Evening, Toadlings.  There’s really very little on in Edinburgh this week that I would personally be up for, and the one gig I want to see is taking place when I am bastarding well out of town, on Thursday evening.  Marina & the Diamonds are playing Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms this week, but honestly I am not all that convinced I have to confess.  The only thing I really want to go to this week is the Jesus H. Foxx EP launch at the Bowery on Thursday night, but I’m in fucking London aren’t I, so I can’t bloody well go.

Actually, the reason I’m in London is rather interesting, now that I mention it.  Sony contacted a few of us UK music bloggers and invited us to meet with them to discuss the internet in general and how to interact with bloggers.   I am not sure if this was motivated by the fuss made over the Glasvegas DMCA fiasco, but I am hoping that they at least found that a sufficiently negative and unnecessary situation to be worth avoiding in future.

Now, quite how productive this meeting is likely to be is something which I have my doubts about.  Talking to bloggers is a little like herding cats; we are all amateurs and all have our own ideas about what we are both individually and collectively.  So beyond serving as an easy focus group for Sony, I am not sure quite what can be made of this little get together.  Mind you, just reading our blogs serves as a pretty enormous source of free information anyway, so I don’t know what else we can hope to add to things.  I’m interested though.  I don’t particularly want to be seen as some renegade, because I don’t see myself that way at all.  I actually think what I am doing is pretty much completely legit and fairly mainstream in terms of intentions and ambitions and so on, so anything we can do to stop people looking at music bloggers as some sort of guerilla criminal underclass bent on bringing down the system is good.  Frankly all I want is to be left in peace to do what the hell I want, with some sort of civillised system in place for resolving differences when we all inevitably tread on one another’s toes at some point.

Fat fucking chance, I know.

In any case, I will be interested to have the discussion.  I genuinely want to know what they have to say about things like the DMCA, the semi-legal nature of music blogs, their approach to teh internetz in general, stuff like that.  I’ll write all about it on the train back on Friday morning, so hopefully it will be an interesting enough meeting to make a good post out of.  I’m really not interested in point-scoring here, or in finding ammunition for the slagging off of Sony, but I think you know me well enough by now to know that I will make my points fairly stubbornly and am unlikely to be swayed by sleight of hand.  Should make for an interesting couple of hours anyway.

Oh, and did I mention Homegame?

Thursday 16th April 2009: Jesus H. Foxx & Art Fag at the Bowery.

The Jesus H. Foxx EP is something I am hugely excited about hearing in its entirety.  I’ve heard bits and pieces here and there, but I am holding off until I can slap the whole thing on, lie back with a gin, and turn it up nice and loud.  My instinct suggests that we may just have a band on the verge of a breakthrough year on our hands, and I hope I am right.  Art Fag, for those of you interested, is an experimental electronic project by a certain pair of miscreants called Neil Pennycook and Chris Bryant.  I wouldn’t miss it if I were you.
Jesus H. Foxx – Trying to Be Good

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Art Fag – Nakhla Dog

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Friday 17th April 2009: The Virgins & the Chew Lips at Cabaret Voltaire.

Despite being extremely fashionable, these slightly dancey, slightly punky, slightly sparky bands sound like they have some promise.  I nearly, nearly reviewed the Chew Lips material when it was sent through to me a few months ago – maybe almost a year actually – so I would be quite interested to go along to this.  Were I not at Homegame of course.
The Virgins – Fernando Pando

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Edit:

Saturday 18th April 2009: Findo Gask, Come On Gang & Dupec play Trampoline at the Wee Red Bar.

Apologies for missing this the first time, that was careless of me, but it should be a really good gig.  Findo Gask are a really excellent band, who I am really keen to see again, and who I am really keen to see release more music.  Their last couple of singles have been superb, and their, erm, experimental disco pop laments – could you call them that? – somehow hit absolutely home, as far as I am concerned.  Hit the nail right between the ears, so to speak.
Findo Gask – Va Va Va

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It’s been a longish week, but believe me this weekend is going to be worse.  I am offering up my poor old Volvo for sale, which breaks my embittered little alcoholic heart, so it does.  I am going to miss that car, we’ve had some wonderful times pottering about in her and I am going to miss the silly old girl, really I am.

This is a joint podcast, seeing as how I was in the pub with Dylan and the poor whelp seemed to have nowhere else to go, I invited him back to the house to add his own particular brand of incoherent nonsense to this week’s podcast.  Because lazy racial stereotyping is something of a stock in trade around here, I find myself making several lame attempts to bring up Welshness and national identity and all that pish, but ultimately this is just two drunk people chattering about music.

More or less the usual, then.

Toadcast #64 – The Welshcast

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01. Billy Bragg & Kirsty MacColl – A New England (05.12)
02. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Miniature Kingdoms (14.54)
03. Manic Street Preachers – From Despair to Where (18.53)
04. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Fight for History (27.46)
05. Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (35.50)
06. Drunk Country – The Rain That Almost Drove the Windows In (44.44)
07. Meursault – William Henry Miller (49.34)
08. Super Furry Animals – Into the Night (57.24)
09. Supergrass – Moving (65.15)

Rampant Chutney Consumerism and Tart, two of the most entertaining and appreciated commenters on this site, have both just discovered Clem Snide.  This is fucking amazingly good news, as far as I am concerned because both Clem Snide themselves and Eef Barzelay, their front man, have produced some of my favourite music of all time.  Consequently, I have dedicated this Friday’s Five to helping people find even more Clem Snide which they might love.

Clem Snide, after roughly a five year hiatus, are back together again and released Hungry Bird earlier this year.  So what better way to celebrate a Biblical holiday than by celebrating the work of a nice Jewish boy who has recently, in a manner of speaking, been reborn.  I mean, it’s more appropriate than the way Christians insist on celebrating it.  In the words of Bill Hicks: “I’ve read the Bible.  I can’t find the words bunny or chocolate anywhere in that fucking book.”  Still, given that we are slowly divesting ourselves of the boring Christian festivals (When actually is Lent, anyone?  Actually, don’t answer that, I really don’t care.) and trying very hard to pretend that the fun Pagan ones were actually Christian all along (Christmas – Yay! for pressies and massive over-indulgence) I figure that the eggs and bunnies and all that shit might as well be suffered to hang around a little bit longer.

Besides, I have a menstruating woman’s taste for chocolate.

Erm, quite how that leads us onto a five for this Friday is beyond me.  On the subject of things that come in fives, incidentally, this weekend we are putting together the new five song Meursault acoustic EP.  It is morose as hell, fucking unbelievably good, and will be available at live shows and from the Toad Records site, starting at Homegame next weekend.

Please de-lurk and say hello.  Rhian, Corrie and Becky have been very welcome additions to the fountain of inane blather in which we indulge on a daily weekly basis around these parts, so if you’ve never commented before, why not make today the day to start.  After all, it’s Easter, so this week’s five are likely to be a little quieter than usual.  Is that a good thing?  I’m not sure. Oh, and no talking nonsense until you’ve filled in your five either, that’s just cheating.

1. Eggs – pickled, chocolate, scrambled, hard-boiled, devilled…?  Name your poison.
2. What’s cuter, bunnies or kittens?  Should we start a campaign for the Easter Kitten?  The Easter Mongoose?
3. How many Easter eggs does it take to make you feel just that little bit sick.
4. You know, they’re making salmon fish fingers these days.  Salmon really is too cheap.  I remember when it used to be a treat, now it’s everywhere.  What’s your example?
5. Favourite moment in Life of Brian.

Clem Snide – Nick Drake Tape (From You Were a Diamond)

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Clem Snide – The Dairy Queen (From Your Favourite Music)

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Clem Snide – Let’s Explode (From Ghot of Fashion)

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Clem Snide – All Green (From Soft Spot)

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Clem Snide – Tiny European Cars (From The End of Love)

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And, just for shits and giggles and because ‘five’ is more of a guideline than a rule, here’s some of Eef Barzelay’s solo stuff, for your enjoyment.

Eef Barzelay – Ballad of Bitter Honey (From Bitter Honey)

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Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree (From Lose Big)

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Well I’ve written about so many famous bands this week you’d think I was aspiring to be Pitchfork, but fear not, I’ll always find the smaller fish more interesting, and it’s about time we got back to that way of thinking on the pages of Toad.  Apart from the new Camera Obscura album, of course.  Oh, and Elvis Perkins.  And Bill Callahan.  Anyway…

Manson Family Picnic are a deft bunch and this is a short but brilliantly assembled little record.  There are lots of nods to neat little pigeonholes in this music, but the band somehow manage to dodge through all of them and produce an EP which, whilst it contains many familiar elements, is actually consistently surprising.

What I mean by that is this: each song seems to be born from a slightly different indie folk sub-genre, so if you only heard one of them you could easily type cast the whole record, yet if you listen to the whole thing it is not quite so simple.

Opener The Mistakes harks back to early REM (the melody seems like it could be straight from Green), yet the arrangement is still a lot thinner and more garage folk than that.  Shit Diggers could be related to the gothic folk-stomp of the likes of the Builders & the Butchers.  Later in the album they veer towards jug and then towards shoegaze indie, believe it or not, albeit played by an errant barn dance band.

They seemed to haveflirted with all the touchstones of the last five years of indie folk, without becoming unhealthily beholden to any single one.  It is, as I said, very deftly done, and a very enjoyable record.

Manson Family Picnic – Shit Diggers

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Manson Family Picnic – Kentucky Waltz

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from the band’s online shop

These chaps were introduced to me by my friend DC who does The Waiting Room radio show on WOXY.  I’ve been slow to review it for some reason, more to do with the backlog in my ‘to listen’ folder than the quality of the album.

It didn’t quite grab me immediately, I have to confess, but I think that’s because I tend to listen to things at quite a rate these days and the first time I heard it thought ‘ah, scruffy acoustic blues rock’ and possibly ceased to pay proper attention.  The most obvious way to describe this, I think, would be to make a couple of quick and easy (or lazy) comparisons: an acoustic version of the early era Stones style or, alternatively, a garage blues band who left their amps behind and who harbour a sneaking admiration for Phil Spector.

It’s pretty successful though, I have to say.  The boy/girl harmonies and extremely loose playing style work well together, and the occasionally wonky additional instruments add a fine helping of charm.  I still think there’s a little work to be done to break away from the constraints of what is a very familiar style, but I am not sure if it is the band or myself who has most need to break away from their  assumptions.  Whatever way you cut the cake, though, I must say there is a lot of real promise here.  I look forward to hearing what they get up to in future.

The Dutchess & the Duke – You Can Tell the Truth, Now

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The Dutchess & the Duke – Ship Made of Stone

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I didn’t think I liked this all that much, stopped listening to it for a few weeks, and then started again in preparation for writing this review and found myself thinking that actually, perhaps I did really like it.  Mind you, their first album was a bit like that, now that I think back.

There may be nothing here to quite capture the sparkle of Frankie’s Gun or the magic of Wonderful Life, but then it’s largely impossible to recapture the excitement of falling in love with a great band for the first time.  Maybe that coloured my first few listens, but having taken the break I was able to clear those particular sinuses and listen almost with fresh ears.

The result?  Well, this is really an excellent record.  I’ve been talking to Campfires & Battlefields, one of my most long-term readers, about it and he likened the feel of it to Tom Waits’ Bloody Money or Alice.  Personally, I’d go for Alice – there’s certainly a gorgeously intimate spell in the middle of this album which has a similarly cossetting atmosphere to that record.

When they get upbeat it changes somewhat, though.  Run Chicken Run, Penn Station and (the not particularly brilliant) Memphis Flu are more rooted in stomping Americana than most Tom Waits material – in fact the latter couple are almost dance music, after a fashion.  I love this record, but wouldn’t say that they’ve pushed their sound all that much though, so whilst if you liked the last one I’d recommend it, if you didn’t then I doubt this will be the one to change your mind.

The Felice Brothers – Penn Station

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The Felice Brothers – Ambulance Man

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

I sort of have two reviews for this album: one from a music fan, which I am, and one from a ‘reviewer’, which I’m not really but bear with me.

The music fan, simply, says that this is pretty rubbish, really.  Stodgy, lumpen, and with the odd exception devoid of tunes.  It’s not lovable.  It may be an album you can respect for its ambition and all that sort of stuff but when I stick an album on the stereo I want some sort of sense of satisfaction or enjoyment or something, and all I feel with this is the urge to kick them in the bollocks and tell them to just bloody well stop poncing around and get on with it.

Put simply, whilst I presume it is very high on intellectual achievement, the instinctive, artistic side – the side which irrespective of anything gets you tapping your feet and humming the tunes – is thinner than Calista Flockhart on the last day of Lent.

If I am trying to be a music critic then there’s a lot to praise.  The exploring of themes, the over-arching concept, the boldness, the bravery of forging on into new territory when you could just trot out some more Neutral Milky alt-folk; all these things are to be praised.  In fact they are to be really loudly praised.  The proggy guitar stuff, the shameless embracing of the idea of a concept album, this all requires more than a little bit of balls, particularly when aloof irony is the chief currency in the world of the hipster, so I really do salute them for their creativity and their artistic integrity.

I want to like this album, really I do, and I do respect it.  But music is for enjoying and at this, I am afraid, it fails miserably.

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)

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The Decemberists – The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

People do not seem to love this album very much, and I am slightly surprised.  Mind you, I am no more than a casual Bonnie Prince Billy fan, so I guess I just take his albums lightly, pop ‘em on the stereo and see what I enjoy.  In this case, I’d say, the answer is ‘most of it’.

Maybe it’s because I have no great emotional attachment to most of his previous stuff that I can allow the cod-Country-Gospel to wash over me without being too bothered, because there are some moments of fairly heavy-handed pastiche on this album.  If, however, you accept the change of tone – it’s positively Playschool compared to the glacial stillness of Master & Everyone – then this is an enjoyable record.

I can see why it is disliked though.  Various red flag instruments, including bongos and a saxophone, make appearances in quite a few places, and the arrangements are never restrained enough to allow the songs to breathe properly.  I’d be very interested to hear this record played with a minimal band, to see how the songs stand up.  As it is, it’s almost impossible to tease them out.

But, all that aside, if you want a lovely, melodic alt-country album to wash over you and enjoy then this will do the trick nicely.  I would rather he not continue too much further down this particular path, but at the moment I am quite happy to go along and see where he gets to.

Bonnie Prince Billy – My Life’s Work

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Bonnie Prince Billy – I Won’t Ask Again

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It’s odd that sometimes an album sounds just like you expect it to, and it’s a good thing.  Then at others, it’s a bad thing.  What’s the difference?  Well, no matter, but I love this album despite not being at all surprised by it.  It’s more cheerful than we’re used to perhaps, somehow cosier than earlier work, and musically a little more upbeat as well.  Optimist vs. the Silent Alarm is almost jaunty, unless you listen too closely to the lyrics.

If ever there were miserable songs rendered indulgently nourishing by the richness of their performance then the songs of Owen Ashworth are they.  Something about the unhurried quality of his delivery, the trademark twin-chiming piano, or the deep reassurance of his voice means that no matter how bleak and heartbreaking his lyrics, there is something reassuring and optimistic about the feelings which they generate.

With time, the arrangements seem to be becoming a little more intricate.  Not intricate, perhaps – maybe just a little deeper and more layered.  The gradual inclusion of intruments beyond the casiotone hum is gorgeous.  The two make the same lovely counterpoint to one another as does the occasional female duet with Ashworth’s own deep thrum.

I sometimes hear what the Mountain Goats might have been, when I listen to Casiotone.  That’s a random aside, but do you know what I mean?  They seem to be kindred spirits in my head, even though the music is very different.  For some reason, apart from the Sunset Tree, the Mountain Goats never quite clicked for me, but despite it’s carefully modest scope, this album really does.  It is balanced and confident, and it almost sounds like he knew from the start that this was going to be a bloody brilliant record.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm (When The Saints Go Marching In)

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Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Man o’ War

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Tomlab

You know, it’s fucking ridiculous, but I am not sure what the overwhelming emotion of this post is for me.  It’s either warm appreciation of Paul Haig for his support and attitude towards a good friend of mine, or it’s sheer frustrated annoyance that this kind of thing is necessary in the first place.  Sadly, I think it might be the latter.

To explain, a while back my friend JC from the Vinyl Villain posted about Paul Haig, former Josef K frontman, and possibly the coolest individual from the last time Edinburgh had anything like this vibrant a music scene.  JC is a big fan, and was absolutely delighted that Paul and his management got in touch to thank him for his post.  Then, the next day, he was absolutely gutted to find that his post had been deleted by Google after three Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints had been made against it within about five minutes.

Now, given that the only people with any right to make that complaint had already been in touch with JC to thank him for the post, who the fuck made these infringement complaints?  Over-zealous legal interns at some obscure distribution company in the States?  Someone with a personal grudge against JC filing nuisance complaints?  Of course, this is very reason why the DMCA is such comically bad law.  Which corrupt clowns drew it up and then signed it into fucking law I don’t know, but they should really be made to walk the streets of the world in nothing but a fucking frilly tutu for their craven idiocy.

Google, when they receive these complaints are obliged to remove the allegedly infringing material immediately.  They are then legally not liable for any damage caused to the victim of the complaint’s business by virtue of a potentially frivolous complaint.  Now, Google don’t merely revert the offending post to ‘draft’ mode or something sensible like that, or lock it, or anything, so that the actual merits of the complaint can be ascertained.  No, they just delete it forever, and getting a response from a counter-claim is like pulling fucking teeth, despite what their terms and conditions would seem to suggest.  They presumably have no desire to actually examine the veracity of these complaints because it could potentially cost them a fucking fortune.  As it is, this job has been outsourced to Chilling Effects, which is basically run by a team of volunteers – their backlog may be as bad as a year at the moment.

This is a fucking disgrace, and it is something we should all be very worried about, because it signifies a very powerful and very scary change in how the law works: guilt by accusation.  In this situation the actual factual accuracy of the accusation is irrelevant – a blogger’s work can be destroyed simply by someone making an accusation, irrespective of the truth.  Remind you of anything?  Yes, another fucking diabolical piece of legislation which the big media companies are trying to jam up our arses at the moment: three strikes and you’re out internet disconnections. The European Court has ruled against this nonsense on the basis that the internet is becoming a fundamental utility in the Twenty-First Century, but they didn’t mention the simple fact that accusation does not mean guilt, and that this is supposed to be the very cornerstone of a civillised legal system.  And the French government is pressing ahead with their plans to implement it nevertheless.

So what are we left with?  Feudalism, basically.  Guilty unless you are prepared to take on a massive corporation in the courts of law and risk total ruin and bankruptcy.  Justice by might, rather than right.  Brilliant.  Vic from Muruch is the only person I know of so far who has been brave enough to actually fight any of this, primarily because she knew for absolute certainty that she was in the right, because Muruch is a 100% legal music blog, but for most people they simply submit to the legal hatchet jobs and either soldier on or end up quitting.  I can’t stress how brave Vic’s actions were, however.  People with houses and families don’t want to be on the receiving end of the music industry’s famously ludicrous damages claims, recently upheld by Barack fucking Obama thank you very much.  And once law becomes about accusation rather than guilt the world could become a very scary place indeed.  It is already happening in other fields, and we should be very, very worried about this.

So a big thank you to Paul Haig and his management for their support during this bloody nonsense.  Please show your appreciation for their efforts in putting out a press release highlighting this silliness, as well as making Reason available for free download as a statement of intent.  Feel free to show it by buying something from here, for instance.  Once the artists and the fans turn on this fucking rotten law who are we left with who will speak up for it?  Ah yes, the grasping whores who made a merry living for years fleecing both of us.  Never let anyone tell you that this is about encouraging art or protecting artists.  It’s just another major industry trying to throw their weight around as their self-importance and onanistic sense of personal entitlement consistently fail to be matched by reality.

Paul Haig – Reason

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Paul Haig – Let’s Face the Music and Dance

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