Basically, Broken Records would be all over this list, apart from the fact that they were all over last year’s list, as submitted to the Contrast Podcast, and all the songs they released this year are songs I knew from last year. So instead of where they belong, on this year’s list, they are on last year’s list. Later on there are also songs by bands which were released last year, I’m pretty sure, it’s just that I only discovered them this year.
So as well as not being in rigid Order of Toadly Merit they aren’t even in accurate chronological order either. Ah well. You’ll live.
24. Broken Records – Wolves (Toad Session) All of Broken Records’ actual releases this year are songs which I already knew, and so really belong on last year’s Festive Fifty, which seems a bit mean. This was new to me at the time they played their Toad Session in April though, and it’s as marvellous like this as it is when they all go mental together and play it on stage.
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25. Withered Hand – New Dawn I am one of the few people I know who took a little while to get into Withered Hand, but I’m there now. Fucking brilliant and, as Bart said: “I think ‘New Dawn’ by Withered Hand is one of the greatest songs about growing old you’re ever likely to hear.”
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26. Nicole Atkins – The Way It Is It’s big, brash, camp, glam and… well it’s brilliant, really, isn’t it. I’d never have guessed at the start of the year that I would be capable of getting into something so, er… shameless.
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27. Pale Young Gentlemen – There is a Place The way this song breaks from the gentler sadness into that great wash of a string refrain is just genius. Another great song from a truly superb album.
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28. Ruth Theodore – Nothing On I was reminded of this by DC on the Waiting Room a couple of weeks ago. I’d forgotten, I’m ashamed to say, just how good this record is and this gorgeous, melancholy song in particular. Imagine if those talky cockney fuckwits like The Allen and Kate Nash were a/ talented or b/ not eye-gougingly annoying, and this is what you’d get.
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29. Modernaire – Distraction I got in trouble for posting this electro-pop masterpiece at the time, so I’m going to have another go. If a song from this year was likely to get me dancing then it would probably be this one.
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30. Withered Hand – Religious Songs I played this on my show on Fresh Air student radio and my mum emailed into the studio to say how much she liked it. I am guessing that she wasn’t listening to the words all that carefully.
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31. MGMT – Time to Pretend It’s mainstream, far too famous and inescapably an instant dance floor classic. And that synth riff is so, so fucking simple. (Actually, do synths have riffs? You know what I mean – the hummy/tuney bit.)
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32. Dodos – Fools This is all about the percussion. Even the guitar is played in a percussive manner, and the rhythm of the whole album is phenomenally urgent and infectious.
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33. Shearwater – Rooks Never heard of these guys, but my 4AD/Matador PR pal has come through with a few great ones this year. Despite the rising loveliness, there’s a suppressed aggression to this whole album. It’s largely under control on this song, but you can hear moments when the horns announce themselves that tell you what’s lurking beneath the surface. So it’s lovely, but just slightly disturbingly so.
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34. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City Broadway indie, I suppose it’s feasible you could call this. This song is pretty much Mrs. Toad’s favourite all year, I think.
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35. The Left Outsides – The Third Light The Eighteenth Day of May didn’t die for no reason, thankfully. Out of the ashes have emerged The Left Outsides, who released this. It would be a good enough song anyway, but that fiddle refrain is the absolute clincher.
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36. Sparrow & the Workshop – Magic Tricks Percussion “like a rolling train” is how Jill described this. And you know, she’s right. This band almost lead with the drums and let the guitar provide the texture, and the results are fucking amazing. Just about the find of the year.
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Once again the whole lot can be downloaded in one handy zip file. Click here for that, and enjoy.
Riff is merely a corruption of the musical term refrain, as in a recurrent phrase from the melody.
So synths can have them just as well as guitars or penny whistles.
Love the MGMT track…as for the Matador/4AD Matador (Annette?) Matador have just come up trumps SO many times this year, will be doing well in my Top 75 Lps
Top 75??????? That’s sheer mentalism! I don’t know if I’ve even reviewed seventy-five albums this year, never mind liked them enough to put them on a best of anything! Do you even pause to eat, sleep or shit?
“Broadway indie” – Broadway Pop™ I think you’ll find…
Well it sounds to me like an indie lass (have you seen her rather splendid Nirvana cover) has been seduced by the Broadway sound, so I stand by the Broadway Indie comment.
You disappoint me, Matthew.
Songs from last year?
Songs from a toad session?
Songs that haven’t even been bloody well released yet?
This is anarchy! Anarchy I tell you!
And I won’t stand for it.
Matthew, you seem to review 75 albums a month! I get sent most of these, mind you, and then there’s the emusic subscription, fantastic thing…
eMusic is bloody great. Apart from the dubious fact that Toad Records has yet to receive a cent from them, unlike iTunes and Amazon mp3.
Bart, you’re lucky this isn’t just a list of my favourite Toad Session. Piss off.
Dylan – I disappoi… oh, never mind.
(Ed, honestly speaking, my computer goes on when I get into work, on go the headphones, and there they stay until I go home, which may explain the volume of posts on this poxy site.)
I mean, what’s the point of even having rules?
Oh, I just hummed a nice tune.
It doesn’t have a name, but I think I’ll put it in my top 10 of the year.
Right between the next Fleet Foxes single and that tune from the Asda advert.
You know the one.
Also, I remember having a drunken argument in a taxi with certain people that “didn’t get” Withered Hand, about two years ago.
They’re all are now avid fans.
Toad, can you do a Top 50 Comments of 2008, too? That would be super, n’est pas?
fuck off
“Oh, I just hummed a nice tune.
It doesn’t have a name, but I think I’ll put it in my top 10 of the year.”
There is absolutely nothing unreleased on this list you ginger nincompoop.
DC – great idea, but I am not trawling through every last comment to find my favourites. I might sneak it into the Friday Fives tomorrow though, so prepare yourselves people.
Just in case anyone didn’t know….i was saying fuck off to Bart….i don’t remember the taxi….i remember the ‘argument’ tho
I thought you were just dropping in, insulting everyone at random, and then vanishing again.
I was quite impressed.
Now I’m just left feeling a bit… oh I don’t know..
Really.
And what label put out Sparrow and the Workshop’s Magic Tricks in 2008?
Or is that another toad session special?
I had to see them play four or five times before it really clicked.
Ah yes, of course. Well fair cop, but it could of course be the Toad Session version, to which I am rather partial. I might just do that, actually, if just to shush your moaning. This is why there’s no Broken Records on here of course – because I listed them last year before any of it was officially released.
You’re still a ginger nincompoop.
No actually, I can’t be arsed.
“I am not trawling through every last comment to find my favourites” – you disappoint me, Toad.
Touché, Bart, touch-fuckin-é!
(That ‘fuckin’ in the middle isn’t really necessary, but it sounds great!)
I know. What a lazy chancer.
All I want is a set of rules to be drawn up, and then strictly adhered to by each and everyone involved to the fucking nth degree.
Is that too much to ask?
rule 12b. no songs to be allowed if they are thought to be a figment of Bart’s imagination.
That Touché was for points awarded to Bart in that particular exchange. I should have made that clear.
Being as he intent on everything adhering to a clear set of rules.
(Now who’s doing the touchéing?! You like that, huh? You like that?!)
All I want is a set of rules to be drawn up, and then strictly adhered to by each and everyone involved to the fucking nth degree.
How about NO FUCKING OWL-BASED FUCKING SONGS then?
We’re all a figment of Bart’s imagination.
Dylan, other people are allowed to be the most funniest too sometimes. Allow Bart to enjoy his moment.
It irritates me though. I want to call him a motherfucker. Can I do that? Bart, can I call you that? Can I Bart? Can I call you motherfucker?
Matthew – you disappoint me…
Mate, I disappoint everyone. Even my missus finds me disappointing and her expectations were lower than pretty much anyone’s.
I like the Left Outsides track. Have you heard the See See? It’s Richard Olsen from the Eighteenth Day of May. Quite good. And no, this is disappointing:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/17/obama.warren/index.html
Oh good grief, that is shit. I always feel that whenever a poof gets married Mrs. Toad and I are just that much closer to divorcing one another because, you know, why bother if them damn faggits can get married.
Well not to worry. Barack’s got your back. Now let’s all hold hands and pray that our poor LGBT brothers and sisters may soon be cured. Never underestimate the deswishifying effect of prayer.
Actually, it will be very difficult for me to remain straight at all if those damn faggits get any more rights. I might just develop, out of absolutely nowhere and with no personal precedent and contrary to every instinct with which I was born, an insatiable taste for semen. In fact it’s almost an inevitable consequence, I would say, by the inexorable power of logic. Fortunately that nice pres’dent will save us all. Fucking weasel.
Nicole Atkins makes me want to wander barefoot down a rainy freeway at night in a red evening dress throwing roses at trucks. Its like an aural video.
Matthew, you live in the UK. Gordon Brown is not going to allow people to develop a taste for anything as rich and nutritious as semen. If you are lucky, we’ll be compelled to go halfers with ze Germans on some glass coffee tables and chow down on shit.
Which list are we talking about again?
I’m with MGMT on digging up worms. A curiously satisfying experience which occupied many a young day. Why don’t adults like digging up worms?
oh gosh I’m so in love with Nicole Atkins/Mrs. Toad right now.
Boys, seriously, just shut up and let us handle things, thanks.
xoxo,
Tart
drunk i am
Is that from one of Yoda’s deleted scenes from the party at the end of …Jedi?
“Besht mate of mine, you are, Luke. Love you really, I do…”
“When 900 pints you reach, look as good you will not. Hm.”
“Mmm, In the pub I was, when I realised the force could help me get pissed up more easily”
Ok, that one isn’t mine. But tis still good.