Given how mental it looks like December is going to be for gigs, the last week of November looks as thin as I wish I still was.  There are a couple of things knocking around though, so bear with me.

On the subject of touring, incidentally, it’s really not a cheap undertaking so as an alternative Candy Claws – who are on my friend Kevin’s label, Indiecater Records – are doing a virtual tour.  This means that each day for a couple of weeks a new blog in a new place will host one of their videos, thus allowing them to play to audiences in lots of different places in much the same way a conventional tour does. List of remaining dates at the bottom of the page.

Erm, so here are the only gigs I could really dig out for the week.  There’s not a lot, but then, giving the liver a rest in the week before the Christmas mayhem really kicks off is no bad thing.  Song, by Toad Christmas part and the last night at the Bowery on the 12th, remember.

Tuesday 24th November 2009: Dawn Landes & the Last Battle (I think) at Sneaky Pete’s.

Dawn Landes is a very lovely American lady singer-songwriter.  I don’t mean to be flippant, but there’s really not much else you need to know.  I think The Last Battle may be supporting, but I’ve managed to lose the email telling me one way or another, so I’m afraid a suspicion is all I can give you.

Dawn Landes – Picture Show

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Saturday 28th November 2009: Drums of Death at Sneaky Pete’s.

Oddly, I am going to have to confess to not being an enormous fan of Drums of Death, but whether or not this was a thin week I’d still be recommending him.  I saw him at Wickerman this Summer and despite the thumping, dirty doosh-doosh-doosh music not being my bag, it was still a really impressive performance, so I’d definitely recommend seeing him if you think you are even slightly likely to like it.

Candy Claws virtual tour dates:

12/8 – Liverpool – The Devil has the Best Tuna
12/9 – Ireland – Asleep on the Compost Heap
12/10 – Norway – Eardrums Music
12/11 – Germany – Das Klienicum
12/12 – Scotland – Song, by Toad

12/14 – Switzerland – Music of the Moment
12/15 – Huggerland – mp3hugger
12/16 – Venezuela – Gopher Illustrated
12/17 – Philippines?
12/18 – Surprise Finale!

Yes indeed, I don’t care about your actual opinions, all I want you to do is vote for my friends, thank you very much.

It is time for the Contrast Podcast‘s annual Festive Fifty vote, and you have until the end of Monday to get your votes in, and there are a couple of local gentlemen who you might want to assist in scoring as highly as possible: Withered Hand and Meursault, both of whom are nominated more than once.

Music bloggers from around the world have nominated songs, from which Tim has created a shortlist, which I am including below the jump because it’s rather long.  All you have to do is read the list, pick your top ten in order and email them to Tim before the end of tomorrow, Monday 23rd December at: contrast.podcast *at* gmail.com

In case you don’t know any of the songs in question, Tim’s also put together a handy player so you can have a listen, which can be found here.  Read the rest of the post for the full list of songs, and please do vote. Read the rest of this entry »

The Excast is so named because I am playing a lot of people’s former bands.  There’s Shane MacGowan’s Nipple Erectors, Phil Chevron’s Radiators, Shilpa Ray’s Beat the Devil and Billy Bragg’s Riff Raff.

I concentrate so much on new music these days that I often decide whether or not I like a band on the basis of a handful of demos, maybe a single, sometimes a debut EP, stuff like that.  And of course, bands don’t stumble into the world fully-formed, it takes some of them ages to become brilliant, and a lot of the time the initial forms of a band can be really strange, presumably because the people in question were still casting around a bit for their sound.

So there’s a bit of that here, but it’s not all that rigid a theme, and the playlist is a bit messy but, erm, well never mind.  There are some great songs, so enjoy!

Toadcast #96 – The Excast

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01. Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers – Beating St. Louis (04.07)
02. Beat the Devil – Plea Bargain (11.09)
03. Bright Eyes – Neely O’Hara (19.56)
04. Richard Hawley – Naked in Pitsmoor (26.16)
05. The Young Republic – The Alchemist (33.20)
06. Construction & Destruction – The Signal (41.24)
07. The Nipple Erectors – Nervous Wreck (48.34)
08. The Radiators – Walking Home Alone Again (50.39)
09. The Pogues – Lorca’s Novena (56.37)
10. Riff Raff – You Shaped House (63.33)

Well thirty-four seems little different to thirty-three, apart from the fact that it seems to involve a severe headache and an aversion to bright lights.  What I need is a lunch and the King’s Wark and a couple of pints and I’ll be right as rain.  Hopefully.

You’ll be blindly indifferent to know that after my back injury (yes, months ago) I am now finally feeling brave enough to go back to playing some gentle 5-a-side football again.  It’s weird with backs – I’ve done some running, and it feels fine, but because I’m not all that confident it’s all still a bit stiff because it’s tough to actually let all the muscles in the base of your spine relax when you’re still a bit nervous that your spine might turn to jelly if you do.

Anyway, we’ll see.  I won’t be pushing it that hard, that’s for sure, but it’s about time I got my lardy arse moving again and at least attempted to wheeze my way through an hour of physical punishment.  Let’s face it, after thirty an hour’s worth of de-fitnetising takes weeks to claw back, so best not let it all get too out of control before I try and get back out there again.

So if I can brave the Scottish Winter in a pair of shorts, you can brave making your first comment.  Why the fuck not, it’s Friday anyway, and everyone else will be talking total nonsense anyway, so why not take advantage of the de-lurking amnesty and get stuck in with a comment.  It doesn’t have to be witty – mine won’t be – so there’s no pressure.

1. Which age was your favourite so far.
2. Which age did you fear most as a kid?
3. How old are you compared to how old your folks were when they had you?
4. What do you fear most about ageing?
5. And what are you looking forward to the most?

David Byrne – Glass, Concrete & Stone

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Randy Newman – Political Science

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Howe Gelb – B4U (Do Do Do)

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Shiva Burlesque – Do the Pony

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The Jesus & Mary Chain – Just Like Honey

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The Times have raised something of a stink recently by announcing that they are going to start charging for the online content of their newspaper.  This isn’t new, exactly, because a lot of newspapers started out that way on the web, but quickly dropped all these clumsy logins and memberships and payment schemes because in the face of free and unlimited services like the Guardian and the BBC they quickly realised that they were losing out massively in the scramble for eyeballs, which is the one criterion everyone on the internet seems to agree is the key to influence, importance and, eventually, monetisation.

This kind of thing was reinforced by the same basic behaviour taking place in the real world, where newspaper prices plummetted and free papers like the Metro became everyone’s commuter read of choice, leveraging their impressive distribution to pull in the kind of advertising that rendered the price an individual might pay for the paper itself trivial.

You can see the same happening in music.  Bands are repeatedly told by the evangelists of the new e-conomy that they should largely turn a blind eye to torrent sites and p2p sharing which basically distribute their content for nothing to a wide audience, with zero income finding its way back to the band; directly at least.  And yes, that applies to Spotify too, particularly if you’re independent or on a small label – there’s just no money in it.

The money, for bands, is supposed to be on the gig circuit, which is quite simply one great big gigantic load of old bollocks.  It’s fucking expensive to drag a band around the country and, until you get pretty big, promoters simply aren’t willing to pay the fees.  It may be true for some bands, but for the vast majority it is not.  People are asked to play in-stores for free, sessions for sites like mine for free, and, not unusually enough, the gigs themselves for free as well.  The rationale is the same: give away the value – the content – for nothing, but in doing so win an audience, which then can be exploited.

But it costs a lot to make music, just as it costs a lot to generate quality news coverage. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Fresh Air time again, and once again Ruth and I have a splendid live session.  We might even have Ruth’s voice back, just to make matters even more special.

This week The Pineapple Chunks are going to play live in session for us.  And instead of being sensible and doing it acoustically we are going to end up having the full band in the studio and are going to just have to try and find some way of arranging the mics so that we pick it all up.  Basically, I think we are going to just have to have two room mics and ‘mix’ the sound by having people move closer or further away from them, much like the way everything was recorded in the olden days!

So, for too-many-people-in-a-tiny-little-studio mayhem, tune in from seven and see how we get on.  You can always point and laugh if it goes horribly wrong.

On air 7pm-8.30pm gmt – listen live here.

Here is this week’s tracklisting, which will be updated live as we go along.  Feel free to heckle in the comments section.

1. The Strokes – The Modern Age
2. Interpol – PDA
3. The Pineapple Chunks – Gyroscope + Look Back in Horror (Live in Session)
4. Deerhoof – Snoopy Waves
5. Stephen Malkmus – Walk Into the Mirror
6. Erik Gundel – Lake On My Roof
7. The Pineapple Chunks – The Diagonal (Live in Session)
8. Khaya – Duet (Single Version)
9. Sparrow & the Workshop – Into the Wild
10. The Maxwell Cult – Sound is a Place
11. Trips and Falls – How Do You Do
12. The Pineapple Chunks – Man Love (Live in Session)
13. Huey Lewis & the News – Trouble in Paradise (Live)
14. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (Live in Session)

Last week’s session was with the occasionally mental, occasionally hilarious and occasionally joyous Japanese War Effort.  Interview podcast, downloadable session tracks and videos are all after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Ooh, interesting interesting.  And really rather weird.  Erik Gundel introduced himself to me as ‘that guy from Motel Motel’ and whilst I liked a lot of their songs, I find this vastly more intriguing.

With this sort of strange stuff the sequencing is always crucial, and in this case it is executed really well.  We’re gently lulled in with a spot of unthreatening instrumentalism in the form of Turkulent Indigo.  Then Birdy sort of hints at where the rest of the EP is going, but is still rather a tame version of the music language in which this release communicates.

The centrepiece of the EP is Lake on My Roof, and this is really rather weird, but nevertheless in a friendly and melodic and welcoming sort of way, before Head of Ribbon just smacks you in the chops with the strangeness.  It sounds like some sort of sonically-based puzzle from late 70s sci-fi film where the hero is trying to escape from a dizzying chamber of lights.  Gundel doesn’t even bother with lyrics, just a misbehaving, synthesised cousin of a church organ breathing in and out at irregular intervals.  An oddly, don’t ask me why, it isn’t shit.  Closing things out is the peace offering of Antacids Love Song, slightly quirky of lyric, but otherwise quite a straight-up song.

And that’s the odd contradiction of this EP.  Depending on what he’s sick of reading about in reviews, Gundel could easily be exhasperatedly saying ‘Well if you listen to it, not a lot of it is actually all that weird’.  And he’d be right.  Then again, not an awful lot of this is played straight, either.  Of the five songs only two, perhaps, could be described as plain vanilla pop songs, and even then you’d be stretching a point to do so.

Either way, this is a challenging and a rewarding listen, perfectly put together and unsettlingly compelling, if you know what I mean.  I wouldn’t say that I love all of it, but it’s definitely one of the most engaging things I’ve heard in ages.

Erik Gundel – Lake on My Roof

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Erik Gundel on MySpace – you’re going to have to message him on MySpace to buy the EP, but I promise you, it’s worth it.

I’m not sure what’s happened to his Sussex Wit, because it’s very much business as usual for Mr. Flynn on his new EP.  It seems a little churlish to complain when business as usual produces songs as lovely as this, but nevertheless this seems a little like treading water.

More accurately, what it seems like is a few songs which were left behind from the body of work which resulted in A Larum last year.  I know the bands are actually all linked one way or another, but The Mountain is Burning does sound like the missing link between Mumford & Sons and Noah & the Whale – a little gentler than the former and a little more anthemic than the latter.  It’s also, I tempted to say, an unfortunately premature high point for the EP.

Trains is pretty nice, but Sweet William has a profoundly irritating falsetto vocal inflection in the chorus and frankly Drum is fairly forgettable, despite some rather lovely trumpet.  All in all though this feels like a thoroughly unnecessary EP designed to keep us all ticking over and his name on the tip of the general tongue while the second album is being hatched.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, and the first two songs in particular are really rather nice, but I really don’t think it moves anything on much and I’m left thinking ‘Well, okay, that’s nice, but what are you really doing next?’

Johnny Flynn – The Mountain is Burning

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Website | Pre-order the EP from here

It’s annoying, I’m sure, but I find it really hard not to compare this to this year’s other solo release by the front man of an early-noughties arch indie hipster band, Julian Plenti.  Alternatively, I suppose, you could compare it to the Strokes’ last and best album, First Impressions of Earth.

In either comparison Phrazes For the Young fares really rather badly, in my opinion.  It comes across as a light, eighties synth-pop facsimile of the best Strokes stuff with all the bite removed.  And it certainly lacks the invention of Plenti’s inconsistent, but often very good, solo record.

To give Casablancas credit, he clearly has tried to take his music in a new direction, although unless he was intending to do this I suppose there would be little impetus to initiate a solo project in the first place.  Impetus, though, is what this release seems to be rather grievously lacking, unfortunately.  There’s just no zip to it.  No snarl, no bite, not even any pace, it’s just sluggish and lifeless and seems to be in dire need of jump-starting.

How the hell can you call a song 4 Chords of the Apocalypse and then give it no balls at all?

Julian Casablancas – Out of the Blue

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Julian Casablancas – 4 Chords of the Apocalypse

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Rough and raw?  On Song, by Toad?  Never!  And bloody hell this is rough.  I reviewed Ryan Schmale’s previous release late last year, but is rather definitely a different beast.  There remain almost none of the glowering, atmospheric songs of this record’s immediate predecessor, and in their place a near-unrelenting cloud of angrily sneering guitars.

There’s a whiff of old time rock ‘n’ roll at times too, although just the barest hint.  I was reminded of early (really early, as in: when they weren’t just a bit dull) Raveonettes just a little at times, but the association was not a very strong one.  If you imagine Phil & the Osophers as a frat boy pretending to be street, this album feels like the murderous hood he might be imitating.  There’s more than a touch of shoegaze to it at times as well, if you’re looking for pigeonholes, but that could just be the scuzzy guitar.

A bit like the excellent Scotland Yard Gospel Choir song featured earlier this week, these guys have a song starting with an opening line of vitriolic excellence.  “Don’t have to say it but it’s true/ Nobody puts me down like you” but while the former was more literally vicious, this is delivered with such spite that it ends up having way more force.  And it is not funny.

In fact this whole album has the look of that slightly awkward teenager who glowers at you from under his cap and, as you belittle him once again, boils up to such an extent that all the simmering resentment explodes, at which point he steals his father’s shotgun and goes and butchers everyone in the local MacDonald’s.

Maybe that’s because despite the aggression of the sound, the rhythm itself if usually relatively slow and deliberate by comparison, giving it the impression of emotions held in check, but without giving you any confidence that they won’t explode into a whirlwhind at any time.  At any point this album could just lose it and hit you with a furious noise, and even though it never quite does, the threat always seems to be there.

Because I’ve spent a long time absorbing the actual sound of the record, I did take a little time to get a handle on the actual hooks.  These are the catchy, hummable bits which you need somewhere in a song whatever the whatever the overall sound to keep you coming back to a piece of music.  It’s not generously laden with melody of any kind, I have to say, and although that’s probably not the point, I do think it could perhaps do with just a sliver more attention paid to that side of things, because the texture of the guitar sound doesn’t always do quite enough to realise the songs entirely on its own.

That’s a pretty picky point to make though, because for the most part I really like this.

That Ghost – Shouldn’t Leave the Estate

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That Ghost – The Roof

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