Song, by Toad

This is the video for the Low Miffs’ new single The Man Who Took on Love and Won.  I think they are brilliant.

The band had suffered a bit of an interruption to their upwards momentum by the time I first discovered them a year or two ago, having lost a manager and a musician, and momentum is a bloody elusive quality in the music industry.  They’re obviously made of more determined stuff than a lot of bands though, because theire debut album is now on the verge of being released and if this song is anything to go by it might well be brilliant.

I’ve had mixed responses from readers to the Low Miffs in the past, but they have the Mrs. Toad seal of approval (maybe she just likes Leo because he makes her feel tall) so they must be good.  And I think they’re fucking superb and a joy to behold live.  A preposterous, outrageous, massively over the top joy, but a joy nonetheless.

And check out Tom’s black guitar in this video.  If he wakes up one morning and his house has been burgled with nothing but that guitar stolen, then I think he should probably check my house first.  I can’t even play the bloody thing and it’s making me salivate.

So, good people of the internets, this Friday I am going to be getting mind-meltingly bladdered at my works night out from about lunch time today, so my comments might go downhill even more sharply than usual this afternoon.  Fortunately, it won’t be the teeth-grindingly awful teambuilding nonsense implied by that picture because basically my work are a bunch of total pissants.  So it will be drunken mayhem, which will be far better.  We even have two new people to torment, which will be splendid.  Mwaah hah haaa!  Actually, we’ll probably all be far too drunk to give them a hard time, but it’s the thought that counts.

For those of you who are interested, this weekend’s plans include sorting out most of the Found Toad Session, DJing at this excellent gig on Sunday and doing the Toad Records accounting so that we can pay Meursault the vast sums of money their godlike genius requires.

Also, I may masturbate and eat some pickled onions.

Not at the same time.

Why why does it always get to past two o’clock in the morning and I am still fucking awake and doing shit?  Fucking hell that’s annoying.  I’m soooo sleepy too, but I just can’t seem to get to bed at a normal time, it’s ridiculous.

Mrs. Toad and I had our anniversary this week – three years.  We first met in 1991, so we’ve taken our time.  I celebrated by going out with my mates, getting pished and breathing beer on her at two in the morning.  I’m a fucking great husband, I am.  She celebrated by forgetting about it and wishing me happy anniversary this morning – a day late.  So it’s safe to say we don’t take this stuff that seriously in our house.  It’s still nice to think about though.

DE-LURK!  Please!  Honestly, the voices are starting to get to me, please jump in and say hello.   Friday is de-lurking day.  I promise you Chutters won’t be boorish, Dylan won’t be pretentious, DC won’t be needlessly verbose and Euan won’t be sulky.  I can’t promise you Bart won’t be funny though.  Five yourselves all to pieces, people.

1. Work social events – good, bad or indifferent?
2. Do you like your baths scalding, warmish or cool?
3. Have you ever heard a better dismissal of a whole musical genre than ‘ethnic sex music’?
4. Favourite kind of fruit.
5. Best ever mix tape you made.

This week’s five songs are all from a mix I made for my brother… bloody years ago, I’m not quite sure when.

Snow Patrol – Fifteen Minutes Old

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Lionrock – Straight at Yer Head

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Arnold – Windsor Park

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Delakota – The Rock

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The Divine Comedy – Thrillseeker

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I rather like this.  I’d heard Harlem floating about the internets for a while so when I first played the album my initial thoughts were: “Big pop song first?  Oh dear, bad sign.”  All too often that is a sign of a band with either little material or little confidence, and so it has become something of a warning sign for me, I have to confess.  It was a bit of a false alarm in this case however, as there’s a lot more good stuff here.

It reminds me a tad of the Felice Brothers during its gentler moments and slightly of Howl, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Americana album, when it gets a bit more furious.  The vocal is a nasal yowl which steps up the gears really effectively, turninging into an impassioned, slightly Gollum-esque shriek at the pinnacle of its distress.

On one hand this is a rock ‘n’ roll inflected Americana album, as you might guess from the above comparisons, but there’s a little more to it than that.  There’s also quite a lot of chiming guitary distressed indie in the mix as well.  You could just about drag out elements from bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or the Walkmen, if you really wanted to, but in general that shuffle between friendly Americana and thumping, distorted indie rock climaxes is the defining characteristic of this record.

It’s one which I find just slightly uneasy at times, I have to confess.  I do get to the point with this record where the thumping crescendoes can be a bit much for my ears – just a little overwhelming in some senses, whilst perhaps lacking the texture which might make them more interesting.  That might not be quite the right way to describe it, but there’s definitely something in their bigger, louder, more thunderous moments which I don’t quite like and am finding it tricky to put my finger on.

For the most part, though, I think this is a very good album: it’s got real energy and bite, and the songs stick in your head with tenacity.  And what more could you ask for?

Motel Motel – Harlem

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Motel Motel – Mexico

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Website | More mp3s | Buy the album

There is a truly atrocious back-story to the creation of this album and the split of Simone Felice from the Felice Brothers, but it is horrible and personal and I am not going to go into it. It is partly because of that back-story, however, and partly because of how much I like the Felice Brothers themselves, that I really wanted to like this album.  I don’t, however, and there’s no escaping it, so there you go.

Why don’t I like it?  Well it’s just soft and rather wet Americana-pop I suppose.  The summery harmonies and the laid back rhythms just don’t grab me at all, and in fact seem really lifeless and lacking in backbone.  There’s even something of a soft rock balladry about some of it, like the atrocious Summer Morning Rain, which really is not something I enjoy at all.

Lyrically it’s actually a rather heart-wrenching album, but for some reason the music used to convey the sentiments themselves just doesn’t quite have the right impact with me. I guess I just find the sound to be smooth and slightly sugary, which is really not my aesthetic to begin with, so given that none of the tunes really stick in my head and make me want to hum them I think the sooner me and this record part ways the better, sorry.

The Duke & the King – If You Ever Get Famous

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The Duke & the King – Summer Morning Rain

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

I’ve written about Donny Hue, both with and without the Colors, on several occasions now and put his last two albums (one with, one without) in my best of the year lists for the last two years running, and yet I don’t get the feeling that they are as much of a favourite with the Toad readership as they are with me myself.  This is a shame because Mr. Hue has now released three superb albums in consecutive years and that level of consistency is beyond the vast, vast majority of bands and puts him at a pretty bloody high level as far as I am concerned.

A bit like the previous Colors album, this is slightly less consistent than the solo record which the two sandwich, but it is still a cracking album.  It’s also put together really well – sequenced in such a way that it flows, and with the right combination of interludes and instrumentals, sad songs and happy ones to make it work extremely well as a single, whole piece of work.  I like it when this happens – it’s good when songs work together to make a larger entity, and it shows that an artist is putting a lot of thought into the broader aspects of what they are doing, rather than the simple ‘well, I wrote some songs’.

The band have a knack for the a gentle, roll-along version of Subterranean Homesick Blues-era Dylan.  It’s a similar sound, but mellowed somewhat.  The piano ambles along, chiming like a player piano, there’s a shuffling beat to the acoustic guitar and a skip-stomp rhythm to the drums.  This Dylan comparison vanishes when they slow right down, such as the gorgeous Lady Tomcat and the Turning Trees, which is a bit more distant and disquieting and very, very lovely.

As with Folkmote there are songs which don’t grab me as much as others, but on the whole this is yet another really enjoyable record.

Donny Hue & the Colors – You’re On Your Own (We Could Help)

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Donny Hue & the Colors – Lady Tomcat & the Turning Trees

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from The Kora Records | Download their ‘Freesides’ for nothing here

I’ve been waiting for fucking ages to review this album, having first been contacted by the band back in April, but it’s finally available to buy, so here we go.  At the time they contacted me Ambulances were a band I had never seen on a bill anywhere in Scotland (although they are playing at the Song, by Toad night at Sneaky Pete’s on the 30th August). I had at that point never read about them on a blog and had never heard them on the radio, although that has since changed.  But when I first heard from them they were, in short, a complete mystery.

Also, they’re from Fife and are not an alt-folk/electronica band.  Given the ascendancy of Fence Records and Benbecula in those parts I thought indie bands were illegal in the Kingdom these days.

But indie this certainly is.  It has aspects of the latter half of the 80s in some moments, but for the most part I find myself thinking of that element of post-grunge which, instead of making more and more noise, went all moody and started using the long, low growl instead.  I’m being reminded of bands like Preston School of Industry quite a lot, actually, which is a good thing, in my eyes.

As an album The Future That Was is perhaps a tad long, and there are times when the sequencing seems to lose a little bit of purpose, particularly about three quarters of the way through.  I’m not sure what I personally would recommend at this point, so maybe I should shut up, but to my ears, despite the good songs, there’s a slightly wobbly aspect to some shadowy notion which I would descibe as the ‘direction of the album’ around that point – the forwards motion of the record just seems to stall a little.  That’s a pretty vague and unimportant point however, so don’t take it too seriously, I’m just nitpicking.

For a record which came so entirely out of nowhere, as far as my awareness is concerned anyway, this is really very good indeed.  I might be tempted to add a little urgency to a song here and there in future, because fourteen songs at a fairly consistently unhurried pace does get a little cloying here and there, but nevertheless I am really impressed with this record.

Ambulances – What I Thought Of

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Ambulances – Cease to Exist

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MySpace – Buy the album here too, or go to Avalanche Records on Cockburn Street, Edinburgh.

I’d hate to turn into the sort of parent who thinks their brain-dead, irritating, charmless little fuckwits of children are cleverer, lovelier and more delightful than the very Baby Jeebus himself, despite their evident lack of any sort of talent or even bare sliver of tolerability to the entire rest of the human race.  In the words of Bill Hicks: “Your children aren’t special.  Oh, I know you think that they’re special… I’m just telling you that you’re wrong.”

Well, without wishing to imply that everything by bands from Edinburgh is better than anything by bands from anywhere else (that’s where that nonsense in the first paragraph was coming from, y’see) I have to confess that I am somewhat amazed by this piece of work: the Cybraphon.  It’s fucking amazing, basically.

Cybraphon Demo Song from Cybraphon on Vimeo.

Found have already demonstrated their incredible attraction to bizarre and wonderful projects, including a set of musical robots installed in the Botanic Gardens last year and their stunning* work for the Playing With the Past project, but this might just top the lot.

Basically, it’s a band in a box – imagine taking the concept of the Player Piano, taking it to its insanely illogical conclusion, hooking the whole shebang up to the fathomless rivers of sludge which are teh internetz, and setting it loose.  It responds to who is saying what about it on the internet and plays tunes according to its mood – sort of like a cross between the aforementioned Player Piano and Marvin the Paranoid Android, I suppose.  For those wanting to find out more, the contraption itself can be viewed at the InSpace Gallery on Crichton St. in Edinburgh from the 5th August onwards.  There is also a website with some amazing videos of the making of the Cybraphon, such as the one below, and a Flickr page with some gorgeous pictures.

Solenoids and Motors from Cybraphon on Vimeo.

Honestly, without wishing to sound like a small-time, partisan curtain-twitcher with a horizon no broader than the walls of my own back garden, I really do get the impression that if this sort of mental genius was being produced in London or by a band who make more effort to dress like hipsters and proclaim their genius to the world, then it would be all over the damn news.  It’s genius, pure and simple.

In fact it reminds me that, instead of wondering why some bands end up disappearing down the avenue of experimentalism and bizarre crossover projects with architects and painters and various other mentalists, I find myself increasingly wondering why so few bands do it.  I mean, if you’re creatively inclined and curious and interested in the world and exploring ideas and so on, surely bizarre experiments and weird projects should be something you’d be inescapably drawn to, rather than remaining cossetted in a narrow little world of three and a half minute verse-bridge-chorus pop songs.

Found, I salute you.  This lunatic contraption is a joy to behold and one of the best things I’ve ever seen.  Ever.

*Apparently, I have yet to see it for myself, but it’s on again on the 22nd August so be sure to get your tickets.

This gig is very much in association with Euan and Trampoline’s amazing lineup of August shows – he basically sent me an email saying that Frances (Animal Magic Tricks) would be the first house gig and what the date would be. All I have to do is the following: invite all yous cunts!

Animal Magic Tricks – Live at Toad Hall, Sunday 9th August 2009

When Frances visited Edinburgh earlier this year she spent some time recording at Toad Hall, assisted by Neil from Meursault and Pete from The Leg. The results are three of the loveliest songs I’ve heard in ages – really, truly gorgeous. So instead of a traditional ’support/headline’ setup I think the best thing to do would be the following: we’ll get all three of them together again and instead of a support act, they can simply take turns playing some songs, with the focus, particularly towards the end, being on Frances’ material. I promise you, if it sounds anything like the material they were creating together in March, it will be stunning.

So the rules are this: we are looking for thirty to fifty people to buy tickets up front (because it’s such a small gig, if people say they’ll come and then don’t bother Frances could end up badly out of pocket, so it is NON-REFUNDABLE). That way we will hopefully raise about £150, all of which goes straight to the artist, which is good money for a tiny gig on the DIY circuit, and paying artists good money for their work is something I really think we should all take more seriously. Downloading and so on is not something I oppose per se, but musicians have to make money somewhere; it can’t all be free.

So, to come along, use the Paypal link below and feel free to pass this on to your friends and share the joy:

And as a bonus, here’s one of the songs they recorded back in March.

Animal Magic Tricks – King

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Having just got back from a weekend spent in the sunshine at the Wickerman Festival, I will be spending all of Monday at a client meeting, and not returning to Edinburgh until Tuesday, so there would appear to be precious little in terms of rest for the wicked this week.  And that means that you’re going to be somewhat on your own with this post today, as I will be sitting in an eight hour meeting with a full bladder of rotten instant coffee.

Bart very kindly rote a fantastic summary of the musical August we are in store for this year, and posted it here, yesterday.  This is something I am hoping to be able to do on a regular basis – ask people to contribute to the blog on Sundays, when I very rarely post.  Bart has kicked it off, and there should hopefully be more in future, ideally on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, with all the splendid things in store for us this August, the city seems to be collectively drawing breath this week, with nothing on until Saturday:

Saturday 1st August 2009: Found, Dent May, White Heath & Rob St. John at Electric Circus.

Apart from a stellar lineup of bands this evening promises to be utterly ruined by my good self DJing again, which is a worrying sign for Edinburgh in general.  Still, it seems so far to to nothing more sinister than to give me free entry into really good gigs, so I can’t say that I mind at all – quite what the other poor bastards at the gig think is another story.  I’ll run out of records soon though, so some shopping might be necessary.
Anyway, the gig itself is something of a stellar lineup.  I was massively impressed by Found at the recent Toad Summer Party and, White Heath are getting better and better at the moment. Rob St. John is someone I haven’t seen in ages though, and I am really looking forward to seeing him play again.  Rob recently put a new song called The Sargasso Sea up on his MySpace page and it seems his lovely acoustic folk music is slowly being turned into borderline Led Zeppelin guitar solos – in other words, Saturday should be a good ‘un.  I don’t know anything about Dent May, but with the rest of the night looking as good as it does, who cares, frankly.
Rob St. John – Paper Ships

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There are a couple of vaguely mysterious things also happening this week, but I am a little too unsure of them to actually put them down as full listings.  Meursault are playing at Sneaky Pete’s on Tuesday, but it’s possible that may be a private party – I trust someone can set me straight in the comments.  Also, White Heath are listed on their MySpace page as playing at Henry’s Cellar Bar on Friday, but not on the listings for Henry’s itself.  Anyone know anything about this?

This is our first attempt at a stunt podcast, live from a festival.  We go to festivals and I am trying to figure out how much work I can make for myself without taking the fun out of the festival for myself, or just generally trying too hard.

I didn’t really set up any interviews this time around – no, not even Billy Bragg – but I did manage to grab Mark from emerging Glasgow band The Seventeenth Century for a chat.  The audio is terrible, I’m afraid, but it should be just about audible.  If I’d been able to locate the keys for the Toad van at that point we’d have gone in there, just for a respite from the wind noises on the recording and the colossal amount of bleed from the main stage.

In any case, it should be entertaining enough, I hope, and with a bit of luck subsequent attempts at the same thing will be a lot better.

Toadcast #79 – The Wickerman

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01. The Cave Singers – Beach House (04.04)
02. Julian Plenti – The Fun That We Had (07.31)
03. The Second Hand Marching Band – Mad Sense (15.37)
04. The Seventeenth Century – Mid October (22.59)
05. Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar (35.37)
06. The Lemonheads – The Outdoor Type (40.00)
07. The Human League – All I Ever Wanted (47.11)
08. The Go Team! – Feelgood by Numbers (50.25)
09. Meursault – Lament For a Teenage Millionaire (59.16)