Hmm, very good stuff indeed.  On first listen I rather dismissed this as indie-rock, with the emphasis on the rawk part.  As soon as rock acquires that ‘aw’ in the middle (think the worst possible squawked, American nasal pronunciation) I get twitchy, but in this case it is part of a weird mixture which actually works really well.

There’s a lot in this sound.  It’s straightforward enough in most ways – guitar music which builds from indie twang to full on rock noise – but the guitar sound itself is pretty interesting.  There’s a lot of jangly indie in the detail work, but when the sound builds you end up with slightly punky rock-god riffs which seem to be shouty American high school rock from one angle, and an odd blend of Cramps/Ramones punk from another.  It’s more the latter, but it’s almost as if every fifth thump of the guitar strings has this weird urge to tease you with the former – like the guitar sound is being pulled in a lot of different directions at once and that is one of the things which makes this record most interesting, from my perspective.

I’d also suggest that this album doesn’t finish quite as strongly as it starts. Gravity, Repeat it and French Rocking Horse are big, riffy, and brash as hell.  Middle of a Field, on the other hand, doesn’t quite grab me and Swimming and Strange Town, for all they are interesting songs, let the pace of the album stutter a little by all being placed together towards the tail-end the way they are.

So I am left with an album which seems a little abrupt, and one with which I have a slightly awkward relationship, but nevertheless one which I find rather interesting and one which I have really enjoyed coming to terms with, after my initally rather frosty reaction.

Mystery of Two – Gravity

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Mystery of Two – French Rocking Horse

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Exit Stencil Recordings

Alright, this time it’s really happening.  After having to hastily re-shuffle the lineup at the inaugural Toad House Gig (no big deal really, as it was a brilliant night anyway, fortunately, and with big thanks to Neil, Jamie, Pete and Jonnie), this time I can confirm that Animal Magic Tricks really is going to play at our house.

She’s touring with the mental and amazing Men Diamler, so I think that makes for a brilliant 1-2 lineup, and we’ve got some recording pencilled in for that weekend to finish off her joint EP release with Neil from Meursault and Pete from The Leg.

Again, please buy tickets in advance if you can, because it really helps to get an idea of numbers for things like this.  Our house isn’t all that big and will fill up pretty quickly, so that would be best all round.  It’s BYOB, and all the money will go directly to Rich and Frances, so please do cough up and come along.

For those of you who wish to investigate, before committing, try here:
Animal Magic Tricks MySpace
Men Diamler MySpace

And also please remember that they are both also playing the Leith Tape Club the night before, down at the Iso Lounge in Leith with the Colourful Band.  The details are here, but please go along to support Alan, who hosts the night, because he is doing an excellent thing.

I was fascinated to hear this record, an electronic spoken-word collaboration between Ballboy’s Gordon MacIntyre and Maja Mångård, (who is Swedish, and might just be his wife, but I’m not certain) but I would say that it is really only partially successful. Some of it really is good, and some just doesn’t quite click for me, but it’s definitely an interesting record.

This album feels a little like an extension of the instincts which drove McIntyre to write I Hate Scotland during his Ballboy days – a rambling, contemplative monologue set to music.  I don’t know enough about Ballboy’s back catalogue to make any kind of statement like that definitively, but it certainly feels like a large step in a similar direction.

The lyrics are absolutely key to music like this, and these remind me very, very strongly of Belle & Sebastian.  Beautifulgirlsunnyledges could easily be one of theirs, although don’t take that as a disparagement of the song, which is really lovely.  This kind of unrestrained stream of consciousness is present on most songs: McIntyre just seems to set a thought loose in his brain letting it flit around, just to see where it will go.  At times he veers towards deeper thoughts, but most of the more profound musings are lightened either by very dry humour or by gentle whimsy.  He’s not fannying around at all, just making sure we know he isn’t taking himself too seriously or trying to solve all the world’s problems in a three-minute pop song.

Lyrically and musically, er, whilst I like an awful lot of this, it can veer towards being just a little bit soft from time to time.  The electronics have just a little too much tweeness and niceness in them, compared to the glitch and skitter which I tend to prefer.  And the lyrics can, slightly in the way of the recent MJ Hibbett & the Validators album, seem just a little middle-aged from time to time.  What I mean by that is, I guess, just a little more inwardly focussed and domestic than I might personally expect.  This is no surprise, because Gordon is more veteran than tyro, nor is it any shame exactly, it’s just something which prevents me connecting with the lyrical content from time to time.

So for all there’s a lot here which I really like, there’s also a fair bit which I don’t quite connect with.  It’s a really interesting album though, and I am always impressed by people who push in radically different directions after making music of a certain type for a long time.

Money Can’t Buy Music – Beautifulgirlsunnyledges

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Money Can’t Buy Music – We Will All Asphyxiate

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

This record pretty much ended up being almost exactly what I expected: most of it I bloody love, some I find a little too much, but in general I am really enjoying it.  A lot of the songs have been loose in the wild for a while, so it’s no surprise that an album with them on it is one I like, but there’s easily enough new fun that any existing George Pringle fan will find plenty of exciting surprises.

I have seen this album reviewed as a spoken word record in a few places, where people discuss the crossover between poetry and lyric-writing, between pop music and spoken word performances and other things which I would be frankly more than a little out of my depth talking about in any but the most superficial sense.  Personally, I reckon balls to spoken word and poetry, this is a pop album.  The vocal may not be sung most of the time, but it does the exact same job as the vocal on any other pop record, so I don’t really see the point in treating them any differently.

George Pringle conjures a bizarre world.  In part she is a dissolute, literate Sloan Ranger surrounded by rich trust-fund babies wasting away and thinking themselves important as they piss away their parents’ money, masturbating their delusions of significance to the point of chafing.  Then there’s the part of it which moves in a world of wastrel art snobs, imagining and cultivating their dislocation and suffering to the point that their whole lives become vapid pieces of stylised performance art.

She conjures these images, not in the sense that she belongs in this world exactly, more that she inhabits it at a sort of uneasy distance.  In fact it’s the only thing that stops you wanting to slap her: the fact that despite the free-flowing confessional of the monologues, the most conspiratorial element in the whole thing is the fuzzy implication that both you and she find the worlds she paints both uncomfortable and in some sense repellent.  Imagine if your posh friend invited you to a party and you were surrounded by rich, vacuous, self-absorbed trustifarian cunts.  George Pringle manages to give you the impression that she would be the girl you spoke to briefly in the kitchen, who you found oddly fascinating and who, long after the revulsion of the party itself had worn off, somehow stuck in your mind, separate from and untarnished by all you hated about the rest of the evening.

That may be an awkward explanation of how the personality of this record comes across, and it also puts a lot of words in the mouth of Pringle herself which may well not be accurate, but it’s difficult to explain otherwise.

Musically this record is at its best when the scratchy, clicking electronic backing tracks slow to a disturbed melancholia and Pringle’s vocal becomes a lament, delivered in a voice which seems to have a distressed wail bursting to break out of it at any point.  Generally, I fucking love these ones.  The only times I am really not that keen on the actual music are on the two tracks in the middle of the album: the ten-minute Bonjour Tristesse which doesn’t really quite manage to fill its length properly in my opinion, and the manic Pop Hit, which strays just a little too far into mental disco pop for my personal taste.  That’s a pretty tiny complaint though, because all the rest of this record is bloody marvellous.

There’s just something incredibly engaging about both the style of the album and Pringle herself – or at least the persona she assumes on this record.  She somehow manages to make this record charming, despite flirting with an awful lot of characteristics I could easily find off-putting.  As it is though, I think Salon des Refuses has turned out almost exactly as well as I had hoped it would.

George Pringle – We Could Have Been Heroes

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George Pringle – Fellini for Prime Minister

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Late last week Dylan was trying to be a smart arse by once again reminding everyone of a joke he found extremely funny about nine months ago but which everyone else forgot more or less within half an hour.  That joke?  Bringing some ASDA Smart Price Gin to our Christmas party (first Saturday in December, for those of you planning that far ahead).  Because I like gin, you see.  Nice gin.  Like Tanqueray.  And this was cheap and rough.  Ha ha.  See?  Get it?  Yes, that’s what I thought too.  Hilarious.

What he ended up doing though, in looking for a picture of this foul fluid, was stumbling across a blog called Gin and Crumpets which is fucking brilliant.  It’s about gin and food and restaurants and gin and cakes and gin, so you can see the obvious appeal.  And, having crashed her party with our Christmas-party-shitty-gin-related shenanigans it then, in a magnificent coincidence, turns out that Ms. Gin & Crumpets herself is actually a fan of the Edinburgh DIY music scene.  Which is weird.  But great.  And weird.

Anyhow, pop along and read the blog.  I am handily linking to the gin section, but there’s a lot more to it than that: the turn of phrase is brilliant, the photos are oddly artless and still somehow gorgeous.  And in general it is just a nice place.  There are other reasons for mentioning it of course, and those reasons are in the title of the blog itself: gin, and of course crumpets.

Firstly, I feel like I owe gin an apology.  Neil and I drank a bottle of Caol Ila and a bottle of Ardbeg between us on Sunday night and, apart from the brain-crushing hangover, I felt rather grubby the next day: like I’d cheated on a lover who had nurtured me through years of heartache.  Do not worry, my juniper mistress, I may have dallied for an evening, but you are still my true love.  Fear not, for you have not been abandoned.

Secondly, there are the crumpets.  I fucking love crumpets.  Growing up in Austria you simply do not get crumpets, so when we came to England to visit my English grandparents (the others are Dutch-Canadian) I remember watching cricket, Wimbledon, Neighbours and eating crumpets.  I still rarely ever eat crumpets now, but for some reason they seem like the ultimate treat: toasted to the point of becoming slightly crispy on the top, but still soft in the middle, and drenched in so much butter it could stop your heart from across the room.  There were a few oddly nostalgic things about visiting England in those days, stuff like digestive biscuits with cheddar and apples or beans on toast – things we just couldn’t get at home – but crumpets were then and remain one of my favourites.

And that, is pretty much that.  Don’t know what brought that aimless ramble on, but there you go.  It can’t be insightful, cutting edge cultural commentary every day, you know.

The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club – Ban the Gin

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Tom Waits – Gin Soaked Boy

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I feel really weird this morning.  Partly I am whizzed off my tits on painkillers, which at least makes the back pain manageable, and partly I took the advice from this thread a little too seriously last night.  Ouch.  Pills, Caol Ila and Ardbeg: not a winning combination by the time the morning after comes around.

So there’s no chat this week, you’ll be pleased to know.  Here are some gigs.  Go to them.  But good luck picking what to do on Wednesday, because I’ve no fucking idea myself.

Wednesday 23rd September 2009: David Thomas Broughton and several other chaps at Sneaky Pete’s.

Actually David Thomas Broughton is being supported by Debutant, Twi the Humble Feather and Ross Clark, I just liked the phrasing of that little place marker, so I left it in.  ‘Several other chaps’ – spendid.  See, I told you the pills were working.  Anyhow, David Thomas Broughton is mental and brilliant.  He has a black belt in the use of loop pedals, a gorgeous voice and a strange knack for peculiar physical theatre to accompany his musical performances.  He’s sufficiently eccentric, actually, that he is a good one for sorting the men from the boys because a lot of people really don’t like David Thomas Broughton.  These people are wrong, it is as simple as that.

Wednesday 23rd September 2009: Withered Hand Album Launch at the Leith Dockers’ Club, with special guests.

You know I like this album, don’t you?  You also know I have an awful lot of time for Dan, don’t you.  And I’ve not read a bad review for the record anywhere – not even a merely lukewarm one.  So expect a big old hairy metal-hippie love-in at one of Edinburgh’s more idiosyncratic venue choices.  I would tell you who the Very Special Guest is, but I am not allowed.  You’ll just have to keep your Ear Against the Wireless.

Withered Hand – Cornflake (Demo)

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Wednesday 23rd September 2009 (or Thursday): Jesus H. Foxx & the Pineapple Chunks at the Wee Red Bar.

The Wee Red website seems to think this is on Thursday 24th, whereas I am pretty sure the bands think it’s on the 23rd.  I don’t know – personally I would go along on Wednesday if I were you because the venue is there all week and it’s probably best to turn up when the bands are actually intending to play.  Besides, at least if you go on Wednesday and you’re wrong, there’s time to put it right.  There will be lots of guitars and drums at this gig,

Friday 25th September 2009: Julie Doiron, Construction & Destruction and Former Utopia at the Bowery.

Julie Doiron is folky, quiet, French Canadian and stuff like that.

Saturday 26th September 2009: Occasional Flickers, French Wives & Cancel the Astronauts at Sneaky Pete’s.

The Occasional Flickers are probably best and most lazily described as pleasant twee-pop.  Which is nice.  My head hurts too much to write anything more about this.

The Occasional Flickers – A Medal Won in ’84

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Saturday 26th September 2009: The Low Miffs & Malcolm Ross at Cabaret Voltaire.

The Low Miffs are a fucking great live band, and their album is excellent.  It’s art rock, to a degree, old school indie to a degree and camp as tits in some senses.  I’ll be here with bells on, depending on certain potential Manchester-based excusions.

The Low Miffs & Malcolm Ross – Cressida

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Sunday 27th September 2009: Strike the Colours & Zoey Van Goey at Electric Circus.

Zoey Van Goey are another band I have inexplicably yet to see, for no really obvious reason.  They have an album out and an increasing national profile, so I really should get my shit together and check them out.  Strike the Colours is the vehicle for Malcolm Middleton’s fiddle player, and a band I kind of like, but perhaps no more than that.

Strike the Colours – Strangernight

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[This week's Sunday Supplement has been very kindly written by perhaps my oldest (and oldest) reader, Campfires & Battlefields.  C&B has emailed me more good music suggestions than pretty much anyone, being the first to alert me to Samamidon, O'Death, Fleet Foxes (okay, we'll forgive him that one) The Felice Brothers and quite a few more, so hopefully we can persuade him to do a monthly column - sort of a Letter From America sort of thing.  Thanks C&B.]

A few weeks back these hallowed pages were given over to iniquity in the form of The Funkcast, where Callum from Meursault faced the unenviable task of persuading Matthew to relax and shake his clenched boo-tay, if only for an hour or so.  I, for one, was inspired, because I really like funk.   I’m not an expert or anything, but I have listened to a lot of this type of music, and I’ve been listening to it a great deal lately.  So I thought I’d take this opportunity to explore the genre a little bit, with an eye to spreading the word about some of the newer stuff that’s out there.

There’s actually quite a global neo-funk “movement” going on at present, and its purveyors have been coming out with some remarkable stuff over the last few years.  In my opinion some of these records tread dangerously close to Acid Jazz or Trip-Hop.  But at its best, the funk renaissance hearkens back to the Afro-beat assault of Fela Kuti, the dark heavy funk of Miles Davis’ early ‘70s output, or the Ethio Jazz arrangements of Mulatu Astatqe, whose recordings from the late 1960s and early 1970s have recently come to prominence after being featured on the brilliant Ethiopiques series from Buda Musique.

It seems like the center of the universe for modern funk is in New York City, where Daptone Records has its headquarters.  Daptone is home to Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, who even some of you poor pallid Scotsmen might have heard of, as well as other great groups like Budos Band, Sugarman 3, and the Menahan Street Band , whose tune Make the Road by Walking was heavily sampled by Jay-Z on Roc Boys (And the Winner Is) from the American Gangster album.

The movement extends far beyond New York, though, and far beyond the States for that matter.  The UK’s Freestyle Records produces solid funk by artists from as far afield as New Zealand (Nathan Haines), Australia (Cookin’ On 3 Burners), and Israel (The Apples), while also providing a home for good English groups like Lack of Afro.   Actually, some of my favorite neo-funk records have been made in Germany by outfits like The Poets of Rhythm and Karl Hector & The Malcouns, and Holland has also made a great deal of noise with the Lefties Soul Connection.

It’s not indie rock, that’s for damn sure, and it’s not folk rock.  Actually, it’s not really the sort of thing that I hear on music blogs very often at all, although I haven’t done much digging to be honest, so there may well be good blogs out there that feature this stuff.  But I thought it might be a nice change of pace, and I think there’s a rich seam of mucis being made in this style right now.  So explore if you want to.  Here’s a couple of new tunes that I particularly like, and also a couple of old tunes that show where this music gets its roots.

Budos Band – Chicago Falcon

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Karl Hector & The Malcouns – Sahara Swing

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The Apples — Kol Hayom Bahalal

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Mulatu Astatqe – Yekermo Sew

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Wallias Band – Muziqawi Silt

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[This week's Sunday Supplement has been very kindly written by perhaps my oldest (and oldest) reader, Campfires & Battlefields.  C&B has emailed me more good music suggestions than pretty much anyone, being the first to alert me to Samamidon, O'Death, Fleet Foxes (okay, we'll forgive him that one) The Felice Brothers and quite a few more, so hopefully we can persuade him to do a monthly column - sort of a Letter From America sort of thing.  Thanks C&B.]

I am enjoying this record way more than I should.  What we have here is a “concept” album about cricket, written and performed by Neil Hannon (from The Divine Comedy) and Thomas Walsh (from Pugwash).  What the fuck?  I know nothing about cricket.  Nothing.  I also know nothing about either the Divine Comedy or Pugwash.  I think I might’ve heard one Divine Comedy song in my life, and I’m pretty certain I’ve never heard anything by Pugwash.   Yet I cannot stop listening.

I first heard the Duckworth Lewis Method about three weeks ago, when DaveyH from The Ghost of Electricity posted a song.  Since then it’s become a strange obsession.  I’ve been thinking about why I like it so much, and the obvious answer is the melodies.  I can’t remember hearing a better set of tunes in ages.  It’s got touches of XTC, the Kinks, and even Robert Wyatt in his more tuneful moments.  That counts for a lot.  Every song swings.  But there’s something else at work that really sets this record apart for me.  A sweetness.   It’s by turns wistful (Mason On The Boundary, The Nightwatchman), comical (Jiggery Pokery, Meeting Mr. Miandad), nostalgic (Gentlemen and Players, Flatten the Hay, Rain Stops Play), and ironic (The Age of Revolution, Test Match Special), but never cynical or sarcastic.  The songs glow with a real fondness for the sport and an affection for its personalities and archetypes.  It’s a shameless authenticity that I find poignant, even if I have no idea what they’re on about half the time.  Sheer aural prozac.

Adding to the appeal of this record is its ephemeral  quality.  The band broke up a few weeks ago, just as I was discovering them, so there’ll be no more Duckworth Lewis Method.  No gigs.  Just 12 perfect pop songs.  This is one of my favorites of the year.

The Duckworth Lewis Method – Mason On The Boundary

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The Duckworth Lewis Method – Meeting Mr. Miandad

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Website | More mp3s |Buy from Amazon

Well this podcast has been recorded from my sick bed, given my current immobility.  Actually, recording the Toadcast from bed was quite pleasant, once I got over the slightly unusual surroundings.  Imagine me in my pants and scratching my balls whilst talking to you and you’ll pretty much have the ambience down pat.

I sort of intended this to be a selection of poppy little tunes from my inbox, because all the last podcasts have been so heavily themed, but instead it’s ended up a little bit on the experimental side, through no real intent of my own.  Nevertheless, if you’re happy to listen to the growl of Polvo, the monologues of George Pringle and the peculiar electro-experimentalism of Mark Linkous and Fennesz all in one podcast then, fuck it, you’re in the right place.

Toadcast #86 – The Paincast

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01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You But Goodbye (03.11)
02. Cast Spells – Glamorous Glowing (07.39)
03. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (13.02)
04. The Leg – A Rat’s Health (17.04)
05. Polvo – Fractured (Like Chandeliers) (22.40)
06. Vandaveer – A Might Leviathan of Old (29.22)
07. Sparklehorse & Fennesz – If My Heart (from In the Fishtank #13) (40.13)
08. George Pringle – SW10 (45.03)
09. X Lion Tamer – Tugboat (52.40)
10. Kurt Vile – Blackberry Song (59.54)

I know, it’s a shocking thought, isn’t it – the idea of me spouting tedious garbage on the World Wide Superhighways in the faint expectation that anyone might take the time to listen.  Anyhow, recently I have been involved in two such enterprises, both eminently listenable, but for entirely different reasons.

Firstly, I made my debut appearance on Hype Machine Radio this month, talking about Julian Plenti.  Given that Hype Radio is supposed to be at least loosely related to their charts I think the chances of my making regular appearances on this thing are pretty slim, although I’d love the chance to go on and slag off The XX, who are fucking dismal, but I’m not sure that faux-hipster sneering is quite what they intend to be about so that chance probably won’t come my way.

Anyhow, the episode I am on is September 2009, which is currently at the top of this page, here.  My friend Dev who runs Hype Radio and comments here from time to time was drinking whisky the other night and was not impressed with his tipple.  He emailed me this plea for help:

I am currently sipping a single malt from Islay, the maker is Bowmore (clearly a mass producer posing as a small producer) and it kinda sucks.  Wine is really my thing these days (or, you know, beer, or margarita, or gin & tonic, of course, depending on the occasion) but I have been every so slowly endeavo(u)ring to develop my Scotch palette over the years… and this stuff sucks.  You have any favorites?

My personal favourite is Laphroaig, but I am so new to whisky that I’m in no position to offer advice or suggestions at all, so I thought I might throw this one open to the readers.  And Dev is a nice guy, so don’t offering the poor man cleaning products just for fun.  Suggestions in the comments, please.

And secondly, do you all listen to the Contrast Podcast?  Well if you don’t, you should.  Every week for the last 180-plus weeks Tim has put together a podcast assembled from songs and intros emailed in from music people around the world, all centred on an ever-changing theme.

I chipped in two weeks ago on the topic of darts, not because I know any songs about darts, but because I know one which mentions them somewhat tangentially and also contains the stupendous line ‘Is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a twat?’ which is, in its supremely brilliant delivery as much as its rather brutally hilarious content, one of the funniest things I have ever heard in a song anywhere, ever.

Half Man Half Biscuit – Surging Out of Convalescence

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Rye Whisky (I know, I know, he doesn’t want a rye, but I like this song so fuck off.)

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