I haven’t mentioned Jesus H. Foxx much on these pages and that is because, if I’m being brutally honest, I had my doubts about them as a band.  They were good, and they were lots of fun, but for the most part it seemed to lack a bit of something. The music could be very uniform and one-paced over the course of a whole gig.  I wasn’t entirely convinced by the lyrics either; whilst they seemed to use them effectively as an instrument to provide rhythm and melody, they seemed to fare less well as actual words.  They were using vocals, basically, rather than lyrics, if you know what I mean.

Well since then I’ve ended up chatting to the band from time to time, talked to other people involved and generally got to know them a little better and, you know what, they had similar concerns themselves for the most part.  They weren’t entirely happy with playing an entire set of short, spiky pop songs and also weren’t entirely happy with being pigeonholed as the angular indie rock support band of choice for Edinburgh.  They didn’t have the haircuts, for a start.

Over the last couple of years they’ve really worked worked hard to develop their sound, and they now sound like they are turning into the kind of band they want to be.  No disrespect to earlier stages in their development, but to hear them talk about the music now, there’s a very solid, very believable confidence about them.  Their new recordings sound extremely promising, so I was really excited to see them live for the first time in ages and judge for myself.

And in the end?  Well, I was very impressed indeed.  The music just sounds more sophisticated.  They’ve shuffled the lineup a little, varied the pace greatly within their set, and they sound much more like a band who know where they’re going these days.  There’s depth, I suppose I’d call it.  They still have that bouncy, energy to call upon, aided by the raucous battering of twin drumkits, but they really are able to shift things around.  The cornet is a welcome addition to the sound as well, as are the female vocal harmonies.  It just all rounds things out nicely and gives a real presence to the music.

So now I am looking forward to their upcoming EP release really rather a lot.  I reckon Jesus H. could make a real impact this year if they play their cards right.  They have a base level of public awareness, general support from the grass-roots within the city, and now a good fistful of exciting new tunes they should really be able to make a splash with.  And they’re from Edinburgh.  And they aren’t alt-folk.  Imagine!

Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were (Old Version)

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Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were (New Version)

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Jesus H. Foxx on MySpace

P.S. Apologies to the other bands on this bill, but I was finishing the Pictish Trail Toad Session and only arrived at the venue very late.  So I’m not ignoring them, I just didn’t get there in time.

How many of you are there?  There’s only one of me, which looks like it might prove troublesome this week, particularly late on when the clashing gigs really start to stack up.  I am just back in Edinburgh after the Jason Lytle interview, which went very well in terms of being a most pleasant sort of chat, yet didn’t provide a particularly obvious hook on which to hang an article.  I may have to listen back and digest for a couple of days before writing it, I think.  It’s odd to suddenly find yourself in conversation with someone whose music you’ve been listening to for over ten years, though, so I guess that in itself might be an interesting angle to take.

This week’s activities on Toad will involve beginning to work on that interview, the writing up of a couple of gig reviews, and editing a big pile of Broken Records live videos.  So in other words it’s going to be fucking busy again.  I am also going to have a chat with Andy about redesigning both this website and the label site.  I find myself feeling inordinately guilty about not designing it myself, oddly.  This whole site has been entirely DIY so far, so that’s probably the reason, but at the moment I need it to be able to do things which are well beyond my own rudimentary understanding of code, and I simply don’t have the time to begin with, so there you go.  I’ll have a big input of course, and the Toad sketches will remain, but basically I’m going to try and let Andy get on with it as much as I can.  As a designer myself, at Proper Job, I know there’s nothing worse than a client who stares over your shoulder constantly while you’re trying to do your job.

So that’s it, this is being posted in the wee hours, and I am going straight to bed so that I can at least pretend to be functional in the morning.  I actually find a lack of sleep worse than a hangover in terms of its damage to my productivity these days, so these half one bedtimes really do have to stop.

Thursday 2nd April 2009: St Deluxe, French Wives & Team Turnip play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

St. Deluxe are the new hot tamales around town, apparently.  I’ve had a listen to their MySpace and they do indeed sound pretty decent, although with such a brief listen I’m really in no position to say much one way or another.  They’re quite a rough and noisy band though, where French Wives and Team Turnip are a little poppier, but all three groups on this bill sound like good value to me.
St Deluxe – New Wave Stars

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Thursday 2nd April 2009: Tim & Sam’s Tim & the Sam Band With Tim & Sam at Cabaret Voltaire.

Tim and Sam and so on and so forth are big favourites of me old pal Drunk Country over at the Waiting Room, so he’ll be chuffed to know that they’re putting in an appearance in these parts.  I am rarely ever much of a fan of bands who play instrumental music, but I think that’s probably laziness on my behalf, and certainly these chaps make fine music under any circumstances.  It’s even better live, according to DC, so I’d recommend this one.  It’s a late one though, I think, so check the times before turning up.
Tim & Sam etc.. – Join the Dots

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Friday 3rd April 2009: Frightened Rabbit & Meursault at the Bowery.

I am fairly (but not entirely) sure that Frightened Rabbit are intending to play an acoustic set at the Bowery on Friday instead of their more usual melodic indie rock, and I do believe Meursault are following suit and unplugging all their electronic faffery as well, so this should be quite a special one.
Frightened Rabbit – I Feel Better (Live)

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Friday 3rd April 2009: Jesus H. Foxx, Y’All is Fantasy Island & the Hindle Wakes at Sneaky Pete’s.

Jesus H. Foxx will be mentioned some time later today when I write up their gig at the Bowery from last Friday, but believe me they are sounding very, very good at the moment.  Where previously they seemed to be fairly single-faceted (is that physically possible – never mind) there’s a lot more depth and a lot more confidence to their music these days.  They have an EP on the way too, which I am very excited to hear indeed.
Jesus H. Foxx – Trying to Be Good

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Friday 3rd April: Thomas Truax, Withered Hand & Greg Dodgeson at Cabaret Voltaire.

Is Dan from Withered Hand playing every single gig in Scotland at the moment?  Ah well, good for us if he is.  Apart from the music, Thomas Truax’s truly amazing homemade instruments make this a gig you really should attend.
Thomas Truax – The Butterfly & the Entomologist

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Saturday 4th April 2009: The Wee Rogue, Rob St. John & Ben Wetherill at the Bowery.

I don’t want to say anything that’s going to get me beaten up by an angry mob of nice, sensitive young men, but this is probably the least ‘anti’ of the many great anti-folk gigs you can find in Edinburgh in any given week.  I mean that in the sense that the ‘anti’ part is something I tend to treat as describing a certain lack of prettiness in anti-folk music, but even as specific a genre description as anti-folk is a bit too broad for that sort of thing these days.  Where was I?  Oh yes, expect fine, fragile and lovely music.
The Wee Rogue – Into the Mist

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Saturday 4th April 2009: The Gothenburg Address, North Atlantic Oscillation & San Sebastian at Sneaky Pete’s.

Should the loveliness at the Bowery prove just a little too gentle for you then Sneaky Pete’s is probably the place to be, where there will be Post Rock a-gogo.  It’ll be loud, I’d imagine, so get there early, find a spot facing the stage and just let it all wash over you.
San Sebastian – New

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Sunday 5th April 2009: Come On Gang, Vendor Defender & The Kays Lavelle at Sneaky Pete’s.

Come On Gang should be in a fine mood after their SXSW adventure, so their punk pop should have even more zip to it than usual.  It’s going to be a busy week at Sneaky Pete’s.  Is their booking getting better and better or is it just that I’m only just starting to realise that I should be paying more attention to what they’re doing?  Good stuff, anyway.

This Toad Session has been a wee while coming, but frankly I think it’s fucking superb.  The videos have turned out wonderfully, Neil and Gav have done an amazing job with the sound, Fee and Dylan have taken some great photos.  I’m happy as a pig in shit, quite frankly.  Johnny Lynch (Mr. Pictish Trail) had plenty of time to kill, so we drank some beer, took our time and talked a monumental amount of shite.  The podcast is really strong this time around, I think.  We talk a lot but I think it’s pretty decent stuff for the most part, not random blather, so I really think it should be an enjoyable listen.  Hopefully, anyway.

Johnny picked really nice songs, too.  He’s recorded a couple of unreleased ones, and a Lone Pigeon cover, as well as his Top of the Pops hit single Winter Home Disco.  It makes for a really nice mix.  As per usual the songs are all available for downloading, hotlinking and sharing around, the videos can be watched below, on our YouTube (yeuch) page or our Vimeo page, and the photos are all to be seen as a slideshow here or on the general Song, by Toad Flickr page here.  Go to Blueback Hotrod for more of Dylan’s live music photography.  And enjoy the podcast – it can be played below, and the tracklisting is at the bottom of the page.  I’m really proud of this, people, so I hope you enjoy it.

Toadcast #62 – The Pictish Trail Toad Session

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The Pictish Trail – Winter Home Disco (Toad Session)

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The Pictish Trail – I Will Pour it Down (Toad Session)

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The Pictish Trail – You Covered the Earth With Your Thumb (Toad Session)

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The Pictish Trail – Won’t You Take Me Back (Lone Pigeon Cover) (Toad Session)

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And now the videos, starting with the overall session video, and then the ones we made for the individual songs:

01. The Pictish Trail – Winter Home Disco (06.04)
02. Bonnie Prince Billy – Today I Started Celebrating Again (17.33)
03. Adam Beattie – Bank Street (22.12)
04. The Pictish Trail – I Will Pour It Down (34.37)
05. Judson Claiborne – Song For Dreaming (38.30)
06. Amadou & Mariam – Sabali (43.35)
07. Why? – The Song of the Sad Assassin (48.51)
08. The Pictish Trail – You Covered the Earth With Your Thumb (62.31)
09. Preston School of Industry – Walk of a Gurl (69.03)
10. The Pictish Trail – Won’t You Take Me Back (Lone Pigeon Cover) (76.42)

Thanks folks, hope you enjoyed that.

Apparently Brazil’s President or PM or whoever the fuck is in charge has recently gone on record as stating that the global financial crisis was caused by people with ‘white skin and blue eyes’.  Whilst a little bitter racism does tend to amuse me in the morning, I think he is only half right.  White men, perhaps, but actually I think you’ll find it was green eyes that were the problem.

Sometime this week I published my official thousandth post, which was cause for not all that much rejoicing at all really.  It looked cool on the stats page but, actually, it wasn’t my thousandth post at all.  I started this blog in November 2006, but an IT disaster a couple of years ago led to me losing the first five months of posts, so now it looks like the site only started in April 2007, which is a bit of a shame.  So my actual one thousandth post was probably written some time in December, I would imagine, but erm, Yay! Me anyway I suppose.

I am going down to London on Monday to interview Jason Lytle, of ex-Grandaddy fame.  He has a new album coming out on ANTI pretty soon, and Grandaddy were one of my favourite bands, so I am pretty excited about this.  Because the interview is for most reputable local organ The Skinny it’s all being funded by the label too, which is rather nice.  They’ve allowed me to publish it here as well, which is rather nice of them, so you’ll get to read it within the month.

So, er, as I head off to the King’s Wark for my weekly two-pint lunch with fucking fantastic fresh fish, please finish your British Rail sandwiches at your desk, and take the time to delurk and fill in this week’s Five Friday Favourites, as stolen shamelessly from the pages of GUT.  It’s always nice to see some fresh faces on the fives.  Frankly my regular commenters bore me to tears, and I secretly long for someone new and interesting to talk to (tee hee).  And nothing too vulgar, or I’ll tell my Mum on you.

And congratulations to Shonagh of the King’s Wark (and most importantly of the Song, by Toad comments section) for her weekend breakfast concoctions being named the best in Scotland by the Guardian.  Fucking brilliant.  I’ve never had breakfast there, but if her eggs are as good as her company then you can’t possibly go wrong.  Awww, wasn’t that sweet.  Quite uncomfortably so, in fact.  I’d better swear about something, just to get the right mood back.

Oh, and thanks to Dylan for accidentally supplying this week’s five.  You may have to be a little creative in your interpretations, but I figured that they were funny enough that they had to go up anyway.

1. When were you last in a house of bondage, and who had to come and drag you out?
2. Carved images. Love or loathe?
3. What have you done today that’s really going to piss off your great-great grandchildren?
4. Is it okay to go ten-pin bowling on a Sunday?
5. Which do you like best, your neighbour’s ox, donkey or female servant?

Grandaddy – Laughing Stock

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Lo-Fidelity Allstars – On the Pier

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Dakota Suite – The Cost of Living

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St Etienne – Just a Little Overcome

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Stereolab – Old Lungs

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I enjoyed the video at the bottom of this page, although it’s a little long for most internet attention spans.  In it filmmaker Kevin Smith, of Clerks, Dogma and Chasing Amy fame, to name but a few, talks about how obsessively he used to read all his internet reviews, right down to the comments.  This is quite rare, or at least it was until recently, because most people still tended to treat internet criticism as a distant and very poor relation to its more salubrious and established cousins.

The problem with taking it seriously is of course, well, where do you stop?  It’s like being able to overhear every last pub conversation about your work that has ever taken place.  Not one single human being talks complete, considered sense all of the time and before you even get into whether or not you want to bother agreeing with someone or not just imagine how many times you yourself just don’t quite express yourself properly.  Instead of disappearing into the air, being re-stated slightly better, or just mitigated with a shrug of the shoulders this stuff now sits there in black and white for all eternity, staring you down on the screen.

The Soft Pack – Right and Wrong (How I wish these guys were still called The Muslims.)

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Then there’s whether or not you really want to bother.  As he sort of mentions, would you ever want to hear every last conversation about you which was had by anyone who’d ever met you, no matter how brief?  Christ, the number of people out there saying that I, for example, am a bit of a dick would be enormous.  Face it, most people don’t like you that much.  Think how many people you like, then subtract it from the five or six billion people in the world.  Think about how many bands, or films, you like and then subtract that from the total number of bands or films which have ever existed.

For some reason, because things are in black and white, including both the comments and the posts on this site, people seem to vest them with more importance than they merit, whereas they are the musical equivalent of a pub conversation.  The table might be a little bigger for those sites with a large audience, but how many of us would your average band or fan even bother to disagree with if they overhead us publically not liking their band in a bar somewhere?  Probably very few.  I know the internet has made these conversations much more public than they used to be, but they are still just ordinary conversations.

Kevin Smith:

It’s been a while since I listened to something genuinely snarling and loud, and I’ve missed it, frankly.  I first read about Titus Andronicus on The Daily Growl and, honestly, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I generally trust Tim’s recommendations I would probably not have persisted with this album, which would have been very foolish.

It starts so deceptively as well.  Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ just growls and grumbles along for ages – to the point that you wonder what the fuck is going on – before exploding into life with all sorts of thunderous drumming, and gritty distortion.  It slips back into a similarly grumblesome ending: a crackling monologue which, I believe, might be from the Shakespearean tragedy from which the band take their name.  I’m not sure though, so don’t quote me on that.  That cooling off might be deceptive, but the cat’s out of the bag by this point.  This is a noisy album.

Actually, the judgment of atonal grunge and cunningly infectious melody is very well-judged on this record.  It sounds like a garage punk album, but it’s not, it’s pop.  I mean, most of the best garage punk albums worked really well as pop albums anyway, so this is no criticism.  The choruses are damned infectious, so despite the thunder of most of it, you aren’t listening to a bunch of naive ingenues here: they know how to write songs.

I’m not saying that this is my favourite album of the year.  There are a couple of songs where the tune doesn’t quite emerge from the cocoon of fuzz, but for the most part I am finding this to be bloody terrific: noisy and brilliant fun (despite the lyrical content, which is not cheerful).

Titus Andronicus – Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ

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Titus Andronicus – Titus Andronicus

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

Apparently, according to my little book of annoyingly folksy cliches, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  It’s only half-right, I think.  Surely the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach – or at least, it should be.

Mrs. Toad and I are both totally disasters, in terms of domesticity, but we both love to cook.  In fact, I remember one of the best things my Mum ever did for me and my little brother as kids, and that was make damn sure we knew how to cook before we left the house.  If you want to pull – either sex – cook for them.  It’ll tell you a lot.  As my Mum (she’s a smutty old bag, really she is) always said: cooking and eating are very important because they involve all the senses, and the only other thing which really does that is sex, so if someone can’t enjoy one then what are the odds that they’re going to be any good at the other?

It’s such a great pulling tool, it really is, if I could recommend any young man or woman learn any one skill (apart from becoming a black belt in oral sex of course) then it would be excellent culinary skills.  Particularly if you can make it seem effortless and do not turn into the gastronomic version of a wine snob.  In fact, best just not use the word gastronomy at all, really, it’s probably a step too far for any right-thinking person.

In a less vulgar sense, of course, it’s a good test of personality.  Anyone who picks their way through things and won’t eat this and won’t eat that is surely not worth bothering with.  I am not talking about shunning people with potentially fatal food allergies (but real ones, not imagined ones, please) but people who are picky eaters are to be avoided.  Why, let’s face it, would you fucking bother.

As for anyone who ruins meals by obsessively watches their weight, well, we don’t even need to discuss that, do we.  Flush them down the toilet with the semi-digested remains of their last meal.  Obsessive gym bunnies (male and female), manorexics (what?) or anyone so obsessed with their appearance that they don’t know how to just fucking relax and indulge a bit… well, fuck ‘em, frankly.  Or, more literally, don’t.

And as for people who have their steaks or their tuna cooked any more than medium rare (and even that’s going a bit far)…

The Divine Comedy – Seafood Song

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James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

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I suppose I’d descibe this as a very, very old school sunshine pop album which has been recorded through a blanket of fuzz.  In fact, this sound has been achieved by capturing the music on a four-track before it was handed over to anything at all computerised, retaining that trademark growly sound, particularly on the vocals, which I am so fond of at the moment.

If I had a criticism of the album at all it would be that it is slightly downbeat for just a little too much of the time.  The problem with writing a stand-out hit like Lalita is that, when it is in pretty stark contrast to the rest of the album in terms of energy and atmosphere, you can end up wrong-footing your audience somewhat.  I spent the first listen waiting for the band to go mental again, and they don’t.

Once you realise that the album is more brooding than you’d thought, perhaps a little more gentle, then you can start to appreciate it for what it actually is: a splendidly crackly perversion of something that was supposed to be innocent and sincere.  They’ve taken something nice, and broken it slightly.

I can’t really deal with genuinely carefree pop most of the time, and the fact that The Love Language have knocked the corners off it slightly puts this right into my kind of territory.  Really good.

The Love Language – Lalita

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The Love Language – Manteo

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Bladen County Records

Do songs titled Lullaby, which include lines about goblins, make you just a little bit wary?  Yes, me too, but don’t worry because I promise you that this is really good.  What it recalls for me the most is perhaps a much more minimal, less electronic version 0f Goldfrapp’s breakthrough Felt Mountain, and this is a very good thing.

The music isn’t so much frivolous as seductively flighty.  It recalls the deceptive innocence of Barry Adamson’s wonderful song Vermillion Kisses, where the impression of childish simplicity is never so convincing as to fail to convey its own sense of menace.  I wouldn’t say that this EP is quite so macabre as all that, but it nevertheless generates a close relative of that particular atmosphere of playfully tantalising darkness.

It manages to be be quite cute without ever being annoyingly cutesy, and this is a pretty difficult line to tread in this kind of an area, particularly as recent music has given us quite a lot of fairly dismissive tags we could easily apply to someone whose style ticks a number of quite familiar boxes.  Music in this kind of territory can annoy the shit out of me, quite frankly, but throughout this record Frivolous Laura never tries to be too twee or too giggly, so all of the common failings of bands like this seem to have been quite deftly avoided – it’s delightful where others in the past have been grating.

The fact that the last three tracks on this EP are more akin to three movements of the same song makes it a little difficult to draw many conclusions other than ‘Hmm, very promising indeed’ so I think I might leave it at that, but I’d certainly say that I am very much looking forward to more where this came from.

Frivolous Laura – The Worker’s Song

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Barry Adamson – Vermillion Kisses

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MySpace | Buy from Fat Badger Recordings

Bugger me it’s a busy week in gigs this week, starting this very evening, which is annoying in a sense as I’d rather hoped to have a relaxing week.  Fat chance, it seems.  Sorry for the lack of chat, but there’s a fuck of a lot to list here and I have to get this done before the end of my lunch break.  Consequently these previews are going to be the shortest I’ve ever written.  It might seem slightly insulting to the bands involved, but huge apologies if it is, but I am really, really rushed this morning.

Monday 23rd March 2009: The Ghost Bees at the Bowery as part of the Place Project.

Very delicate and, yes, ghostly female indie-folk from the Maritimes in Canada – Nova Scotia I think.
Ghost Bees – Vampires of the West Coast

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Monday 23rd March 2009: Joe Gideon & the Shark, Paul Vickers & the Leg & Enfant Bastard at Cabaret Voltaire.

Lots of growly guitars.
Joe Gideon & the Shark – Civilisation

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Wednesday 25th March 2009: Schwervon, Withered Hand & Come in Tokyo at the Bowery.

Schwervon are part of the New York anti-folk stuff I do believe, albeit rather more punky that you might expect from a tag like that.
Schwervon – Pretty Slow

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Thursday 26th March 2009: Leith Tape Club upstairs at the Isobar, with Rob St. John, Jennifer Concannon, Randan Discotheque & Ottersgear.

A really friendly DIY night down in Leith.  Highly recommended.

Friday 27th March 2009: Tentracks and Oxjam at the Bowery, with Punch & the Apostles, Jesus H. Foxx, The Byrons & the Black Diamond Express.

The new Jesus H. Foxx stuff sounds really good, I’ve never seen the sheer carnival mentalism that is Punch & the Apostles, the Byrons make a good fucking racket and so, in a different style, do the Black Diamond Express.
The Byrons – Good Man

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Friday 27th March 2009: Oxjam presents Vashti Bunyan & Lucky Jim at the Roxy Art House (i.e.: upstairs at the Bowery).

Lucky Jim is rather lovely, in the singer-songwriter style and Vashti Bunyan took one of the biggest hiatuses in music history between her first and second albums of folk prettiness.
Lucky Jim – You’re Lovely To Me

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Saturday 28th March 2009: Broken Records at the Bedlam Theatre.

Should be quite an interesting show, this, because it’s a small venue and apparently the usual mayhem will be tempered somewhat in favour of something more tailored to the environment – should be good.
Broken Records – Wolves (Toad Session)

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Saturday 28th March 2009: The Phantom Band at Cabaret Voltaire (more Oxjammery).

I’m not so keen on the Phantom Band but I know a lot of you are, so I thought this was worth pointing out as well.
The Phantom Band – The Howling

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