You know, I can almost hear The Eagles in some of this. It’s described as cowboy folk on their website, and that’s pretty accurate, but there’s a definite West Coast sunset cocktail ambiance in evidence as well.
There are reverby guitars in the backgound, some ghostly harmonies, a little saw, all the usual things you’d expect from the kind of music I go for. It sits in fairly typical Toad territory in general, actually, with classic, old-fashioned storytelling, and an engaging combination of folk and Western musical leanings. I suppose that if you drew a line from the Fleet Foxes in the North to the likes of the criminally underrated Richmond Fontaine in the South, Black Golden Bull would sit somewhere vaguely inbetween.
Given I listen to most of my new music at work, I have to confess to having found this a little tricky to concentrate on at times. It’s not an album which aggressively demands your attention, more one which welcomes you with a nod when you find you have some to give.  I like that kind of music, though. Music which isn’t trying too hard, which seems to trundle along happily with a confident sense of having nothing to prove, and music, I’d say, which brooks little analysis. It simply does its job, does it well, and lets everyone else get on with the business of taking life too seriously.
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After the ramshackle growl of their home-recorded four-track albums, released on CD-Rs in the back rooms of pubs, this acoustic affair comes as something of a surprise to me, I have to confess. The sound, more than anything, seems very different. Given the amount of material the Wave Pictures have at their disposal there are some oldies on this, such as old favourite My Kiss, but the sting has somewhat gone out of the music with the arrangements being as they are.
The lyrics also seem to have moved somewhat beyond the half-snarled, half-wailed alienation of previous records, there is here something a little more resigned and domesticated. Earlier stuff was still quite kitchen sink in its lyrical scope, but there is a little less anguish to this stuff. Consequently the whole album, for all Tatersall is clearly a first class lyricist, seems to lack punch, to be honest. I’m enjoying it, but I’m far from blown away.
To give you an idea, have a listen to the version of Canary Wharf below and compare it to the plugged in version we filmed at the End of the Road Festival last year- the amount of bite missing is palpable, if you ask me. But then again, maybe I’m just pointlessly pining for the way things were and secretly hoping they’ll never change, despite criticising people who don’t explore new things. Music fans have been known to do that, you know.
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I really can’t think of much to compare this to, so I think just listening to the songs below and judging for yourself would probably be the best route. Musically, there’s all sorts jammed into this album – folk (sort of), cabaret (here and there), a little bit of swing, some indie, some, er, well, a little bit of almost everything really. It’s chock full of dramatically sawed violins and wink-and-a-nudge accordions, but there’s still enough ballsy rock ‘n’ roll in the undercurrents to make this a lot more than another pastiche of some imagined indie band who ran away with the circus.
Dianna dresses her songs up in shades of Jacques Brel and Neil Hannon theatricality, but the lyrics tend more towards the dark humour of the former than the whimsical fancy of the latter. For such an old-fashioned album (evocative of an imaginary time and place perhaps, but strangely nostaligic nevertheless) the tales told are themselves really quite modern. In fact, this could easily read as the diary of a modern girl-about-town in many ways, just one with genuine wit and intelligence instead of the usual obsession with shopping and shoes.
I really do like Technicolour Wilderness actually. It’s just… and odd record, I suppose. It has a tremendous character and personality all of its own, and I find that incredibly endearing for some reason. Add to that the gorgeous instrumentation and I reckon this is a real gem of an album.
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Adam Balbo comes across for all the world as an exiled New York anti-folker. His music settles slap bang in the middle of territory most well known for the likes of Jeffrey Lewis and Lach, and I am hence just a little surprised why Balbo himself doesn’t get anything like the same amount of credit.
It’s possible there isn’t a similar mutual-reinforcement society in San Francisco to the famous one in New York, but that sounds unlikely. And really, if you want to know what I am talking about, then this might not be the best album to start with. 6 Outta 9 w/ Beats might be a more immediately accessible point of entry, but that’s only because it is just a little more conventional.
This album is a little messier in many ways. Musically it’s pretty straightforward – experimentation has been entirely banished, to be replaced by a ubiquitously relentless scraping thrum on the acoustic guitar. It is more in terms of song structure and lyrics that this album goes quite considerably off the rails, and I know that sounds like a critcism, but it isn’t – I think this is a terrific record.
Balbo has always been prone to writing rambling interior monologues when he pens his words. He can be wry, witty, cynical, self-deprecating and awkward all within the space of a line or two, and in this release he takes this and runs with it. Right out of the park. These songs are fractured thoughts, scattered like smashed glass across an album in shards of one or two minutes or less, skittering forward at a slightly disorientating pace, firing thoughts at you with all the hectic chaos of a child with ADHD.
He frequently interrupts his own songs, almost to heckle himself as with Debating a Time Metaphor, or just as constant asides worked into the fabric of the song, as with Obligatory Highway Analogy. He bookends Girl at My Pity Party, which mocks his own self-pity, with two songs expressing a cartoonishly exaggerated version of that same pity.
Imagine a long, involved late night conversation which veers from elaborate digression to bare emotional honesty to peculiar in-jokes which twist in on themselves to the point of becoming entirely obscure. Imagine that this conversation took place over the course of about eight or nine hours, into the pale hours of the morning, and that instead of a conversation it was simply a tangled monologue. Now imagine that you had a tape recorder with which to capture this, but you only managed to tape a minute or two every half an hour, resulting in a a barely-related series of weird snapshots of a conversation you don’t entirely understand. Now set it to music. That is what The Fix is like.
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Well the mammoth video nightmare of the last week is nearly over. This week I will be working in the Meursault tour diary from when they went away to the North of England for a few days in our big green van. They recorded some excellent sessions while they were touring, including three songs in the back of the van from some campsite in, erm, Lancashire somewhere I think, and also a few songs at a bandstand in Newcastle. The tour diary itself might just be mental, and but for some judicial editing could easily become the most offensive musical document ever recorded (thank you Fraser, Preston’s a bit ‘rapey’ is it?) so I hope I can get it trimmed down to something vaguely family friendly before I go away.
Here’s a preview for those of you who are interested – this is a version of a new song called Sleet, as played in the Newcastle bandstand to an appreciative audience of a great many birds, and no, not the kind your average rock star aspires to have in his audience either:
As you know, Mrs. Toad and I are off in Italy for a couple of weeks from this coming Saturday and in our absence the splendid Three Toadsketeers of Dylan, Bart and Euan have agreed to take over the Good Ship Toad. I will be enforcing a strict regime of alcoholism and offending vegetarians, so it should hopefully not be too far from the sort of unprofessional garbage you’re used to around here. But I owe them all a massive thank you for taking this on, because I think it will be much nicer for everyone than just leaving it quiet for two weeks.
So, before I bugger off, what will I be attending? Some of these things, I suspect:
Formerly Davie Fiddle and tour-mates of Mumford & Sons, these chaps play a very English-sounding indie folk. If anything, actually, it harks back more to the folk rock of the late 80s and early 90s rather than the more glacial stuff of the last couple of years. Cherbourg – Man
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This is the official launch for the EP Withered Hand recorded with King Creosote earlier this year. He’s currently working on an album, which is almost through the mixing process and vaguely pencilled in for release in August or September this year, I believe. The album is a full band job, but this EP is a much more acoustic, and the lineup for the launch party is nothing if not eclectic. Incidentally, I filmed a couple of songs by Emily Scott at Homegame but she still hasn’t got back to me to tell me what they’re called. They can be viewed here and here if anyone can supply me with the missing information! Withered Hand – Shooby (Demo)
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Cheveu are French and a little bit mental from the sounds of it. Still, this kind of, erm, noisy, crackly post-stuff music should make for a good evening. I hesitate to imagine what it might sound like live, but I think this is one of those gigs where you just have to turn up and see what the hell you get. Support comes from the very promising White Heath, making what is I believe their Bowery debut. Cheveu – Like a Deer in the Headlights
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Woodenbox are a terrific live band, who have been working on some new recordings recently – as, incidentally, have the Kays Lavelle. The former play stomping Americana, full of brass and rhythm, and the latter play piano-led indie ballads, which cross over into that sort of post-rock atmospheric aesthetic from time to time. And both bands now share a piano player, as far as I am aware. Kristoffer Morgan is a bit of a mystery to me, I must confess, this being the first time I think I’ve seen his name on a bill in these parts. Woodenbox – Situations (I think this was recorded before the addition of the Fivers)
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This is a crossover night between the ever-excellent This is Music characters and Crystal Wish Records, with a lineup full of bands I’ve never heard of. Crystal Wish appear to be pretty electronically and experimentally orientated though, and these are always great nights, so I’d definitely recommend popping along. This is Music generally do a podcast as well, in advance of their night, and that will appear here at some point in the next week, I assume.
I don’t really know what to expect from this gig. The Foundling Wheel and Wounded Knee are a little more experimental than Meursault tend to be most of the time, but Meursault have been slipping some new material into their recent Edinburgh gigs and they definitely have it in them to be a little weird from time to time, so this might well be a bit of a treat for everyone. If you like your music a little off the beaten track, that is. The Foundling Wheel – Out to See
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Diane Cluck is an (anit-)folk legend, so I really wouldn’t miss this if I were you. Unless you’re going to the Wee Red, because I wouldn’t miss that either. Thank fuck I’m not here to have to make this terrible decision! Diane Cluck – Save Me
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Phew, and I thought it was going to be a quick on this week!
This is a series of videos of Broken Records’ amazing live show at the Bedlam Theatre on Saturday, 28th March 2009. You can use the widget above to watch everything and browse amongst the videos. They are pretty good quality, so pop them up to full screen if you like – if you hit play and just leave it alone it will play through all of them sequentially. Alternatively, you can just scroll down and watch everything there. There are twelve songs in total including, at the very end, the interview video as well, where Jamie and I had a bit of chat after the gig.
Big thanks must go to Mrs. Toad, who operated camera two all evening. Camera two sounds a bit junior, but actually she is the one who got all the interesting shots, while I do all the safe stuff so we have something to fall back on when she’s moving around. Nic Rue, who can be found at nicrue.carbonmade.com, took all the phenomenal still shots I used as the title pages for these videos. Broken Records’ sound guy Kas mixed all the sound, and the reason these videos look so good is because his friend Colin McCallum did all the lighting, which made a massive difference.
Broken Records’ debut album Until the Earth Begins to Part is out now, and it’s brilliant. Their stuff can be bought from recordstore.co.uk here, and their upcoming live dates can be found on the band’s website. Enjoy these videos – they should give you some idea just how good this band are live, and why everyone in Edinburgh was so excited when they first emerged on the DIY gig scene in town just over two years ago. They’re on tour now, actually, so you really should catch them if you get the chance. Read the rest of this entry »
This is called the Slowcast because there are so many songs and, more commonly, whole albums out there which I took ages and ages to get into, and for no really obvious reason.
There are several reasons, I guess: how familiar a sound is, your emotional state at the time, what your mates are listening to, how popular something is and stuff like that. I know I’ve admitted plenty of times in the past that I have a habit of refusing to like things if they get too popular. That sounds ludicrous, but it’s not exactly a conscious decision, more an instinctive recoiling. I never have liked much popular stuff, although I do certainly go through phases. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that, with the label, I am not looking to sign or work with the modern equivalent of a Top 40 band – I have never much liked Top 40 music.
Anyway, that’s not really the point of the podcast. This is dedicated to those albums which for some reason you have to hear about a million times before you eventually, out of nowhere, realise that you love them.
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01. Billy Bragg – Honey I’m a Big Boy Now (04.36)
02. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (08.37)
03. Radiohead – My Iron Lung (14.14)
04. The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels (23.42)
05. Mancino – Definition of an Accident (32.26)
06. The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest (36.09)
07. Interpol – Obstacle #1 (43.31)
08. My Latest Novel – Wolves (49.30)
09. The Wedding Present – 2, 3, Go! (55.29)
10. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (59.56)
Thank god all-fucking-mighty that it’s fucking Friday. I am exhausted. I’ve been up until the wee hours (5am on Tuesday, 6am on Wednesday, etc etc…) working on the videos for Sunday’s mammoth Broken Records at the Bedlam Theatre post and have had just about enough. I don’t get too sleepy during the day though, and I can still get through it all just fine, but I am getting a little pie-eyed. Not sleepy, per se, but the world is becoming a little surreal.
Mrs. Toad and I are a week away from going on holiday for two weeks. We are going far, far from an internet connection and will be pretty much completely incommunicado for the whole fortnight. This is a good thing. I am not burned out on all this Toad business, but I am getting a little frazzled. There’s just always so much to do and it gets really hard to keep track of it and to make sure that everything is getting done properly.
This weekend sees the Meadows Festival tomorrow, followed by the Gaza benefit thingy in the evening. I really don’t know if I am going to make the Black Tape night tonight, but I hope so. So much still to do in the house.
So, Mrs. Toad has just returned from a week away in the States, so I am going to pop out and have my lunch with her, before coming back and marvelling at the wondrous fountain of meaningless gibberish which the Friday Fives seems to infallibly generate. I love this post – total chaos!
So, de-lurk; this is the lurkers’ amnesty post, remember. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never said anything before, no knowledge of in-jokes or obscure indie bands required here, just the time to say hello and make a couple of flippant remarks. Fives first though please – no pish-talking until I’ve got your fives down. Then go crazy.
1. Most annoying vehicle on the road.
2. Top Summer song.
3. Best kind of sleep.
4. Favourite grandiose title (like Grand Vizier, Viscount and stuff like that).
5. Name of your stuffed toy.
This is the first track the Cave Singers have released from their forthcoming album. Sounds bloody brilliant. The Cave Singers – Beach House
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I discovered The Seventeenth Century courtesy of Halina and her team of devilish minions over at Glasgow PodcART a couple of weeks ago. I’ve tried emailing the band to see about buying a copy of their EP, but no response, so I ended up having to just rip it off MySpace. Still, I’m sure I’ll get the chance to make up for it in the future as I am pretty confident we will be hearing more from these lads over the next year or so.
People seem to be talking their folky-sounding acoustic indie with a liberal portion of electronica these days, so this sort of beautifully-conceived, gently swaying and rather sad music is appearing less and less on the iPods of your average skinny-jeaned hipster about town. This is a shame, because when it is done as well as this, however familiar we might be with the general approach to making music, stuff like this still makes for a genuinely lovely, affecting experience.
The lead vocals are reedy, but the choral backing on songs like Traffic give a fullness to the sound. The instrumentation is nicely managed, which creates a sound which is never too crowded. Also, the rhythm has a lovely, slow rise and fall to it which gives the songs their air of slightly indulgent sadness, somewhat like witnessing a grey, rainy morning in the hills, but all whilst sat comfortably inside with a nice cup of tea.
So sonically we may have heard this before, to a degree, but this is still extremely well done and really gorgeous listening. I await developments with considerable interest.
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It’s only four songs long, so you can only have one download I’m afraid – I don’t want to take the piss – but here’s a splendid video of Traffic to make up for it. This is a really gorgeous song.
I received an email the other day from a friend of mine who records under the name of Scuff (MySpace here) tipping me off about a band he plays in called Fur Hood. And they’re good.
It’s sort of twee, with lazy harmonies and an unhurried pace, which creates something of the atmosphere of a prohibitively hot Summer’s day. They use quite staccato rhythms and some genuinely eccentric percussion, which sounds like their playing the contents of their dishwasher. On top of these two elements drift washes of melodic electronica, somewhat reminiscent of the likes of Dubstar and Saint Etienne’s dreamier material.
I think that why this works for me is the interplay between the retro-sounding indie pop of Always Tomorrow and the far less mellifluous rattle and stumble of Yellow Yellow Always Yellow. They seem to be able to veer between the lush and comfortable one one hand and the weirdly experimental on the other that you find yourself never really knowing what to expect. This makes each song something of an emotional challenge – a relief when it stays pretty and exciting when it doesn’t.
From five songs you can’t always tell that much, but this is a really promising start if you ask me.
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