Song, by Toad

Oh dear god almighty I have a hangover.  Fucking bastard music people.  Last night there was gigging and drinking and wandering the streets of a most balmy and pleasant Edinburgh with an assortment of miscreants and other ne’er-do-wells.  We saw Honeytrap and Meursault play at Sneaky Pete’s – I was recording this podcast, hence late for X-Lion Tamer, sorry to both Ed and Tony – and it was fucking amazing.

And after that there was drinking.  Fuck me there was lots of drinking.  And then I came home and went into the local all night shop and purchased a couple of steaks for late-night snacking purposes, and was harassed by a bunch of young lads when I came out.  Not harassed in a bad way, but I think I was asked to buy them some fags or something like that.  Anyhow, the conversation… erm, well I’m not really sure how the conversation went, because I was fucking hammered, but at some point the van came up, which was parked just along the road.  So, ah, for some slightly bizarre reason I ended up with five high school lads and me sat in the van with the stereo up fucking loud – so loud apparently that you could hear it all the way down the street.  Or, at least, so Mrs. Toad tells me.  Because at some point she came home from wherever it was she was out drinking and hopped in as well.

So, after a little van-based rocking out, they came back into the house for a bit and Mrs. Toad played them Motorhead and The Sex Pistols and The Wedding Present so fucking loud the windows shook.  Funnily enough, these nice, polite lads kept insisting throughout that we should just let them know when we were bored and we would like them to go.  Such nice, polite boys!  I think one of them even did the dishes.  I didn’t want to have to try and explain what a couple of total fucking bozos they were dealing with, but erm, yeah, that was our Friday night.  Weird, huh?  I think we went to bed at about five, eventually.  And now to record a couple of Toad Sessions, at least one with a very, very hung over band.

Toadcast #71 – The Tough Lovecast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Belle & Sebastian – Take Your Carriage Clock & Shove It (03.46)
02. Adam Balbo – Debating a Time Metaphor (07.16)
03. The Sequins – The Usual Delights (14.05)
04. Situationists – A Cold Front (16.31)
05. Blur – Out of Time (23.02)
06. New Ruins – Symptoms (32.37)
07. The Laurel Collective – Hindenburg Mile High Club (41.26)
08. The Lovely Eggs – Tyrannosaurus Rex for Christmas (45.07)
09. The Empty Set – A Challenge to Copernicus (49.34)
10. Honeytrap – Mussolini’s Son (55.29)

Fookin’ marvellous, not only is it Friday but this weekend is supposed to be stunning and there are all sorts of fun and capers planned between now and Monday.  Firstly, tonight Honeytrap – one of my favourite bands – are playing Sneaky Pete’s with Meursault, and I am really looking forward to it.

Then tomorrow we have a marathon double Toad Session day of mentalism, with Found coming in at about two in the afternoon and Honeytrap at six.  It is going to be, I think it’s safe to say, fucking hectic and probably very drunken, but the stuff we get out of it should be absolutely fucking amazing.   It’ll no doubt take some time to get through all of the stuff we generate, but I think it will be worth it for a couple of brilliant sessions.

So, while I go out and find somewhere to have a couple of pints in the sun over lunch, please take this opportunity to come out of the shadows and have your say.  Fridays are de-lurking amnesty threads, so if you’ve never chipped in before, why not make today the time you pop your cherry.  Fill in your five and then talk total pish with everyone else for the rest of the afternoon, whilst you’re supposed to be working hard but are secretly just waiting for 5pm so you can bugger off down the pub.

1. Most sinister-looking animal.
2. Favourite movie villain.
3. What goes best on toast?
4. Favourite cocktail.
5. Best place to have a cup of tea.

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – The Summer’s Been Good From the Start

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Shivaree – Reseda Casino

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mark Eitzel – Move On Up

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Come Ons – Strangelove

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rufus Wainright – One Man Guy

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mrs. Toad likes these guys, so they must be good.  I am joking, but only partially; for my midget companion to lift her head and break a lifelong habit of treating my musical adventures with total and utter disdain happens very rarely, and when it does she tends to be onto something so I take notice.  She’s sort of a populism radar, I suppose.

Linfinity have finished recording a full length album, apparently, but shuffling through their various web stuffs there’s little sign of when or where we can expect it.  If the four songs which are available for our perusal at the moment are anything to go by then we are in for something of an eclectic surprise.  Holy Rain is reminiscent of a couple of things I’ve heard recently: Glasgow’s excellent The Seventeenth Century, and a more Eastern European relation of Kill It Kid.

Splendid, it is tempting to think, another lovely indie folk ensemble inspired by music from a little farther afield than their own country.  They may be good at it, but that would hardly be a new approach, would it.  Further listening, however, muddies the waters somewhat.  Molly Mar of Rome is a far smoother affair, more of a piano ballad, occasionally railroaded by the other instincts within the band, but building to a big, bombastic Radio2 crescendo.  Choo Choo Train to Venice brings a start which could easily come from The Clash covering an Elvis Presely tune, and then settles into a riff which reminds me somewhat oddly of Morrissey’s brilliant song You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side.

So what kind of a band are these guys and what can we expect from the album?  Fuck knows, frankly, but large chunks of this sound incredibly interesting and I am really looking forward to hearing it.

Linfinity – Holy Rain

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Linfinity – Choo Choo Train to Venice

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | MySpace

I don’t think I really hyped this album as much as a lot of the popular press, so perhaps I don’t have to feel quite as guilty about the subsequent letdown.  I did like their preceding EP Chunk of Change though – in fact I liked it an awful lot – but to re-read that review is to perhaps understand why I find this album so disappointing.  Here are some quotes:

“It’s just on the fringes of being way too electronic and frantic for me, and that atonal female wail seems like it’s daring me to call the whole thing tuneless garbage.”

“That distant female vocal, once you’ve adjusted, is really nice despite sometimes sounding like it was recorded in the middle of a football pitch on a mobile phone.”

“There isn’t an easy, pleasing sheen to this and I think that, as well as the satisfying, comfortable beat keeps me happy.”

Well, therein lies the problem with this full length release.  It’s smooth, electronic disco-pop, and it’s shit.  Previously, what I liked about this band was that off-kilter aspect to the music: the lurches and stumbles, which are almost entirely gone now. Where once there was “a less irritating Scissor Sisters”, here there is piss-poor disco pastiche band, whose eighties ‘do-dooo’ laser synth noises and other such tacky, cliched moments sound so needlessly selloptaped on top of the songs that they could be a five-year-old experimenting with the weird noise buttons on their keyboard for the first time.

So I am disappointed.  Did you get that yet?  I was, whilst not frothing with excitement, really rather looking forward to this album and now it’s here and it’s crap.  Remember MGMT releasing the excellent, edgy Time to Pretend (now annoyingly over-played, but it’s still a good song)?  And remember the incredibly soft, camp disco bobbins the rest of that album was?  Well Passion Pit have managed the exact same trick, just spread across one really promising EP and subsequent, spongy, lifeless album.

Passion Pit – Make Light

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Passion Pit – The Reeling (Really, truly awful, and the epitome of what is wrong with this record.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

This album really is strange.  Largely, it’s a gorgeously spooky indie folk album with plenty of snarl and threat to it, and then occasionally it disappears off into pretty much garage rock territory, cutting up rough with the guitars.  Lead vocalist Adrienne Hatkin has a quavering, ragged edge to her voice which can go from lovely Michelle Shocked cooing tones to angry, lupine howls at the drop of a hat, adding to the surprise when they do change gears.

Shadow, for example, is an angry, punky song full of growling blues.  One song later, Biology is a fragile piano lament more akin to a disturbed take on the likes of Cocorosie or even Beth Orton.  Next up is a borderline-apocalyptic accordion line with a thudding percussion undercurrent, which slowly morphs into something more comforting when the brass makes an appearance.  In other words, this album is weird, wonderful and all over the place.

That’s a large part of what makes it so good, of course.  I will confess that there are times when the shifting about causes me to lose my grip on it a little, however, and there are one or two moments where I find her voice a little too much.  This tend to be largely on the more rollicking garage rocky songs, but then there are plenty of times when I think it’s bloody gorgeous, so maybe it’s more to do with the style of the music at those moments rather than the actual vocal.  In fact, the garage rock elements of this are definitely my least favourite aspect of the album, but they do play a crucial role in offsetting everything else, so it would be foolish to wish them away.

Adrienne herself was apparently involved in an embryonic incarnation of Portland’s band of mental geniuses The Builders & the Butchers, and you can hear plenty of their hellfire and brimstone attitude to folk music stalking this album.  Autopilot do seem to have more of a tendency to slow things down to a simmer though, but when they do so there’s always the threat of it all kicking off once more, and that underlying promise is one of the best things about this record.

Autopilot is for Lovers – Whale Belly

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Autopilot is for Lovers – Come Now

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | Buy from Bladen County Records

This is a straighforward, Americana-flavoured indie rock album.  And it’s very good.  There’s something of a Western aspect to the roll of the lyrics – almost like a desert album accidentally fallen into the hands of a city indie band.  There is also some pretty lonesome fiddle screeching going on at times, squarely in Spaghetti Western territory, but whilst they flirt with this aesthetic, they never seem to quite give themselves over to it entirely.

Apparently their previous album, Are We Not Horses, was something of a smash hit amongst the discerning hipsters of the internet, but I’ve never heard it, myself.  This means I don’t have that particular baggage to deal with when listening to the new stuff, which I suppose both liberates my reaction, and possibly skews it just a little too.

Accordion, tumpet and Morricone fiddle are as close as you’re going to get to musical catnip for someone like me, particularly when matched to a keening, slightly strained voice which is frequently full of anguish.  It still sounds like a basic indie rock rhythm to me, for the most part, which is what prevents this being an album which I would pigeonhole as Americana.

It’s like a mosaic, in some ways, composed of shifting textures, some more abstract than others, from which on occasion  emerge steady rhythmic directions, some infectiously catchy choruses and the odd flourish of instrumentation.  For the most part this produces a wonderfully fluid record, with an intriguingly shifting emphasis, but on occasion they slightly miss.  Sometimes the rhythm gets going, and you can almost hear something catchy trying to break through, but not quite doing so.  At times like this I can find the record slightly less arresting than at others, but this is pretty rare in what is for the most part a consistent and excellent album.

Rock Plaza Central – (Don’t You Believe the Words of) Handsome Men

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rock Plaza Central – O Lord, How Many are My Foes?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | The band’s webshop

This is the last Song, by Toad show on Fresh Air for this term – so the last one until about October time, basically.  As the band are long time Toad friends, and as their long (loooong)-awaited debut album is being released on Monday, it seemed only fitting that Broken Records pop into the studio and have a chat about things, talk through the album itself (read: TOAD EXCLUSIVE!!!1!1 or something like that), and generally shoot the breeze.

To tune in, go to the Fresh Air homepage and click on the big Listen Now button on the left hand side, from about 6.30pm-8pm, UK time.  As per usual, I’ll fill in the playlist below, and you can take the opportunity to leave compliments, questions and abuse in the comments section as you see fit.

01. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Hard to be a Saint in the City (Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1975)
02. White Antelope – Wild Mountain Thyme
03. Broken Records – Wolves (Toad Session)
04. Linfinity – Holy Rain
05. Ambulances – Come With Us
06. Broken Records – Lies
07. Sparrow & the Workshop – Last Chance (Toad Session)
08. The Lovely Eggs – Have You Ever Heard a Digital Accordion
09. The Low Miffs – Dear Josephine
10. Broken Records – Nearly Home
11. Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark

Whee – pub!

Slow Club’s performance at the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival last month really shouldn’t have surprised me, but for some reason it did.  I’ve seen them before, at another Fence event in Edinburgh’s Caves a couple of years ago, and I really like their Moshi Moshi singles, but for some reason I’d allowed them to drift somewhat from my consciousness; I really don’t know why.

When they played at the Anstruther Town Hall, however, I was reminded pretty sharpish.  They were sharp, energetic and bags of fun to watch.  It all just seemed incredibly natural, watching them perform, as if playing their songs was simply something they found as normal and everyday as brushing their teeth.  Where other bands had laboured, for instance, under the appaling sound conditions, running the full gamut from quietly disconcerted to openly irritated, Charles and Rebecca just laughed it off, played through it and generally made it seem like it was the most insignificant thing in the world.

This attitude breezes through their music as well.  Even their less lyrically perky songs are infected with a relaxed, bouncy enjoyment and they rattled through their set at a fair clip.

The band are from Sheffield, but where up until only very recently there was a fairly thriving alternative music scene, loosely based around entities like the Sheffield Phonographic Corporation label, now there is apparently something of a wasteland.  Consequently, Slow Club seem to have been adopted by a number of other groups, whilst not necessarily being an obvious part of any of them.  Their label, Moshi Moshi, brings something of a scene with them, and they also seem to have been somewhat co-opted by the posh-folk crowd which includes the likes of Johnny Flynn, Noah & the Whale and Laura Marling.  Then there’s their relationship with Fence, which now stands at two Homegame Festivals and a Fence Club.

Their music also doesn’t seem to quite belong in any such easy niche, though.  It thumps along, with plenty of rockabilly and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, but they seem to get lumped in with alt-folkies which, apart perhaps from some of the company they keep, makes no sense at all.

Their album, Yeah So, is basically finished though, and will be out in July so maybe then they will get the chance to make an impact on the UK music scene more in keeping with who they themselves are, rather than being pigeonholed by either the city of their provenance or the other bands who like them.  After their superb performance at Homegame, I am really looking forward to this record, and so should you be.

***

The videos here are snippets from their Homegame set.  I actually recorded a whole interview with them while they were in Anstruther and, in the mother of all IT disasters, lost the fucking lot.  So my sincerest apologies to Charles and Rebecca, and to Debbie who set it up, but if you want to hear a proper interview with them then download DC’s podcast of his Waiting Room show for woxy.com, or alternatively go and check out Andy’s live Off the Beaten Tracks Session videos from the same day, as well as Dylan’s photos on Blueback Hotrod.  This must be a significant annoyance for professional music people actually, having to deal with an increasingly amateur music press, so I really am sorry.

This week I discovered Women’s Shoes Syndrome.  I wore leather shoes for the first time in something like six years on Saturday and Christ am I paying the price now.  I’m sure the women reading this are most likely to be making comments along the lines of men not being able to take the suffering and not really understanding the concept of pain and childbirth is shit etc etc etc but that really isn’t my question.  My question is Why?  Honestly, if it’s always this painful, why the fuck do you bother?  It’s the equivalent of a child burning itself on the stove.  If, after repeatedly causing yourself considerable pain, you do not cease to do the thing which causes you pain then what the fuck is in your head?  That’s crazy talk.  Meet your new friend, Mr. Pair of Trainers – comfortable, soft and will never bite you angrily in the heel for no reason.  Christ, how much better do you think these things make you look, that you’re prepared to go through this every goddam time?

In other news, tonight I will be commencing work on a painting for the next Toad Records release, because it really is high time that was finished.  One thing that will be finished this week is my run of shows on Fresh Air.  It’s the end of term and the station shuts down over the Summer, so Tuesday will be the last Song, by Toad show until some time in September, I think – maybe even October.  This is a shame as I find the Fresh Air shows tremendous fun, but it’s hard enough to get students into university during term time, never mind the holidays, and it is a student radio station after all.  Gigs… well, maybe towards the end of the week.  Limbo looks good this week, and there’s no way I am missing Meursault and Honeytrap on Friday.

Monday 25th May 2009: Zoey Van Goey & We See Lights at the Bowery.

Zoey Van Goey have a new album out round about now, which is encouraging news.  I know scandalously little about them, but their indie-pop is very much respected amongst people whose opinions I trust, so if you have some time tonight this should be a good evening.
Zoey Van Goey – City is Exploding

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 28th May 2009: The Lovely Eggs, Second Hand Marching Band & The Pineapple Chunks play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

The Lovely Eggs, from what little I know about them (ie: a cursory MySpace listen) seem like they are completely mental, but in the best possible way.  The Pineapple Chunks have a similar, slightly spasmodic element to them, but where this fits with the loveliness of the Second Hand Marching Band alt-folk hydra is a little beyond me.  Should be a good night though.
The Lovely Eggs – Sexual Cowboy

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 28th May 2009: St. Deluxe, Gothenburg Address & Bronto Skylift play Skinny Dip at the Bongo Club.

Whilst this lineup doesn’t excite me very much (anyone championed by Alan McGhee is to be treated with deep, deep suspicion) what is interesting is seeing the Skinny start to move into gig promotion.  Given their involvement with music retail in the form of Ten Tracks, their involvement with the local music scene is becoming pretty varied, it seems.  Good on them.
St. Deluxe – New Wave Stars

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Friday 29th May 2009: Meursault, Honeytrap & X-Lion Tamer at Sneaky Pete’s.

I am really excited to see Honeytrap at long last.  They were one of the first small bands I ever discovered after Song, by Toad finally drifted into its current guise.  Infuriatingly, I found out about them something like a week after they’d played Henry’s, and it’s been something like two years of waiting before I’ve had a second chance to see them live.  I will not be passing this one up.
Honeytrap – Broken Violin

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Saturday 30th May 2009: Cancel the Astronauts, Moustache of Insanity & Conquering Animal Sound play The Gentle Invasion night at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

Moustache of Insanity pretty much lay their cards on the table with their choice of name, and Conquering Animal Sound is the first outing for a new project involving Jamie from the excellent Japanese War Effort.  Headliners this month are Edinburgh indie boys Cancel the Astronauts, who have a new EP available for sale, called I am the President of Your Fanclub, and Last Night I Followed You Home.  Freaks.
Cancel the Astronauts – Country Song

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This week I am piling on the music snobbery.  Oh, okay, I’m not really – if anything I’m undermining it with some truly guilty pleasures.  There’s not much modern fluffy pop music which I happen to enjoy despite my snobbery because… well, because I just don’t think there’s anything I can think of which fits that bill at the moment.

I know nostalgic guilty pleasures and truly embracing low-brow music purely for the enjoyment of it aren’t quite the same thing but I think I’ve budged about as far as I am going to go on this one.  Girls Aloud are unlikely to ever make an appearance on this podcast, but there’s a spot of memory-tickling being indulged in with picks from Kylie and Guns ‘n’ Roses.  You can tell Mrs. Toad has been involved in choosing a playlist when it contains Guns and fucking Roses, but she was sacked from co-presenting duties due to excessive drunkenness, so her imprint on this particular episode is in selections only, and not in the presence of her dulcet tones on the interwaves.

Toadcast #70 – The Snobcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Kid Canaveral – Couldn’t Dance (03.52)
02. Popup – Lucy, What Are You Trying to Say (07.04)
03. Art Fag – Nakhla Dog (15.48)
04. Kylie Minogue – Confide In Me (23.27)
05. Motorhead – Ace of Spades (28.50)
06. The Seventeenth Century – Mid October (36.16)
07. Alan Pownall – The Others (43.56)
08. Haggard the Listener Group – Blackette (47.29)
09. Soft Cell – Tainted Love (51.22)
10. Guns ‘n’ Roses – Sweet Child o’ Mine (58.12)