Music Chatter Personal Rambling: calexico cave singers eagleowl festive fifty frightened rabbit james yorkston low lows mumford and sons pale young gentlemen pictish trail samamidon velcro quartet willard grant conspiracy
by Matthew
30 comments
Toad 2.0
Toad Festive Fifty: 37-50
Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50
Here is the official beginning of Christmas List season, here at Song, by Toad. If you want to get involved and write your own list, then please do. Go here for more details. The more of you that contribute to that the better the results we will get, so don’t be shy.
This is the first quarter of my Festive Fifty for 2008. I will also be preparing a list of my twenty favourite albums, but I might just neglect singles and EPs this time around. If you disagree with anything then do get stuck in, but bear in mind that this is far from a definitive ranking. Ask me on another day and Pictish’s brilliant I Don’t Know Where to Begin could easily be in the top five. Ask me in four months’ time and it would probably be all-change again.
37. Pale Young Gentlemen – Kettle Drum (I Left a Note) This whole album was an absolute joy, and the ‘we could talk for hours, or even not at all’ line is a gem. Sheer, easy, gentle loveliness.
38. The Cave Singers – Dancing on Our Graves Along with the Dodos this is some of the most percussive music I’ve heard in ages. And that voice – weird, whiney and wonderful.
39. James Yorkston – Tortoise Regrets Hare James Yorkston needs little more to be said about him; the man’s just bloody brilliant. His rolling monologues are almost spoken word at times, and this particular example is just bloody gorgeous.
40. Mumford & Sons – Awake My Soul It’s big and potentially radio-friendly (which I am almost starting to see as an insult) but this whole EP is genuinely uplifting – virtually gospel in fact.
41. The Pictish Trail – I Don’t Know Where to Begin Slightly sad, slightly nostaligic and absolutely beautiful from the first moment to the last. There are more complicated songs on his album, but none lovelier.
42. Calexico – The News About William Border noir. Calexico only flirted with their former genius on this album, but one or two tracks harked back to their glory days.
43. Frightened Rabbit – Good Arms vs. Bad Arms It’s almost, almost a Christmas song, this. A bitter, miserable, lonely one, but almost a Christmas song nonetheless. Don’t ask me why, it’s just something about the rhythm, and perhaps the turmoil of overwhelming emotions.
44. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Painter Blue Not quite a murder ballad, but a really odd tale set to music that is fascinatingly divorced from what you would expect from a story like this.
45. eagleowl – Blanket I don’t know if it’s the harmonies, or the gorgeous way the bowed double bass underpins the fiddle, but pretty much every last thing about this song has been done right.
46. James Yorkston – Midnight Feast From a confident, lush album comes this choral jewel, transcendent and grand. James Yorkston seems absolutely on top of his game at the moment.
47. The Velcro Quartet – Dead Dogs’ Hill Basically, this is just mental. Pure, unhinged, nut-pop – and absolutely inspired to boot.
48. The Low Lows – Five Ways I Didn’t Die This whole album is grumbling and drenched in reverb and distortion. It is purposeful and menacing, and then at times disarmingly sentimental
49. Samamidon – Saro Sam Amidon uses an awful lot of instruments to make very, very little noise. The brass is deep and mournful, but there’s a lighter sadness to everything else which makes it if anything even more affecting.
50. Mumford & Sons – Roll Away Your Stone I sometimes wonder if the impact of this is the same if you haven’t seen them live. It should be though.
And here’s the whole bloody lot as a single zip file – may take a while to download.
ok, self confessed lurker, delurking on the basis of that Sam Amidon track. A lovely set of tunes indeed but sweet baby jesus that Saro track just blew me away and I would like to thank you for that very much indeed! Off to see what more I can find out about him and can’t wait to see what is at the top of the list (and the middle!)
You never fail to disappoint. Thanks for this and thanks for the reliably amazing posts.
Never fail to disappoint?
Is Emma’s Freudian slip showing? Matthew, I admire how you are utterly consistent in your propensity to fail at not succeeding.
‘ave you heard samamidon is playing with David Thomas Broughton in Glasgow in January?
Early contender for gig of the year 2009?
They’re a miserable bunch round here aren’t they? And at Christmas time too…
Hello Paulene! Lovely to see you delurking yourself.
And isn’t Emma cool? A fellow fan of The Rural Alberta Advantage no less. That makes two of us!
Bart, I don’t think you’re far wrong there. Apparently there’s some chat of his swinging back through Edinburgh again as well, which would be splendid. Needless to say I would be angling for a Toad Session if that ended up happening.
Everything’s coming up Millhouse.
Love that Cave Singers track – really think their album might be my favourite this year.
Bart – eh?
Ed – well, after your experiences I am just glad to check in and find the fucking post still here.
That would be crap.
If the DMCA nazis were so hot on Ed they started deleting comments he left on other people’s blogs!
Aye pretty good list Toadio. The only ones i’m not sure of are the Mumford and Sons tracks..Really liked them when you first posted,but they grate a little now. Maybe that’s the problem with how immediate they are. However, I haven’t seen them live, which may be where the problem lies…..Definitely agree with commments made on Saro, it just grows on you every time you play it!
Oh, and you dissapoint me as well….:-)
That Pale Young Gentlemen track is lovely. Is the new album as fun as the first?
Had the Mumford boys on the iPod on the way in this morning actually, first time I’ve listened to them in a while, and that second EP kinda began to drop into place.
I do get what Jim’s saying; the music’s very immediacy could turn out to be their undoing over a longer period, but that banjo-led interlude on the change halfway through Awake My Soul will always be magic.
Dylan – I meant my own Festive 50 post, not Ed’s comment. Festive 50s are so full of mp3s that they are natural DMCA magnets, so it wouldn’t surprise me if this whole thing spontaneously vanished.
I realised I had the wrong end of the stick half way through typing that comment out.. but I decided the joke was funny enough to go ahead with anyway.
I mean – you wouldn’t put it past them if they were given the chance!
Oh and Jez, yet it most definitely is. Very highly recommended indeed.
I too am cooling slightly on Mumford & Sons. Not sure if that’s personal because of how they reneged on their promise to play the Bowery Opening party, and did so by text no less, or if it’s inevitable that such a burst of excitement will wane quite quickly due to just being unsustainable.
bloody hell this is a strong start……have you heard the Kenny Anderson version of Tortoise Regrets Hare? really really good.
No I haven’t actually. It may be time someone shared with me for a change instead of vice versa…
..nah, I’ll just buy the vinyl. I’ll only want to buy it anyway.
well it’s on my top 20 tracks of the year……if you give me a usb flash drive (i would offer but i’ve ran out) i’ll fire them over to you!!
Zip file on YouSendIt?
no idea what you’re talking about….but i’ll have a look
Zip file on YouSendIt
That’s just a bunch of random words.
Toast face on Sparkplug Wednesday.
You’re so analogue.
That would be crap.
If the DMCA nazis were so hot on Ed they started deleting comments he left on other people’s blogs!
Don’t joke…
N’est pas, ED; n’est pas?!
This isn’t anything like that targetted. I am pretty sure we are just collateral damage, not the main focus. The problem is that there is no incentive within the terms of the DMCA for the legal rottweilers to be anything other than scattergun. If we were the main focus there would be a fuck of a lot more of these things – it would be more systematic and more widespread and we probably wouldn’t know what had hit us.
well fuck me! that’s a gorgeous set of tunes. these lists are a bit like getting married… you don’t really appreciate other people’s until you do your own, then you want to see everyone’s! bless ya for doin all this work for us hun xoxo
Christ that’s a lovely set of tunes. Those horns at the opening of Saro make me weak in the knees. And Tortoise Regrets Hare is a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship; it really is an almost perfect song. Even the DfMfB impersonator sounds OK to me this time. Must be the Christmas season. Anyhow, well done so far. A pretty goddamn strong set of tunes for the bottom of your list.