Greetings my Summery flock of Toads, how are we all doing this fine morning?  Or afternoon of course, depending on where you might be located.

I was advised once by Johnny Pictish not to put on gigs during July or August because getting people out to them was a near-impossibility.  I don’t know if this is just Edinburgh or if it applies universally, but certainly the promoters of this fair city seem to have taken it heart because there is really is sweet Fanny Adams happening in the next couple of weeks on the live circuit.

Maybe people are gearing up for the Festival.  It wouldn’t surprise me because after last year’s programme being thinner than a model’s forearms this year’s August schedule is shaping up to be extremely good indeed.  We’ve got Retreat back (only for a day this time, unfortunately) and Trampoline‘s Festival lineups are looking really rather excellent too.

It has to be said, as well, and despite my general tendency to bash corporate enterprise and side shamelessly with the DIY, the ramshackle and the home-grown, that the lineup for this year’s Edge Festival is also looking rather good.  After scrapping the generally excellent T on the Fringe, they seemed to have some pretty significant teething problems with the rebranded (but essentially identical, as far as I could tell) product last year, but there are some terrific bands booked for this year, so August promises to be utterly exhausting, but in a very good way indeed.

So what is there actually going on this week?  Well here’s about the best that I could find, but please have a scan through the comments because if I’ve missed anything then someone’s bound to point out the error of my ways.

Wednesday 22nd July 2009: Be a Familar & Tango in the Attic at the Electric Circus.

I have to confess that I am not entirely convinced by Be a Familiar, but they seem to be generating a good vibe about the place and picking up quite a lot of interest.  A pleasant evening of somewhat twee guitar-pop beckons.

Friday 24th July 2009: Found (well, Ziggy and Kev) & Dead Boy Robotics at Sneaky Pete’s.

After playing a stripped down set at the Toad Night on Saturday Found are at it again, this time performing with just Ziggy and Kev, and if Saturday is anything to go by it should be brilliant.  Dead Boy Robotics new stuff is apparently a bit less techno than previous, and apparently this is a good thing, so it should be very interesting to see what they’re up to.
Found – Turnstile

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Sunday 26th July 2009: The Shipping Forecast Garden Party at the Peartree with Ross Clark, Mitchell Museum, Little Pebble and Randan Discotheque.

A pleasant afternoon spent in a pub beer garden with lots of great music – if I weren’t going to be at Wickerman this weekend I’d be at this thing without a second thought because it looks brilliant – say a little prayer for good weather.  There’s a good mix of pop and acoustic and Little Pebble is one of the most underrated performers in Edinburgh if you ask me.
Mitchell Museum – Exciting But Drunk

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Uncut Magazine and I had a pretty amazing relationship between the turn of the millennium and about 2004 or 2005.  Basically, I would buy it every month and turn straight to the reviews section and the cover mount CD of what they considered to be the best of new music released that month, and devour both simultaneously, taking notes about what I wanted to spend that month’s meagre wages on.

Those cover mount CDs were amazing, at the time, and almost invariably related to that month’s new releases, but in the last few years they have become way, way more concepty, and I have started to enjoy them less and less.  For some reason, Uncut’s relationship with contemporary music seems to have come adrift even faster than my own, even as I approach my mid-thirties.

Even if I am exaggerating that particular claim – maybe blogging is keeping my tastes young(ish), you never know – it seems a shame that I have drifted away from what was one of my major sources of new music for years, so this podcast is something of a retrospective  and also a salute to all the stuff I picked up from Uncut and in particular their amazing cover mount CDs over the years.

Toadcast #78 – The Uncast

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01. The Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Want to Get Over You (03.36)
02. Ismael Lo & Marianne Faithful – Without Blame (10.01)
03. Gemma Hayes – Over & Over (14.19)
04. Elliot Smith – Memory Lane (19.01)
05. The Woodentops – Well Well Well (26.59)
06. Lift to Experience – To Guard and to Guide You (31.07)
07. Heather Nova – I’m On Fire (39.55)
08. Roddy Frame – I Can’t Start Now (46.36)
09. The Flatlanders – Going Away (50.10)
10. The Acorn – Crooked Legs (59.37)

Nah don’t be daft, of course it doesn’t.  Friday loves you. It loves your Mum too.  Does your Mum have great tits?  I reckon she probably does.

Today technology is King.  I remember my first few days being properly employed and how far away the things we take for granted really are.  I was working on concepts for this kind of stuff years ago, and it may not have ever come into production,  but it’s amazingly exciting to see the future actually happen, right before your eyes.  Honestly, we would sit and have meetings on just how feasible video calling was and how much the ubiquitous ‘do-it-all PDA’ would be able to do for you.  It’s odd to look back on because now, pretty much all of it is here.

Yesterday I saw my silly old folks on Skype.  I have an iPhone too, which means that despite the mild embarrassment of being an iPhone person, I can always reach people.  It’s downright bizarre – basically technology has overtaken the popular imagination in the last few years, and now all these things which seemed downright stupid a year or so ago now seem kind of sensible.  And many of them exist already.

Had it not been for technology like email and SMS messages Mrs. Toad and I might not be together at all.  For the first two and a half years of our relationship I lived in London and she in Edinburgh, so texts and emails pretty much held us together during the week, as we waited for the chance to travel 400 miles on the weekend to see one another.  I know social networking sites have their critics (mostly idiots) but their capabilities are pretty amazing, when you think where technology was even just five years ago.

So, erm, good luck with the rest of your lives and hopefully this week’s technology-based five will be up your street:

1. Name your favourite scientific theory.  Or just name one – any one.
2. Favourite gadget.
3. Do you know what the term ‘anecdotal evidence’ means?  Why the FUCK NOT?
4. Most Star Trekky bit of technology in common use today.
5. Which technology on the ‘coming soon’ list are you most looking forward to?

1. Trips & Falls – In Real Life He Wears Corduroy Pants

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2. Clem Snide – The Dairy Queen

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3. Maxwell Panther – Too Many Magazines

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4. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Going Back to Coventry

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5. Enfant Bastard – Gremlin

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My Mum has always told me never to judge other people’s relationships by the standards of my own, because people always negotiate their own compromises, and they are never the same as yours.

I know this is pretty obvious, but when you actually look at it some of the balances we strike amongst ourselves are quite amazing, and some of them really quite funny.

I remember Mrs. Toad’s brother bristling rather considerably when I, unthinkingly, called her a ‘minging bitch’ in the house once.  That’s something we have both been known to call one another, and there’s a reason it isn’t offensive: our previous cleaning lady’s ex girlfriend was a complete hygiene freak, to the point of OCD, and she rather venomously referred to her ex as a ‘minging bitch’ because she was so unclean.  Mrs. Toad and I found this so funny that it’s been a part of our vocabulary ever since, and we’re so used to it now that we forgot how it might sound to other people.

My brother and his missus were visiting once when she snarled at him for being an idiot.  As his elder brother my hackles instantly went up – how dare she speak to him like that, dammit, if she wasn’t going to be respectful then she could bloody well piss off.  That is exactly what went through my head; and this from the man who calls his wife a minging bitch with careless abandon.

In fact Mrs. Toad and I are known to mix in ‘stupid fucking whore’ and various other colouful epithets amongst the more traditional pet names for one another – it’s just part of how we are, for some reason.  Really, though, you’d think that kind of behaviour would be totally unacceptable and when you look at it in isolation it’s ridiculous that it’s not only normal for us, but actually affectionate.  Yet I doubt that anyone who knows us would suggest for a second that we don’t adore each other or that there was even the tiniest lack of respect in our relationship.

So I guess I kind of have to remind myself of this every once in a while when we’re in the pub and I see people behaving towards one another in ways which makes my skin crawl or my lip curl.  Basically, if I wasn’t actually in my own relationship, I’d think it was a disaster – an abusive disaster, probably.  You never know what someone wants from another person, I guess, or what strange things counterbalance other things to create relationships in some kind of equilibrium.

Sorry, this wasn’t meant to be a profound post, nor anything other than obvious.  It just occurred to me again the other day just how awful Mrs. Toad and I can seem to be to one another, and yet how affectionate we think we’re being at the time.  And it made me laugh, so there you go.

This is an unassuming little EP, low key and uninsistent, and yet it is one which hit me immediately for a change.  The slightly nasal vocal reminds me strongly of Dan Bejar, although the music is more Destroyer than New Pornographers, dominated by a regular thrum of acoustic guitar, which slows on occasion to a more deliberate strum full of slow, contemplative piano.

For an EP which generally eschews the pop aesthetic, Ilona, You Should Still Be My Vampire Attendant is a surprisingly infectious pop song, but the rest of the EP is generally a little slower and less insistent.  Funnily enough I find the opening song to be the weakest.  There’s a sort of cod-barroom jazz beat underlying I Loved John which actually reminds me of early 90s MOR-period Everything But the Girl.  The vocals rescue it from being too much of a pastiche, but nevertheless, I am not gripped.

For the rest of Every Rival, that’s emphatically not the case.  The music may not be aggressive in its demands for attention, but I’m finding it really immediately lovely nevertheless.  It has a kind of determined purpose to its underlying sadness, as if it may be down but it’s not beaten.  I’d almost say that there was something quite definite and certain about the tone of the music, actually. I really hope there’s more where this came from.

Virgin of the Birds – Ilona, You Should Still Be My Vampire Attendant

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Website | More mp3s | Download free from Abandoned Love Records

I am not, I have to confess up front, much of an expert on Sunset Rubdown.  I understand they have something of a long-standing and fairly devoted fanbase, but this is the first of their albums I have voluntarily sampled for myself, the previous times being recently, at the insistence of friends appalled at my ignorance.

The vocals are quite Interpoly, actually, as are some of the rhythms (I mean early Interpol here, not the pale shadow of their former selves they have become).  Other touchstone indie bands from about five years ago are also represented, in that there are shades of Wolf Parade (hardly surprising, as it started as a Spencer Krug’s breakaway solo project), Arcade Fire, New Pornographers and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to be heard as well, so it’s hardly unfamiliar soil which is being turned here.

Does that ruin it for me?  No, not at all, because this music, whilst familar, still has a lot more of the edges left on it than the aforementioned bands tend to have these days.  The guitar solos are messier, the growl of the playing more pronounced, the keys more aimless and in general the music feels less tightly constrained than a lot of the bands who emerged with such a bang in about 2004 or so.

Due to the somewhat relentless nature of this borderline discordant, sloppy, somewhat antagonistic style, Dragonslayer can become something of an assault by the time you’re three quarters of the way through.  I did, I have to confess, find myself starting to hanker after something more slow burning and broody, but maybe that was because I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that Mrs. Toad was present and perhaps not as entranced as I was by some of the harsher edges of this album.

All in all though, I am really enjoying this album.  And the best thing about discovering a band this far into their careers – back catalogue!  Woo hoo!

Sunset Rubdown – Silver Moons

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Sunset Rubdown – Nightingale/December Song

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

This album was made by a gentleman called Niek from Holland, who I’ve exchanged emails with on a few occasions, who I’ve reviewed a couple of times and, after initial misgivings, whose music I have come to enjoy more and more.  I like it when that kind of thing happens – when you can actually watch an artist develop like this.  Much like the way I’ve been allowed to watch this album grow into being from a handful of demos about a year ago.

It’s pure bedroom recording, this whole thing, sounding like every last beep, scratch and piano chime was created on a laptop, resulting in a slightly tinny, wobbly album of DIY pop music which manages to shine by embracing its shortfalls, rather than by worrying about them unduly.

And as a pop album this works surprisingly well for something so obviously self-recorded.  There’s an eccentricity to some of the tunes which really suits the recording style, but plenty of songs I could easily imagine being bigger and shinier and so becoming really rather radio friendly.

This is not to suggest that the album is sunshine itself, blanketed by a layer of fuzz, because it isn’t.  It’s blanketed more by a layer of melancholy and uncertainty.  There is plenty of pop here, but there is also a fair bit of tense, fuzzy unease, and there are times when I find myself slightly wishing there was a little more of the former than the latter, just to break the mood a little bit.

Still, that would be wishing for a rather different album, in a sense, which I would not do at all because I am really enjoying this one, despite its flaws.

Yoshimi! – Song For Suzy

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Yoshimi! – Season Song #4

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Website | Buy from Tocado Records

It always takes me absolutely ages to get into Son Volt albums, so I suppose I’m due a bit of an apology for the poor publicity team at Toolshed who sent me this a couple of months ago and have been patiently waiting for a response ever since.

I wanted to take my time though, because that’s just my pace with Jay Farrar’s band.  The music itself is a little like that as well: rich, comforting and unhurried.  They sound like a band who are prepared to give you the time to come to them on your own terms, whenever you’re ready, which is a reassuring feeling when listening to a record.

Inevitably though, my first reactions to this were the usual: ‘Well, where are the tunes?  Where’s the immediacy?  It all sounds the damn same!’  I must have listened to this record through almost twenty times or so before I started to know the songs well enough to form relationships with them individually, instead of as a single homogenous lump.

In this case it was the gorgeously harrowing tale of the wreck of the Sultana which was the trigger.  For some reason this was the song which grabbed me first, and given the rather horrible subject matter and my predilection for sad music, it was quite an iron grip.  It was only then that I started to hear that same heartbreak in many of the other songs.  Cocaine and Ashes is similarly laced with luxuriant pathos – the kind that breaks your heart yet makes you feel warm and consoled inside at the same time.  It’s a canny trick, and few can pull it off anything like this well.

Apart from the sad songs, there is a shimmering rage to tracks like When the Wheels Don’t Move – not unhinged fury, more a growling glower of a song, which marks perhaps the furthest distance from classic alt-country to which this album ever wanders.

Farrar sings about his country, its history, its legacy and its people – it’s a remarkable blend of the big and the little stories in that respect.  Perhaps that’s where the title comes from, with the dust equally representing the grit of the music and the ashes of America’s confident self-regard.  As a title, it also conjures up the dustbowl nightmare of the Grapes of Wrath, for me, and fitting that he should do so so soon after Wilco, led by Farrar’s former bandmate Jeff Tweedy, released a version of Woody Guthrie’s Jolly Banker which takes aim at precisely that subject.

So I doubt Son Volt are going to shock anyone any time soon in a musical sense.  They seem entirely settled in their general dynamic, and I can live with that quite happily.  It means I know to take my time, not to rush anything, and give enough time I know their albums will seep into my consciousness eventually.  Just be prepared to relax and let it come to you at its own pace.

Son Volt – Dynamite

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Son Volt – Cocaine & Ashes

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

It’s funny, during the recent rise and rise of Sparrow & the Workshop I have started to wonder slightly, why them?  That’s not supposed to be a criticism of the band, because I think they’re brilliant, but there are a lot of good bands around these parts at the moment, and Sparrow’s current upward trajectory is probably the steepest.  Consequently, I had begun to wonder what it was about them in particular which seemed to capture the imagination of pretty much everyone.

Well on Friday I got my answer.  The circumstances were not the easiest, exactly: Sneaky Pete’s was like a bloody sauna, and recent sound complaints meant that the band had to make a few last minute adjustments and rearrange their set quite considerably.

Having been preceded by Randan Discotheque, a band who have never really captured my imagination I must confess, Sparrow & the Worlshop opened with a new song which was frankly bloody gorgeous.  A lot of bands seem to be able to generate an intial flurry of good material, but I always find it telling when they start writing after that initial burst, because a lot can’t manage it.  A band whose new material is consistently this good are clearly onto something.

The more acoustic setup – with three acoustic guitars, a single snare drum and cymbal, and a stomp-box instead of a bass drum – worked really well.  They even managed to add to their percussion by taping a tiny mic to Nick’s guitar and asking him to flick the end of it to fill out the higher end, which took some spotting, but was a really nice piece of improvisation.

In terms of the music, I think I even preferred some of the songs played this way.  Nick is clearly chanelling the spirit of the late Johnny Cash at the moment, and the sound he is making with his guitar is amazing.  With the quieter set the vocals could become a little less combative, allowing Jill’s voice to lose some of its fierceness and simply be lovely for an evening.  When all three were playing guitar there was a rich, confidently quiet aura to the performance which was really quite special.

I’ve seen Sparrow play with aggression in the past, and it’s a great sight to see.  This time, however, they were playing to a very appreciative crowd, and one they know quite well, and the more relaxed, low key approach this engendered brought a warm, generous spirit to the set and made this month’s This is Music one of the best gigs I have been to all year.  Truly brilliant.

Sparrow & the Workshop – The Gun

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy their EP and single from Norman Records

The Festival is a bit mental in its own right, but this year it is also rather annoyingly commandeering the Bowery for six weeks to pimp shitty bottles of Magners to punters and in doing so depriving us of one of the best places to go to see live music in the city.  Bastards.

Anyhow, before closing up until September, there Ruth and Jane are having one last big piss-up which happens to coincide with a Toad Night.  We’ve got an hour of open(ish)-mic beforehand, with some splendid people booked, and then we have Glasgow’s extraordinary Yusuf Azak and a somewhat pared-back set from Found.  I am expecting a splendid night, honestly.

Also, the dress code is floral, but don’t worry, because I will be bringing along some blooms and will pin a couple to anyone who can’t find anything flowery to wear themselves.  Any anyone who moans will be mocked for being a curmudgeonly old fuddy-duddy.  Make an effort people, and let’s send Ruth and Jane off on holiday in some style.

Tuesday 14th July 2009: There Will Be Fireworks & Cryoverbillionaires at Electric Circus.

This show starts at 10pm and is preceded by a Sneaky Pete’s night, including a live show from Sleepy Sun and a couple of others.  For me though I have to confess that the real highlight will be the chance to see There Will Be Fireworks for the first time.  They’ve been tipped by an awful lot of people, and I am still waiting for their album to make its way to my front doorstep, so I am looking forward to this one a great deal.

Saturday 18th July 2009: Found & Yusuf Azak at the Bowery.

Anyone wishing to read more about this can click here.
The original song, by Toad

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Yusuf Azak – Light Procession

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And for those of you not planning on attending the Toad party on Saturday (which fucking well better be NO-ONE!) there is this rather promising looking alternative at the Wee Red Bar, including Trapped in Kansas, a post-rocky band I’ve been hearing quite a bit about lately.