Apart from being brilliant from a musical perspective, Homegame was brilliant for a great many other reasons.  One of which was seeing semi-official Toad photographer Dylan walking around glowing like a well-spanked arse throughout Sunday.

How did this happen?  Well, sleeping spots were at something of a premium over the weekend, and Mrs. Toad and I hosted well over a dozen people, spread between two tiny and massively over-populated cottages in the town of Pittenweem.  This was all very well, except that on Saturday night, after a prolonged and somewhat industrial drinking session, we acquired a couple of hangers-on.  Dylan, having departed to spend the evening with a couple of other friends of ours, returned to the cottage he was supposed to be staying in to find the floor entirely covered in bodies.   Seeing as how he’s actually far more sensitive and nice than you would think, given he reads this pish every day, he didn’t just hoof out the interloper or decide to sleep on top of him, no he spent the night wandering the streets of the East Neuk and eventually fell asleep on the beach in Anstruther.

This would have been fine, of course, apart from the fact that it was gloriously, joyously sunny on Sunday.  So much so that a certain gentleman of leeky persuasion spent the entire day with a face as red as our little simian friend in the picture.  And there was much tittering.  There’s nothing quite so funny as the misfortune of your friends, is there, for some reason.  Maybe it’s just gratitude that it was them, not you, who was made to suffer.

I bumped into ex-lurker Dan at Sneaky Pete’s on Wednesday at the Casiotone gig, which was really nice, so do feel free to follow his example and emerge from the woodwork.  You don’t have to make any sense or be all that witty or anything, you just have to fill in your five and then natter about total horse manure with the rest of us.  And come to Yusuf Azak and Enfant Bastard at Sneaky Pete’s tonight, because it will be brilliant.

1. Beetroot – pickled, roasted, not at all..?
2. Worst sunburn you’ve had.
3. Ever fallen asleep somewhere inappropriate.
4. What is your activity of choice at the beach.
5. Ever cooked a lobster alive?

The Avett Brothers – At the Beach

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Eilen Jewell – Too Hot to Sleep

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The Shaky Hands – Sunburns

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Elvis Perkins – While You Were Sleeping

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Maximillian Hecker – Sunburnt Days

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Sadly, This album leaves me feeling nothing at all. Nothing positive, nothing negative, just nothing.  None of it sticks, none of it offends, I can’t remember a single song on the thing, even after listening to it over a dozen times.  I don’t even have the faintest idea what to write in this review.

Callahan’s lyrics are always beautifully penned, and although the music fails to make any impact whatsoever, the stories are still lovely to listen to, steeped in the slow pace and unhurried luxuriance embodied in the arrangements.  Late Smog had bite, though, even if it was no more than a spooky sort of simmering tension.  What made Callahan’s solo debut Woke on a Whaleheart so nice to listen to was that this was replaced with an infectious cheerfulness – not exactly exuberance of course, this is Bill Callahan after all – which was an absolute pleasure as well as something of a surprise.

This album falls down by embracing the worst of both worlds.  It’s as inoffensive as Whaleheart whilst also losing some of that carefree air to it, making it sound a little like a toothless Smog. It’s not terrible, of course.  There are some lovely tunes on this album, a couple of which I have posted below, but it has made not an ounce of emotional impact on me, I’m afraid, and I sincerely doubt that having written this review I will be likely to ever listen to it again.

Bill Callahan – Too Many Birds

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Bill Callahan – All Thoughts are Prey to Some Beast

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Drag City Bill Callahan page | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

If anyone in Edinburgh is at a loose end tonight, this is where you should be.  At half eight in the Voodoo Rooms Limbo will be launching the first volume of a series of Limbo Live albums.  Basically, they’ve taken the recordings from their weekly live shows and compiled a Best Of as something of a showcase, both of their work, and of all the new Scottish bands they’ve given a chance to over the course of the last year or so.

Honestly, I have no idea how they do it.  Three bands a week, every week, for over a year: that should be impossible.  The work they put in is impressive, and the encouragement that gives the local scene can’t be underestimated.  I’ve seen a number of superb bands for the first time by going along to Limbo.  The beer is cheap, the lineups are varied, the sound is phenomenal and all in all it’s invariably a good night out.

Things like this really are the engine room of a music scene.  They sit there and chug over reliably week after week, providing a platform not only for bands themselves, but also for other venues.  The Bowery, Cabaret Voltaire and Sneaky Pete’s are doing amazing work in improving the live scene in this town, but something like Limbo, which means that even during lean spells there is something good on, makes sure that everything keeps moving, that the audiences remain engaged and excited, until bands get back on the road again and the scene around the city picks up once more.

Tonight’s gig is going to be a massive great mish mash of as many groups represented on Limbo Live Vol. 1 as they can manage to pull together.  Everyone sets up at once and there’ll be a short, sharp collection of performances, rather than the standard, support-support-headline setup.  This is another thing I like about Limbo, actually.  Was anyone at their collaborative night with Canongait Books?  It was superb.  Poetry, readings and music all together in one night, and not really like much I’ve been to before – they really do try and innovate with their nights.

So please pop along and support them tonight, or go and buy the CD.  Dave and Andy are a pair of total fuckwits, but they are lovely blokes, and really important to the music scene in Edinburgh, so it would be good for them to get some love in return.

Zoey Van Goey – City is Exploding

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Isosceles – Get Your Hands Off

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Limbo on MySpace | Buy the CD from limbolive.co.uk

This is beautiful.  At times like a slightly more ethereal version of the Cave Singers, at times even evoking seventies British psych-folk, they even end up with spooky, reverby guitar growls reminiscent of the Low Lows from time to time.

It’s not an immediate hit, however.  This is the kind of album you have to ease yourself into with a few listens, I think.  The pace is very, very slow for the most part, and it leaves you prone to distraction as you listen.  The vocals are like some desert choirboy gone badly astray, which makes the excruciatingly slow washes of guitar even more threatening.

The dance between folk and low-fi indie is a well judged one, it has to be said.  The way the album slips back and forth between the two mirrors the way the layers of the songs build in gentle, yet insistent gusts as more and more tension is steadily added to the mix.  Dawn & Delta is a classic example.  It starts out at a barely conscious whisper, and builds to the most restrained of crescendoes, embellished with just a little guitar noodling which could have come from the guitar of Richard Thompson.  It is followed by Puget Sound, possibly the song most remimniscent of that sound on the whole album, switching gears just a little, after sounding more closely related to Americana for the first handful of songs.

Why is this important?  Well, it’s more to illustrate the richness of what’s going on here.  I honestly was in danger of dismissing this when I first heard, with a casual ‘all the same’ shrug.  The variety really is there, however, if you give it the chance to make itself known.  It would be a real shame to dismiss this record too easily, because it really doesn’t deserve it.

Dame Satan, incidentally, is the name of a bomber from the Second World War, in case you were wondering.  It is slightly misleading in a sense, but once you know the provenance then it fits, in its own way.  I like this band, and I look forward to hearing more.

Dame Satan – Suffering Daughter

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Dame Satan – Country Thief

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Ghost Mansion

Well because of the intervention of Homegame this post has been somewhat delayed, so apologies for that, so here we go.

Firstly a brief description of the circumstances.  A little while ago, London-based Winston’s Zen was the victim of another of those DMCA take-down hits.  Due to connections he was able to actually get through to the label at the source, Columbia Records, part of Sony BMG, and they invited him in to talk to them and suggested he bring along a couple of other bloggers and make something of a meeting out of it.  So last Thursday myself, Winston himself, Jamila from Fucking Dance and Tim from The Blue Walrus went along, the Sony people booked a table in a pub and we talked about stuff and drank ourselves into a stupour.

And what did we achieve?  Well honestly, I’d say not an awful lot, really.  We chatted, but I am not sure either side had much of a concrete idea of what we wanted to get out of the meeting, so it was little more than a start, I’d say.  Some thoughts, though: Read the rest of this entry »

As you might expect from the title, this is one ungodly clusterfuck of a podcast.  It was recorded well into the early hours of the morning with Dylan, Neil and DC who were all in the house by virtue of Homegame being imminent (happening already by the time you hear this) and the Meursault EP being in the final stages of completion.  DC stopped by the house on his way to Fife, Neil was around to put CDs into card envelopes and Dylan, er, just likes beer I think.

There’s was also some heinous Norweigan anus cheese being eaten as well.  Toffee-flavoured cheese.  Fucking toffee-flavoured fucking cheese.  Honestly, it is the most disgusting substance known to man and looks just a little bit like brown plasticine.

Anyway, please don’t expect anything coherent or, frankly, even anything listenable.  Four of us sat around and bellowed incoherently into a microphone for a couple of hours, and frankly that’s exactly what it sounds like.  There are some good songs, though, and some really good new music but, erm, honestly you might want to skip the talky bits.  Actually, you know the first time anyone talks any sense whatsoever on this podcast?  The last link.  Really.  We get drunker and drunker and more incoherent, and then right at the end there’s an utterly shocking outbreak of common sense.

Toadcast #65 – The Clustercast

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01. Eels – Fresh Blood (02.27)
02. Jeffrey Lewis – Don’t Be Upset (10.10)
03. Slim Twig – Young Hussies (17.07)
04. Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows (21.04)
05. Dame Satan – Suffering Daughter (33.03)
06. Eagle Winged Palace – Hand of Doom (36.21)
07. Arab Strap – Fucking Little Bastards (43.49)
08. Graffiti Island – Wolfguy (53.47)
09. Graham Coxon – In the Morning (66.12)

Yeah, Sweden, fuck you with your pleasant way of life and beautiful scenery, and legendary ladyfolk and being good at hockey and all that shit.

Well, no, that’s not what I meant by Fuck You, Sweden.  I’m sure it’s very nice there.  What I meant was to express was incredible frustration at that fact that for some inexplicable fucking reason, my computer thinks I am in Sweden.  There must be an obvious setting somewhere, but for something so simple, I can’t seem to find it.

Who cares, I hear you say, but actually it’s quite annoying. I can go straight to Google UK, for example, but when I type anything into that little search box on the top right of the browser window, it gives me the results in Swedish, and tries to send me to Swedish websites (no, not that sort of Swedish website).  This is merely annoying, but in writing yesterday’s Mimicking Birds post, I was actually sent to MySpace Sweden, for fuck’s sake.

Erm, anyway, I am writing this from the 6am train up from London after last night’s chat with Sony which was, erm, pleasant.  I am not entirely certain quite what was achieved, exactly, and I am wary of becoming part of the circle of mutual backscratching which is an inevitability for an insider in any industry.  But it was a fun evening, and it was really nice to meet Jamila, Tim and Brendan.  And it was really nice for Brendan to let me crash at his house.  As good as it was to see people at a big label in the UK start taking bloggers seriously, however, and as nice an evening as it was, I can’t help but feel that once we start going out for drinks on a major label tab we become part of the problem for the music industry, not part of the solution.

That picture at the top of the page was contributed by my friend Dev from New York, incidentally.  He does Blog Fresh Radio, which seems like it might be in the process of becoming Hype Machine radio, but I’m not entirely certain.  I’ll ask him next time we speak.  But he’s indeed right, this week’s five are going to be ‘mint’.  Gosh I’m street.

1. Oddest flavour of ice cream you’ve seen.
2. Name of a herb which sounds quite cool – just as a word, not the comestible itself.
3. Is frozen yoghurt any good?  Better than ice cream?  Just different?
4. Toppings – evil or splendid.
5. An ice cream-based anecdote from your childhood.

These five songs are all promo mp3s from recently or imminently released albums.  Isn’t that nice.  Actually, the St. Vincent one sounds rather good, I think. And My Latest Novel – can’t wait for that one.

My Latest Novel – All In All In All is All

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St. Vincent – The Strangers

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Maximo Park – Wraithlike

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hysteric

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Eulogies – The Fight (I’ve Come to Like)

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Campfires and Battlefields, apart from being pretty much the only commenter on this site who isn’t an out-of-control internet freak , is one of my most consistent musical scouts.  I don’t get an awful lot of emails from him recommending bands, but they are always, without fail, worth paying attention to (Samantha Crain, Samamidon, Felice Brothers – actually, reading that, what the fuck am I doing writing this?  I feel shamed).

Anyway, he recently put me onto a band called the Mimicking Birds, who are creating something of a fuss around the Blogosphere at the moment, seeing as Modest Mouse recently plucked them from nowhere to support them on tour.  ‘Who?’ we all said at once. They’re actually signed to Glacial Pace, the label run by Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock, but apart from that there’s not much I can tell you.

Nate Lacy, whose project this is, is from Portland in Oregon.  Yes, another one from Portland, Oregon.  I think they must have musical greenhouses hidden in the hills around that bloody city, secretly breeding some sort of indie-folk master race, because fucking hell if there isn’t some amazing music coming out of that part of the world.  Even now that it’s become a cliche, they’re still at it.  I want to move to Portland (as if they needed another record label specialising in agit-folk).

Anyway, this stuff is a kind of thick, comforting broth, rendered friendly and contemplative by the use of spoken word intros (in the case of New Doomsdays) or samples of the sea breaking on the shore.  This makes the music sound like an evening in on the Oregon coast on a misty, rainy afternoon in the Autumn.  I know that’s an overly flowery analogy, but that sort of stuff really does take away the urgency from music, and ground it in something altogether stiller and more domestic.

It’s still mysterious though.  The high, harmonised vocals are quite ghostly, and the plucked guitar rolls gently through the songs, adding to that sense of warmth.  It’s like seeing a ghost, but one of a loved family member which for some reason you find more comforting than scary.

The quality of the music aside, it’s really reassuring to see people like Isaac Brock doing things like this.  It reminds you that a lot of people at the top of the industry really are still music fans.  In this jumpy era of lawsuit and obituary it’s nice to be reminded of that.

Mimicking Birds – New Doomsdays

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Mimicking Birds – Home & Somewhere Else

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MySpace | Other mp3s

This is something of a spectral take on the Gothic folk mini-genre, crammed full of the sort of Brothers Grimm meets the darkest of American folk tales kind of  imagery which we’ve come to expect from this sort of thing.  I’ve pigeonholed it fairly mercilessly there, but I don’t mean to imply that you can nail this EP to the mast with a single glib sentence, because there is more to it than that.

It’s only four songs long and each song has its own character.  The first track, Hand of Doom, perhaps fits the above description the neatest, but subsequently each track deviates from this model in its own little way.  The Ballad of the Red-Legged Hawk’s Fountain is dominated by a wonderful female vocal, which teases with sweetness, but remains just that little bit elusive.  The song itself has something of a folk-soul lullaby feel to it, which suits the overall mood of the album: lovely, but slightly unnerving at times.

Mansion on the Hill changes the game again slightly, being the poppiest of the songs, with an almost jaunty little piano riff twinkling away behind the drifting mist of ghostly vocals.  It is, as with the rest of the EP, a familiar sound, but one which I like and it still seems to me to retain a pretty solid character of its own.  As beginnings go, this strikes me as a very promising one, and with a full album on the way, I am confident we’ll be hearing more of these guys quite soon.

Eagle Winged Palace – Mansion on the Hill

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Park the Van Records

You know, for once I think the religious right in America have actually put their finger on something which I find difficult to argue with.  Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media, of whom Song, by Toad is a staunch supporter, has written this insightful little piece for Christian News Wire called “Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murder”.  In it he points out the obvious fact that a decline in Judeo-Christian morality (actually, I think he means Judeo-Christian-Islamo morality because the three religions are all basically offshoots of the same sapling) has led to the permissiveness in society which leads us to tolerate both the marrying of ‘people’ of the same sex and the mass murder of innocent children.

I think it goes with out saying that knowing that our brief time on Earth is all you have, rather than having a nice safe spot in heaven to look forward to when it’s over, would lead you to be cavalier about human life.  Basically, the secular Darwinian values of modern society encourage you to go and kill people, whereas no-one with a safe knowledge in a neverending afterlife of bliss would be at all tempted to be even remotely careless with the seventy or eighty odd years they might have to spend on Earth in advance of it.

The clear, rational crux of his argument is expressed beautifully in the following paragraph:

“This secular value system is also reflected in the ‘sexual revolution,’ which is the driving force behind the push for ‘gay marriage;’ and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly.”

I don’t think anyone would argue that gay marriage and the sexual revolution are clearly responsible for abortions, divorce, rape and abuse of children, and the trafficking in slaves.  Gay marriage has been on the agenda for the last twenty years, at most, and is only legal in a tiny number of states in the US and other countries around the world.  Yet even in this short period, rape, the slave trade, abortion and the sexual abuse of children have all clearly skyrocketed out of control.

Only a staunch Darwinian, like Hitler, could try and argue that the world is undoubtedly a safer place now than it has ever been.  Because don’t let the Nazi definition of a woman’s role in society: “Kinder, Kirche, Kueche” (Children, Church, Kitchen) fool you, they were self-evidently atheist liberal elitists.  Allowing rationality into the law and into society in place of obedience to the dogma of the Judeo-Christian(-Islamo) values system on which the United States was founded will inevitably result in a terrifying slide into anarchy, plagues, and the rebirth of Sodom and Gomorrah in the 21st Century.

The United States is the most religious of all the first world nations, and has the highest levels of violent crime, which proves conclusively the need for more religious guidance in the law-making and social policy of developed nations.  The fact that there is absolutely no correlation between the contents of the two doesn’t mean that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights weren’t clearly founded on the Bible and the Ten Commandments, as David Limbaugh recently made clear.

And if anyone needs any more proof of the direct link between gay marriage and mass murder, I offer you this little personal anecdote.  I have now attended a couple of gay weddings, and since then, every single time I hear this kind of babbling, incoherent rhetoric I am overwhelmed with the desire to hunt and kill absolutely any of the retards who take this sort of shit even vaguely seriously.  So there you go.  Maybe Peters had a point after all.

The Magnetic Fields – When My Boy Walks Down the Street

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The Ballet – The Face of Everything

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Billy Bragg – Sexuality (Live)

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