Well we’re finally back into the swing of things after a slightly stuttering start to the new year, here at Toad Hall.  We have a Samamidon session in the bag, which we’ll be hoping to largely sort out this weekend.  And those videos from the live show are amazing, if you ask me.  The HD quality may be slow to load, but even as heavily compressed as they are (and they really are) I still think the quality is fantastic.  We are likely to acquire one of those cameras for the Toad Sessions on a permanent basis, so we should be able to make some really good videos from now on.  The Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival in March should produce some cracking stuff with a bit of luck, although the more footage the more editing etc etc.

Anyhow, it’s Friday and we are about to go to the pub for a couple of pints and a good meal.  Our favourite haunt, the King’s Wark, has been shut down for a few weeks so we’re a bit homeless at the moment.  And Shonagh, our favourite King’s Wark bartender, has been banned from reading this site at work so the fates are trying to separate me from my favourite watering hole at the moment and I shall not let them!

In other news, Tim from the Daily Growl, who has just penned a lovely Meursault review, tipped me off to a gorgeous Samantha Crain Daytrotter Session which you all might rather like.  Her new album is getting ever closer and I am as excited as a small child at five o’clock on Christmas morning.

Anyone who wishes to contribute Five Friday Favourites just get in touch, but whatever the weather, here are this week’s five for your shameless time-wasting pleasure…

1. Really good song by a group you really fucking hate.
2. Really cringeworthily bad song by a group you love.
3. Favourite crap film.
4. Public figure who is a total dick, but whom you quite like anyway.
5. Some really good news you’ve had recently – share the joy, it’s fucking Friday after all!

Right, I’m starting with something great, because this is going to become bad pretty damn quickly.  I really dislike The River overall, and I think it’s generally one of Bruce Springsteen’s worst albums.  This song is amazing though:
Bruce Springsteen – Independence Day

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But this one is abysmal.  Can’t fucking stand it:
Bruce Springsteen – Hungry Heart

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Michael Jackson is both deeply sinister and a total fruit loop.  But you can’t argue with this sort of thing:
Michael Jackson – Billie Jean

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Inexplicably, I liked both of these last two songs when I was young, and because of that I still have a faint affection for them that I can’t quite purge.
Simply Red – A New Flame

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No, I really wasn’t very cool when I was twelve.  But why has Phil Collins never been enjoyed in the full flower of cheesy 80s retrospection?  I know that personally he’s a total cock, but musically he’s no worse than loads of the stuff which has been celebrated with ironic glee, surely?
Phil Collins – Don’t Lose My Number

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Just how I like an EP: very small scale, very home-made and very good.  I call it an EP, but actually it’s one of these increasingly common and very welcome mini-albums – six songs long – so to call it an EP is to underestimate it slightly.  It’s been sequenced like an album, as well, with a nice, rewarding emotional trajectory and the feeling that everything is in it’s right place.

If I were to try and call up a comparison, I would probably lean towards what Pale Young Gentlemen might soound like if they had gone in a slightly tweer, sadder direction than the more rich, orchestral one they chose.  Basic layers of guitar and vocal duets are supplemented by gentle waves of cello and plucked strings, which bring a lush indulgence to a sound already beautifully steeped in sadness.

It’s not quite the finished article yet, or at least it doesn’t quite feel like it, but don’t ask me why.  It’s just an impression I have for no good reason, but if they can build on this very promising start indeed then I think it’s entirely possibly that Ragged Claws could become a very good band.

Ragged Claws – Lully, Lullay

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MySpace | More mp3s | Download from Common Cloud Records (FREE! no less)

Samamidon – Wild Bill Jones (Live at the Bowery, Edinburgh) from Song, by Toad on Vimeo.  If this is loading too slowly, click the little ‘HD is On’ button on the right of the picture and it will turn of High Definition, which should be a lot faster.

This live review is mostly going to contain video footage.  Partly because I reviewed a live Samamidon performance at this very venue really quite recently, and partly because the videos will explain so much better what I actually have to say myself.

When Samanidon plays it reminds me how narrow our perception of music and the performance of music can become.  As he plays, Sam interrupts the songs with asides, surreal anecdotes, bits of other songs, and all manner of other bits and pieces.  Maybe it’s because in the folk traditions in which he was raised, where the music is frequently part of the conversation, not some separate, sacrosanct entity to be treated with kid gloves and a false sense of idolatry, but I can’t speak for him on that score.

Neil from Meursault suggested that his unpredictable conversational detours actually fit quite well with the way he plays the fiddle – as rooted in free jazz as in the traditional reels he uses it to explode so brilliantly.  The anchor for all this eccentricity is provided by the simple loveliness of his reinterpretations of old folk tunes, almost as if there is only so much uncertainty we can collectively cope with. Read the rest of this entry »

This here is an automated, pre-written post as I’m currently away on one of my spy missions to the USof until the 21st January. Not only does my welcome absence afford TWoTH some much needed ‘down time’ from my giddy ninnying, she also has about 2 weeks of having to only worry about the DCHQ cats dropping half-chewed food on the duvet, leaving suspect puddles on the floor & jumping all over her head at 3am because they can’t sleep & want attention.

This week, then, in a further installment of the Drunk Covers series, TWoTH & I am genuinely delighted to present GUILT BY ASSOCIATION VOL. 2, the second album of intriguing & sometimes ingenius cover versions (recorded by a gaggle of well known, & not so known, indie bands & artistes) on the wonderful Engine Room Recordings. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a recommendation from Sparrow & the Workshop, albeit one I am finally latching onto properly something like six months after I was initally tipped off during their Toad Session.

The band, or nom-de-guerre I suppose, in question is Scuff, and there are still only three songs on his MySpace page, so I suppose things have hardly been progressing with a frantic sense of urgency in his part of the world either.  Only three perhaps, but they are really good songs.    The only sentence on the MySpace page that offers any sort of insight into what we’re listening to is this one:

band stuff can get complicated and it’s nice just to be able to play a bunch of songs that you like

The songs sound just like that as well.  I maintain that the Scots, and the Glaswegians in particular, have a unique flair for a characteristic form of rambling interior monologue.  These are rendered special by their signature blend of grandeur and melodrama, mixed with irony and scathing self-mockery.  They are simultaneously entirely serious and entirely tongue-in-cheek and I have never really heard their like elsewhere.

Scuff’s lyrics, coupled with that one line about eschewing the complications of bands, seem to put this music in a similar sort of territory.  It’s one side of a random personal conversation, delivered in an open, uncontrived manner, and it really works.  The guitar style is really nice as well and I don’t know how many more songs like this Scuff (Dougie, if I remember correctly) has in him, but I for one am very keen to hear more.

Scuff – Sailing 3 Sheets to the Wind

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Scuff – Step a Little Closer

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I am putting Mitchell Museum down as unsigned at the moment, but I doubt that will be the case for much longer.  Labels are sniffing around them like flies round a honeypot, apparently, so I don’t think it’ll be long before we see them on a label; independent, boutique, major or otherwise.  I know that Beggars Group are intending to scout one of their upcoming shows, but then Beggars comprises so many record labels that could mean almost anything.  Personally I’d love to work with them myself on Song, by Toad Records, apart from the fact that in terms of money and time I wouldn’t be ready for a couple of months at the least, so I will probably have missed my chance by then.  Still, they have a big, bold sound, so maybe a bigger, or at least a trendier, record label would be more suitable anyway.

Anyhow, here is another song, the b-side to their single Warning Bells (buy it from their website), which has appeared on their MySpace page recently.  It’s very much of a piece with their general brand of thumping spastic mentalism and, as such, is bloody brilliant.  I still haven’t seen them live, but Nick from Sparrow & the Workshop reckons they are a band I have to get through to Glasgow and check out as soon as I can, having seen them a couple of times himself.

Given I am now aware of ‘the buzz’ I do wonder slightly if I’m getting caught up in it a bit too much, rather than making this call on my own judgement alone, but I certainly think this band are capable of big things, assuming the rest of their songs are as good as the ones we’ve heard so far.  Definitely one to keep an eye on in 2009 I would say.

Mitchell Museum – Take the Tongue Out

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Mitchell Museum – Extra Lives

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On the weekend Mrs. Toad and I used a City Car Club car to tool around the place trying to find a camera for the Toad Sessions.  They’re really useful things to have available, those cars, because you sign up to the scheme, they’re all over the city and whenever you need one you just take it.  Easy peasy.

Anyhow, when we turned on the stereo it turned out someone had left a compilation CD in the player when the car was last used, and the first song that came from the speakers the second we pressed the on button was the wonderful Can’t Hurry Love by Phil Collins the Concretes.  This is hardly a well-known song, or at least so I would have said.  Not obscure exactly, but it was a genuine surprise to hear it.  Fascinated, I flicked back to the start of the CD – The Concretes was song six or seven or something like that – and what should come on but The Boy With the Arab Strap by Belle & Sebastian.  It was like a gift from the gods of music nerdery!

Next came a couple of Arctic Monkeys songs – Fake Tales of San Francisco and Mardy Bum, two of their better ones – and then something else I can’t remember, and then this bizarre bit of music that sounded quite like Ian Dury & the Blockheads, but wasn’t.  By this point I was singing the praises of our mysterious benefactor as if he or she were some sort of benevolent indie god.  It didn’t last, unfortunately.  There was some shitty hip hop after that and then it descended into the sort of shit you imagine an ageing indie kid might be forced to put on his compilation by his girlfriend.  That sounds rather sexist, and it is, but Mrs. Toad said it before I did, so sod off.

So it may not have ended up as the euphoric celebration of indie serendipity which it teasingly suggested it might be in the beginning, but it was still a wonderful accident of circumstance, particularly starting with that Concretes track.  And it got me to thinking how cool it would be to make a pile of Song, by Toad mix CDs and then rent City Car Club cars one at a time and every time leave a little musical present behind when we return the car.  It would be amazing.  I suppose a lot of people would just think it was shit and throw it out, but I wonder how many people would listen.  And how populist do you think you’d have to make something for them to stick with it long enough to discover some hidden gems?

The Concretes – You Can’t Hurry Love

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Belle & Sebastian – The Boy With the Arab Strap

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Sorry for the silence over the last couple of days.  Yesterday we recorded the Samamidon Toad Session, which took a while and generally distracted me from the business of writing the blog, so I’m afraid this weekly update is a day late.  Which you are just going to have to fucking live with.

I’d almost say that there really wasn’t much on in Edinburgh this week, but what I would really mean is that there is not much high-profile stuff going on in Edinburgh this week.  There are, actually, some very good gigs to be found.

Saturday 17th January 2009: Endor, Cancel the Astronauts & Team Turnip play Trampoline at the the Wee Red Bar.

It’s a bloody good thing that the impending arrival of Baby Trampoline didn’t kill this night off altogether because I’ve always liked their lineups.  For the first show of the new year we have a couple of bands about whom I know far too little – Endor and Cancel the Astronauts – beyond being able to tell you that the latter are indie-popsters whose demo CD I rather enjoyed last year.  Team Turnip I know a little better, having heard Russell’s EP which will hopefully be self-released later this year.  He plays very friendly twee indie-pop and has some really good songs, so I am hoping the timing works out with the Rob St. John performance at Cabaret Voltaire such that I can catch both.
Team Turnip – Photos of the Staff

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Saturday 17th January 2009: Rob St. John, Tragic O’Hara & Carrie MacDonald at Cabaret Voltaire.

I’ve picked this particular show because I am a big Rob St. John fan, but Cabaret Voltaire are putting on a whole series of Duty Free gigs (ie free entry) gigs over the course of the next week or so, so if you fancy checking out some emerging bands for free, this is a bloody good chance to do it.  Rob is all excited about this gig, too, because he will be playing with the full band and really going for it so if there’s one don’t-miss gig in the city this week it is definitely this one.
Rob St. John – Paper Ships

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Sunday 18th January 2009: The Moth & the Mirror, Emily Scott & Enfant Bastard play Concrete Campfires, downstairs at the City Cafe.

This one’s a little new on me, but I rather fortuitously received an email this morning from Stace, who has just brought her Concrete Campfire night through from Glasgow, and set up shop downstairs in the City Cafe.  The bands will be performing stripped down sets, I believe, and entry is free with the first band on stage at nine.  It’s a nice idea, and I’ve always liked the City Cafe for some reason so I think I will go along to this and say hello.  I can’t quite imagine how the prettiness of Emily Scott will mesh with the off-kilter eccentricity of Enfant Bastard and the somewhat epic (judging by a quick MySpace listen) music  of The Moth & the Mirror, but then I’ve always preferred the slightly unusual bills to the predictable ‘one headline band and a couple of supports who sound sort of like them’ approach.
Enfant Bastard – How Much Do You Need?

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Well here we go.  The new year is yet to quite take hold or take off, but I promise you that things will kick back into gear this weekend.  There are some fine love shows appearing on the calendar, slowly but surely, and eventually 2009 will get going.  No rush though.

This Toadcast is a bit of a mix.  I’ve got some of this year’s favourites, I look back at some of last year’s favourites, and I also poke away at a couple of the bands I hope will make their mark in 2009.

In that sense, examining last year’s favourites makes a lot of sense.  I’m always curious about how well our fads and fancies bear up to the passage of time.  I’ve not been too fickle in recent years, which is sort of nice, so I don’t mind looking back like this.  There aren’t too many embarrassments to be had, so it’s kind of nice to take the chance to look backwards, look forwards a little and generally just take the opportunity to pause for breath and enjoy the new year.  As should you, toadlings, as should you.  Happy new year, folks.

Toadcast #52 – Let’s Go

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01. Bombadil – Cavaliers’ Har Hum (02.24)
02. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Ragged Garden of Your Eye (08.57)
03. Aidan John Moffat – The Boy That You Love (12.19)
04. Mitchell Museum – Extra Lives (18.11)
05. The Savings & Loan – The Virgin’s Lullaby (24.36)
06. The Builders & the Butchers – When it Rains (28.06)
07. Elvis Perkins – It’s Only Me (34.30)
08. Mother & the Addicts – Are Others (38.21)
09. The Pictish Trail – Winter Home Disco (46.27)
10. The Low Lows – Dear Flys, Love Spider (54.49)

Hello, and welcome back to the slowly restarting new year of swearing and complaining here on Song, by Toad.  Don’t be too perturbed by the look of the thing.  This is not the final design, but as I am not a web designer it will have to do until I can figure out exactly what I want, lay it out properly, and then ask someone to code it for me.  That won’t be for a month or two though, so settle in for now and just ignore some of the crapper elements of the design – they won’t be permanent.

In other news, we have some splendid plans for 2009, so it should be another exciting (exhausting) year.  We are trying to get Meursault moving and arrange a couple of tours for them, which will be tedious.  We have a whole list of new releases for this year, including two Meursault 7″ singles, a split 12″ with the The Builders & the Butchers and Loch Lomond, the Loch Lomond album Paper the Walls is getting a UK release, Maxwell Panther and The Savings & Loan will be releasing records… and that’s just the ones we already know about.

In news more related to this site, rather than the label, we have Samamidon and The Pictish Trail now firmly booked in to record Toad Sessions before the end of January, there are plans to expand our coverage of Pickathon, Homegame and the End of the Road Festival, and of course increase the number of interviews and get a bit more video onto the site, as discussed in the previous thread.

So, I am not one for new year’s resolutions, but I am also incredibly lazy, so that’s what you’re getting for this Friday’s Favourites, as pinched from GUT.  If you want to suggest a Five at any point, just email me.  The music is taken from five of my favourite EPs from last year, as a sort of apology for not having a list on which they could be included.  I’ll try and put that right in 2009, but… ah, fuck it, that’s ages away.  Enjoy the new year, Toadlings.

1. Give us a new year’s resolution.
2. Recommend one for someone else.
3. Most anticipated 2009 release.
4. First gig of the year.
5. Suggest a quote for Toad t-shirt of the week.  T-shirt of the week you say?  Why yes, that’s just what I said.

Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – The Last Stanchion Goes Belly-Up

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The Avett Brothers – Murder in the City

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Passion Pit – Sleepyhead

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The Young Republic – Shiloh

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Over the Wall – Thurso

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