I think this week may be very tricky for me indeed in terms of gig attendance.  Clients here at Proper Job have just this very afternoon ‘re-strategised’ a pretty significant piece of work so I will probably spend the week working late into the night on what I am actually paid to do for a change, rather than just writing posts and editing video for the entertainment of you bastards.

Still, it’s been a hectic as all fuck August, and I am actually kind of glad it’s over.  Not because of Festival hatred or anything, just sheer tiredness.  And The Bowery is back with us as of next Monday as well, which is bloody brilliant news.

Monday 31st August2009: Jeffrey Lewis & Withered Hand at Cabaret Voltaire.

Anti-folk legends old and new at Cabaret Voltaire tonight.  These two have actually got really similar styles – bleakness and cynicism made brilliant by wit and warmth.

Jeffrey Lewis – Banned From the Roxy

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Tuesday *!*8th*!* September 2009: X Lion Tamer at Electric Circus.

Erm, sorry everyone, this is next Tuesday apparently.

X Lion Tamer – Life Support Machine

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Thursday 3rd September 2009: Aidan Moffat & the Best-Ofs & Rick Redbeard at The Bongo Club.

I’ve said this a dozen times before and I will say it again: Rick Redbeard is fucking brilliant.  Anyone who likes the kind of hushed Americana played by the likes of the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Smog or Bonnie Prince Billy really should go and see him play.  And that Moffat character’s rather decent too.

Rick Redbeard – Dreams of the Trees

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Saturday 5th September 2009: Scott Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit), Withered Hand & Danny from Chutes at Electric Circus.

I don’t know much about Chutes – they’ve been working on new recordings recently, apparently, so not playing live as much – but I know the other two pretty well in terms of their musical output and a quiet solo show from either Scott or Dan would be worth making the trip for.  Put the lot together and you have an absolutely brilliant lineup, if you ask me.

Frightened Rabbit – Poke (Live)

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These are the videos we got from Meursault’s live performance at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, when they supported Frightened Rabbit on the 18th August.

New Ruin and Crank Resolutions are new songs, which will both be on their second album, and this is pretty much the first airing for the former.  Enjoy.

Playing With the Past is an annual (we hope) event at the Edinburgh Film Festival where contemporary bands are invited to write new soundtracks for old films.  Last year was the first of these, when the superb British Sea Power wrote a brilliant score for Man of Aran, a (slightly fake) documentary about the lives of the inhabitants of a remote island off the West Coast of Ireland (extract here).

This was such a success that the band have been performing it all over the place ever since.  This year David Drummond, who put the event together, decided to invite three different bands to work with roughly half an hour or so of footage each, and he started off by inviting eagleowl, who suggested a number of other bands, from which David chose FOUND and Meursault.

We decided not to include more than a few excerpts of the music in this because the bands were a little uncomfortable about listening to too much of their stuff in the absence of the film to which it belongs.  So a big thank you to Tommy, Bart and Neil for coming in to talk about their music, and to David and Theresa from the Filmhouse who came by to chip in at the beginning, before having to rush off.  It may not be the catchiest of podcasts in a musical sense this week, but I think this is easily one of the best podcasts we’ve done – one of the most interesting, certainly.

Also, although I haven’t tracked down all these films on the internet, I have got some bits and pieces for you to give you an idea of what was going on.  Confusingly, they all have the original scores on these clips, but erm… well, hopefully you’ll find them instructive.

The Films:
1. eagleowl: Granton Trawler
2. eagleowl: Begone Dull Care
3. Meursault: Stan & Ollie
4. Meursault: Night Mail (Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3)
5. FOUND: Camera Makes Whoopee (Sorry, couldn’t find this one anywhere – here’s a Google search though if you want to have a go yourself. And a bit more about Norman McLaren, here.)

Toadcast #84 – The Playing With the Pastcast

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01. British Sea Power – Oh Larsen B (06.17)
02. eagleowl – Granton Trawler (Excerpt) (17.16)
03. eagleowl – Begone Dull Care (Excerpt) (24.46)
04. Six Organs of Admittance – Eighth Cognition/All You’ve Left (27.34)
05. Meursault – Night Mail (Excerpt) (35.46)
06. Meursault – Stan & Ollie (Excerpt) (43.24)
07. The Books – All Our Base are Belong to Them (46.25)
08. FOUND – Camera Makes Whoopee (Excerpt 2) (56.43)
09. Marvin Gaye – T Plays it Cool (68.39)
10. FOUND – Camera Makes Whoopee (Excerpt 1) (72.56)

That there finely crafted piece of graphic art is the flyer for the Toad Night happening on Sunday at Sneaky’s.  Beauticious, isn’t it – took me almost fifteen minutes.  It should be a fun night though, particularly if you get lubricated at the Shipping Forecast Garden Party at the Pear Tree beforehand.

I was a guest DJ at Born to Be Wide last night, which was rather fun.  My assignment was to play about half an hour of unsigned Edinburgh bands, so it was a fine opportunity to make a club crowd listen to tunes by the likes of The Leg, Enfant Bastard, the Pineapple Chunks and eagleowl.  I can’t imagine there are many clubs where that sort of stuff is on the playlist, so that made me smile a little on the inside – particularly when I was approached by someone during eagleowl, demanding to know who was playing this wonderful song.  Score one for the wol.

The other comedy about last night was the lineup of guest DJs.  Born to Be Wide is a good night anyway, but last night Derek and Olaf truly excelled, getting porn director Ben Dover, actor and former Fire Engines singer Tam Dean Burn, and Orange Juice/Josef K/Low Miffs guitar hero Malcolm Ross to do sets at various points during the evening.  So yes: me, Ben Dover, Tam Dean Burn and Malcolm Ross.  I might as well retire now.

To make matters even more surreal, Malcolm did his Postcard Records set after my Unsigned Edinburgh one, and didn’t know how to use the DJ stuff, so I had to show him.  Talk about the blind leading the bloody blind – me with my almighty two sets of DJ experience having to show someone else how to use the equipment.  In future, of course, I am going to simply refer to this incident as ‘that time I taught Malcolm Ross to DJ’.  If any of you let slip the fact that this is a gross exaggeration to the point of pure fabrication, then I’ll kill you.

“What did you do last night Toad?”
“Oh the usual… played some tunes, had a couple of gins, taught Malcolm Ross how to DJ.  You get up to much?”

Not sure where I was going with that, actually.  Apart from trying explain the fact that it’s Friday and once again I have a massive hangover.  If only the day was 30 hours long I could sleep this shit off quite happily – curse you, Earth, and your excessively hasty axial rotation!  The only real consolation is that Mrs. Toad went on one of those corporate circle jerk team building buzzword bingo tossathons last night, staggered in so pished she didn’t even turn out the light in the bedroom and is now probably feeling far worse than I am.

Although knowing her, she’s probably curled up on the floor of the disabled loo having a crafty nap, the cheeky little minx.

1. Best ritual to get you to sleep.
2. Best tip for getting ready for work and out of the house fast with a stinking hangover.
3. Best hangover treat.
4. Best comfort food your mum made.
5. Best drunken debacle which happened to someone else and was hence very amusing instead of mortifying.

Orange Juice – Love Sick

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Josef K – Sorry For Laughing (Vinyl Version)

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Fire Engines – Get Up and Use Me

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The Shop Assistants – It’s Up to You

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Parenthetical Girls – A Song For Ellie Greenwich (Who is dead.  Ruth from the Bowery and I recorded a podcast yesterday, which will go up next Saturday, which goes into this in much more detail, but for now just look her up and marvel at quite how many truly legendary songs the woman wrote.  I genuinely had no idea.)

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I give my parents tons of music. So much, in fact, that I made them pay for their copy of the Meursault album. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s not as daft as it sounds: basically, I give them tons of music as it is and if I thought they were going to like it then I would have given them a copy already. Consequently, if they just wanted one for sentimental reasons… well so do a lot of people, and you aren’t going to make any money at all if you hand out freebies to everyone who thinks they are due one.

I played the album to them after they’d coughed up and, sure enough, it wasn’t really their kind of thing. I think it’s a lot to do with the electronics, but by and large it was no real surprise. As I said, if I’d have thought they were going to like it, they’d have had a copy already.

They loved Small Stretch of Land though.

Neil, from the band, says much the same thing. His parents are incredibly proud of him, but in all honesty they aren’t all that keen on the music… eeexcept for A Small Stretch of Land, which they love. In fact, pretty much everyone’s parents love Small Stretch of Land.

Scott from Frightened Rabbit (who has done more than anyone except perhaps Vic Galloway to promote Meursault far and wide, which is hugely appreciated by all of us) has taken to occasionally covering one of their songs, particularly when he plays solo. Which one? Yes, A Small Stretch of Land.

Of course, given he only plays a Meursault song from time to time, and mostly at solo shows, it makes sense for it to be one of the ones that suits the acoustic guitar, but the end effect of all this was still the same: I ended up forgetting just how fucking good this song is.

Salt Pt.2 was always my favourite of the maudlin ballads on Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues and because Small Stretch of Land was the ‘obvious one’ in many ways, as evidenced by the general parent love and so on, I sort of forgot about it. But, as Lloyd Cole once sang, “The reason it’s a cliche is because it’s true.”

I’ve seen this song performed live twice recently, for the first time in nearly a year: once in somewhat confrontational fashion at the Queen’s Hall (video coming soon) and once in a small upstairs room in Leith. The massively different environments made the song sound totally different on both occasions, but it was fucking gorgeous on both. I really do have a bad habit of forgetting that sometimes the reason everyone likes something is because it just happens to be fucking brilliant.

Meursault – A Small Stretch of Land

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MySpace | Buy from Song, by Toad Records

I’ve heard a lot about the Pineapple Chunks over the last year or so and I have to confess that I have been pretty casual about engaging with their music.  I’m not sure I could tell you why, really.  Maybe it was because I saw them at Limbo quite early on, and found it all a little full-on.

I remember when I first started to get into FOUND I was a little perplexed, not sure if I loved or hated it, but oddly compelled to listen to more.  Well the first time I saw the Pineapple Chunks it was at Limbo a few months ago and my reaction was a little like that: I didn’t quite know what to make of them, in all honesty.

It’s choppy, sloppy indie rock which drawls and slouches around your head, and just as you think it’s getting too lazy to bother with much of much, they break into something altogether more furious, discordant and erm, well, bloody exciting, frankly.

They do have tunes, but they tend to batter the shit out of them until they are barely recognisable beneath a blanket of digression and fuzz.  Having seen them again at the recent and splendid Retreat Festival I felt like I was starting to get it a little more, although I’d still say I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it all, yet.  It’s still bloody fascinating though, and I am definitely going to see them again as soon as I get the chance.

They have five songs up on their MySpace page at the moment, but they are going to be recording some more stuff soon, with Pete from The Leg (who recorded the imminent Withered Hand album, along with Neil from Meursault). I’m really looking forward to the results, partly because I like what they have already and want more, but also because I think it might give a much clearer idea of who they are and where they are going as a band, now they have their first demos out of the way.

I might end up hating them, but I could easily end up loving this band.

The Pineapple Chunks – Look Back in Horror

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The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage

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The Pineapple Chunks on MySpace

Last week I went to the Leith Tape Club for what was rather shamefully the first time.  It’s a tiny monthly night run in the Isolounge – just upstairs from the Isobar on Bernard Street – and has had some extremely good lineups in the months its been running.

Despite intending to attend on several occasions it took the fact that a couple of my friends were playing to get me to finally get off my arse and get along, and I am very pleased I did.  Apart from the fact that Leith, and the Shore in particular, is a brilliant place to go out the night itself really was lovely.  The Isolounge is all full of comfy seats, so it doesn’t take many people before it starts to get quite full.  This is a good thing, although it can result in a slightly oppressive need for absolute and total silence while the bands are playing.  Even a whisper can seem rude, but then, who am I to really complain about that; miles better than a fuller bar, but an audience composed of disinterested slackjaws who insist on gabbing away during even the saddest songs.

Alan the compere, also known as Little Pebble, MCs the night with enough character to be entertaining, but enough humility not to grandstand.  He basically leaves it up to the bands to garner the attention, and this kind of unpretentious friendliness pretty much permeates the entire evening – it was just a nice place to come for a beer and some tunes, simple as that.  The whole business is recorded to tape, and you can buy one either on the door or from the website.  Volume 1 has some very good bands indeed, so you won’t regret your purchase.

I remember a while ago I pointed out that Edinburgh’s more famous bands like Broken Records, Young Fathers, FOUND and so on make a huge contribution to the music scene here just by existing – that the work and financial commitment they put into constantly touring or their mere presence in the press spotlight brings attention, investment and belief to everyone else in the city trying to make music, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Shortly after that Rob St. John wrote a really nice piece for the Scotsman’s Under the Radar blog which, whether or not it was intended as a direct response, could easily have been so.  He argued that the health of a city’s music scene is reflected not in its marquee bands, whose wider profile can often remove them somewhat from the grass roots goings on in their home town, but in the number and variety of smaller, more local DIY bands and promoters.

The two views aren’t in conflict of course – in fact I think both are true – but it’s seeing nights like this put together which remind me of Rob’s article.  I urge you to come along if you get the chance – the lineup for the 1st October is brilliant and as good a place to start as any.

Sometimes your taste just stops progressing.  You can see it happen with clothes, too – there is no way in hell I am ever going to wear skinny jeans, for example.  Oddly, I think they look can quite cool on cool people, but they always seem to be monumentally physically unflattering, no matter who’s wearing them.  My taste in trousers basically stopped moving forward around the time the hipsters of the world started to leave the bootcut on the shelf a few years ago.  A good few years ago now, actually.

This happens to people with music all the time.  Here at Proper Job one of my bosses’ musical taste pretty much ceased to have a particularly close relationship with the cutting edge at the tail end of the nineties – about the time he and I both lived around Byres Road in Glasgow, shopping in all the same record shops, unbeknownst to one another.

JC over at the Vinyl Villain has said on numerous occasions (usually when praising Frightened Rabbit for being the exception) that he just doesn’t connect with current music – he finds it difficult not to sigh the weary, jaded sigh of someone who has heard it all before*.

I remember the moment my cousin Steve said how much he liked the new Neneh Cherry song when it came on the car radio one afternoon many years ago.  It was spongy, soft, banal R ‘n’ B and I was quite shocked – this is the man who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys, The Piranhas, The Specials, The Clash, The Smiths, Billy Bragg, REM, John Cooper Clark, Madness and Adam & the Ants when I was no more than a nipper.

It’s particularly obvious with radio presenters and magazine editors whose taste clearly and publically starts to stagnate – failing to ever really move forward from the sound they were into when their fascinations and those of the hip and the cool truly coincided for a while.  I presume the same will happen to me and this site.  Hopefully not yet, but I suppose it’s probably inevitable, notwithstanding the fact that it was never all that hip to begin with.

I always wonder why this happens.  Do you just stop caring?  That’s what happened with my boss – he says it just stopped being all that important to him.  Do you slowly but surely stop surrounding yourself with people who are going to play you the new and the weird stuff until you get over the initial disomfort and get to like it?  Do you just get to the point where you fill up?  People seem to have the ability to get excited about new television series much later in their lives, although I suppose we all seem to lapse into Midsomer Murders eventually, but why does the musical interest seem to tail off so much earlier?  I guess people just watch a fuck of a lot more telly, so they are probably kept closer to the cutting edge just by default, but why do fifty year olds seem so much more likely to get excited about the new series of The Wire than the new album by Animal Collective or someone like that?  Or is that not really true, am I missing my guess on that one?

Whatever, it doesn’t really matter, I’m just idly speculating.  I think I’ve managed to keep my parents’ taste relatively young, actually, by constantly sending them new stuff.  Not NME haircut young, but a respectably alternative kind of young**.  They struggle a bit with some of the electronic stuff though, and I didn’t send them the Meursault album, for example; except Small Stretch of Land, all parents love that one.  But I hope someone does the same for me.  At thirty-three I reckon I have a couple more years of  youthful enthusiasm in me before the will to live slowly dies and I begin the long, slow, depressing slide into that awful form of dementia that leads you to believe that Noah and the Whale are any sort of a band at all.  When that happens, someone please just give me a massive overdose of Coldplay and put me out of my misery as quickly as possible.

R.E.M. – Radio free Europe

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Billy Bragg – World Turned Upside Down

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The Beat – Whine & Grine/Stand Down Margaret

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*That’s just because he’s so incredibly fucking old, by the way, not because he’s a snob.
**I never liked mainstream music when I was young, so I’m not likely to aspire to it in old age.  I just mean stuff that’s still current and innovative.

For those of you who aren’t blind it should be rather obvious that we’ve had something of a facelift around here.  Massive thanks are due to Andy from Nonimage for his work on the site, not least for his patience in dealing with my pernickety* nature.  As a designer, I can promise you that having another designer for a client is an unspeakable nightmare, and he really has been very patient.

There may be a few kinks to work out over the next day or so, but if you have any obvious functional issues then drop me an email and we’ll get on them.  Or you could just leave a comment on this post I guess, that might do the trick too.

Thanks Andy.  Sorry for being such a colossal pain in the arse.

Clem Snide – Beautiful

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* Sorry, Americans, there’s no ‘s’ – don’t know where you get that nonsense from.

Well the truly mental Edinburgh August schedule is nearly past and I have to confess that, for the purpose of writing this post anyway, that is something of a relief.  This week I am involved in a couple of things – firstly, Thursday’s Born to be Wide in the Speakeasy at Cabaret Voltaire, Olaf Furniss’s regular night of chat and help and networking and stuff like that.  This week I have been asked to put together a playlist of unsigned Edinburgh bands for the Wheel of Fortune.  There’s something of a grey area in that signed/unsigned stuff, so I might cheat slightly and take the opportunity to plug Song, by Toad bands, which is highly dishonourable.  But then, I am a highly dishonourable man, so what do you expect.

Secondly, I have put together a lineup for Sneaky Pete’s Edge Festival stuff, including brand new Fife indie characters Ambulances, whose debut album I am really enjoying, as well as Art Fag, and the excellent Enfant Bastard.  It’s  a bit more of a loud and scruffy lineup to those you might be used to, but we all need to quit being so fucking delicate from time to time.  I may also do a spot of DJing, but hopefully the true masters will take over before anything too serious needs to be accomplished.  Any volunteers to help out?

[EDIT: Whoops, like a fuckwit I forgot the excellent Shipping Forecast Garden Party.  It's between 1 and 7pm at the Peartree (ie perfect for pre Toad Night bevvying) and you will be entertained by the splendid Woodenbox, Zoey Van Goey, The Stormy Seas and Come in Tokyo, amongst others.  Sorry for missing this one, lads.]

Wednesday 26th August 2009: Dinosaur Pile-Up & The Curators at Sneaky Pete’s.

I don’t know too much about Dinosaur Pile-Up, but I quite like some of the stuff I’ve heard.  It’s quite NME-friendly indie rock, but I remember rather liking a good few of their earliest tunes, although I’ll admit I’ve somewhat taken my eye off them since.

Dinosaur Pile-Up – Love is a Boat and We’re Sinking

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Thursday 27 August 2009: Malcolm Middleton & The Red Well at Cabaret Voltaire.

Do I need to tell you anything about Malcolm Middleton?  I shouldn’t, really, should I.

Malcolm Middleton – Fuck it, I Love You

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Friday 28th August 2009:  Frank Turner & Sam Beer at Cabaret Voltaire.

Frank Turner’s early solo stuff put me quite strongly in mind of Billy Bragg.  I really liked it, but I have to confess I haven’t seen him for a while now, so all I can tell you is that his newer stuff appears to embracing a more rounded, full rock ‘n’ roll sound.

Frank Turner – The Real Damage

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Saturday 29th August 2009: Penny Black Remedy, The Red Well, The Stormy Seas, Fanattica & All at Sea at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

The Stormy Seas and Fanattica I know and can recommend.  The others sound quite promising too, and Henry’s is bound to be a bargain, unlike some of the shinier venues in the city.  Should be a good night, this one.

The Stormy Seas – Blood on the Carpet

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Sunday 30th August 2009: Song, by Toad Night at Sneaky Pete’s, with Enfant Bastard, Ambulances & Art Fag.

You never really know what you’re going to get with Enfant Bastard, but I will say that I have never seen it be bad, and when he’s good he’s fucking amazing.  Art Fag, whose side project Meursault are doing quite well too, will support, as will the very-promising-indeed Ambulances.

Ambulances – What I Thought Of

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