21.FOUND – Enough About Human Rights
I’m not sure if anyone, not even the band themselves, likes Enough About Human Rights best from their excellent Let Fidelity Break EP, but I do.  There’s just something unexpected about this song, for some reason.  The fact that it is in fact a Moondog cover probably has a lot to do with that, but the hectic, percussive energy FOUND pile into their version just makes me grin every time I hear it.

22.Timber Timbre – Demon Host
The ‘ohs’ in this song take the spectral folk of Timber Timbre and give it a pleading, forlorn quality which imbues it with just a little more pathos than some of the others on the album, and this makes it extra special, in my view.

23.FOUND – You’re No Vincent Gallo – Toad Session
Honestly, I could put pretty much their entire session in the top ten of this list quite easily.  It was one of the best things I have ever seen, I think it’s fair to say.  Without all the stuff added by the full band I found myself so much more impressed with Ziggy’s voice, with the gorgeous tones he got from his banjo… with pretty much all of it, honestly.  Gorgeous.

24.Broken Records – Lessons Never Learnt
This may have been on an earlier release, but it was on this year’s(ish) Out on the Water EP, so I am putting my foot down and saying that it counts.  In any case, a really surprising song to come from a band like this, and I think that little down-up of the cello absolutely makes it.

25.Trips and Falls – Breaking Up With My Mormon Missionaries
These guys were pretty much the revelation of the year for me, in all honesty.  So much so that we’ve offered to release He Was Such a Quiet Boy on Song, by Toad Records, and it should be coming out in early March.  Their music is just fucking creepy, to be honest, and the male/female vocal interplay on this track in particular really is odd.  Add that repetitive descent on the strings and this really is an unsettling song.  And a brilliant one.

26.Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy For the Good Times
It didn’t grab me as my favourite track from Jesus H. Foxx’ debut EP Matter right off the bat, but I think it is.  The cornet, the harmonies, and that simple, repetitive rhythmic underpinning for the whole thing… it all just works incredibly well together, and there’s a sophistication to it which never ceases to surprise me when I think that this is the band’s first release, with their current lineup that is.

27.The Pictish Trail – You Covered the Earth With Your Thumb (Toad Session)
I love the Toad Sessions.  They really can provide some amazing recordings, and with Neil so kindly recording and mixing all of the ones we’ve done so far this year we really have had some incredible stuff.  Johnny Pictish is about the nicest guy ever to set foot in our house, and his session really was good.  The slow build of this, and the prominence of his vocal really are gorgeous.

28.Navigator – Change
An oddly melodic tune from one of the most belligerently low-fi albums I think I have ever heard.  It took a while for the sense of ‘whoooah, what the fuck?’ to subside when I first heard this record, but it is absolutely brilliant.  Fuzz or not, this is just a stone-cold pop gem and one of the most catchy riffs of the year.

29.The Builders and The Butchers – Golden And Green
Mental and ferocious brilliance.  When these guys hit their stride their ramshackle old jalopy threatens to shake loose its wheels altogether and crash into a ditch, and those are almost without fail their greatest songs.  This is just like that.

30.Titus Andronicus – Fear And Loathing In Mahwah, NJ
I don’t know whether I just like how raucous this song gets, or whether I like how quiet it is half the time, compared to how raucous it gets when it cuts loose.  Either way, this is one of the best play it loud soungs of the year.

31.Sparrow & the Workshop – Into the Wild
I heard this EP so close to doing this list that Horse’s Grin could as easily have been here instead, but such is the slightly arbitrary nature of these things that you’re getting this one.  Maybe it’s something about the storming ending which gets me – Nick is getting to really have a right bloody go on his guitars these days, and Jill is proving that her voice is easily powerful enough to step up and match it.  This is full on rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s superb.

32.Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (I)
Yes, more Wild Beasts.  I don’t know how this happened – it wasn’t exactly deliberate, I just kept ordering and re-ordering my list and their songs kept on sticking in there, often at the expense of stuff I thought I liked better.  This one’s more downbeat, but again that guitar sound and gorgeous voice produce something atmospheric and yet still insidiously infectious.

33.Alela Diane & Alina Hardin – I Have Returned
This whole EP is simple and absolutely gorgeous.  Again, I could have picked pretty much any of the songs from it, but there’s something about this one which seems to have captivated me just that little bit more.  The vocal interplay between the two is as lovely as with any song on the EP, but maybe there’s something in the roll of the verses which does it.  Then again, maybe it’s just arbitrary and I might pick a different one this time next week.

34.Meursault – Nothing Broke
A different version of this was on the band’s MySpace page the first time I ever heard them and it made a really strong impression on me.  They recorded it for their Toad Session back in August last year, and now this gorgeous piano and harmonium version for the truly stunning Nothing Broke EP.  If anything, the only reason this song is so low on this list is down to the fact that it’s so familiar by now.

35.Timber Timbre – Lay Down in the Tall Grass
This song shows just how simple most of this album is – the barest hint of percussion doing nothing very complex, a simple organ riff repeating throughout the song, and vocals.  There’s other stuff there too, but really very little of it, and that kind of subtle touch is what makes this such a special album.

To download all these songs in one big zip file, click here.

1-10 / 11-20 / 21-35 / 36-50

36.Wild Beasts – All The King’s Men
The vocals are weird, but there’s something about a large chunk of this record which I find absolutely compelling.  I love Ben’s voice, for starters, and this song probably highlights it better than any other.

37.Virgin of the Birds – Ilona, You Should Still Be My Vampire Attendant
Quite apart from the weird start, this is just a song based around a single, simple, brilliant hook.  So infectious I simply can’t stop humming it to myself.  And he’s playing a gig at our house on New Year’s Eve, if you fancy seeing him live.

38.Meursault – William Henry Miller Pt.2 (EP Version)
Meursault releasing their singles so late in the year has really fucked with my lists.  I love Nothing Broke, and both of the Williams Henry Miller on it, but the single version just blows this clean out of the water and the poor little acoustic version has ended up exiled to No.38.  It’s non-lyrical vocal bits which make this – the sort of deflated sigh of dismal unhappiness in between verses – just brilliant.

39.Withered Hand – Providence
Erm, nothing to say about this actually.  It’s just ace.  Dan’s slightly peculiar lyrics, the borderline-Hawley guitar strums, the vocal harmonies… who knows what makes this song so good.  Like all his music though, it just makes you like the guy.

40.Timber Timbre – Magic Arrow
Spooky and weird.  That kind of describes the whole album, but the repeating bassline and the insistent rhythm give this one a sort of sinister purpose of its own.  One of the discoveries of the year, as far as my ears are concerned.

41.Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard – To be Ojectified
There are a lot of songs about ageing and mortality on Em Are I, but this is one of the saddest and most resigned.  It’s like a cross between a stream of consciousness and the gradual deflation of an airbed, and ends up being both maudlin and comforting.  Which is to say that the lyrics are a bit on the horrible side, but the delivery is sympathetic and warm.

42.Broken Records – Wolves
Broken Records (and many of my other friends, like Sparrow & the Workshop and Withered Hand) suffer a bit in this year’s Festive Fifty because many of my favourite songs on their album, like A Good Reason, were actually featured in demo version on previous year’s lists.  This song, however, did not, and is one of the highlights of their album for me.  By the time everything gets going it’s just a fury of a song, and cannot fail to remind of how brilliant these guys are on stage.

43.Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber
It’s an odd subject, and the story is almost as compelling as the music itself.  There was a bit more full band stuff on vs. Children, and I’ve heard older fans complain about this, but the drum beat and the repeated, yet unintrusive chime of the piano in the background of this song are both lovely.

44.Alela Diane – White as Diamonds
This is fucking stunning and would have been in the top five had it not been for those goddamned bastard cymbals, which time has done nothing to soften.  The acoustic Daytrotter version of this song is one of the loveliest things I’ve ever heard.

45.Broken Records – Out On the Water
Hmm.. am I allowed to include this, given it was out last year?  Fuck it, I love it when a band whose live set is mental and reckless suddenly slow it down and play something surprisingly gentle. Here this is performed live at the Bedlam Theatre early last year – bloody great:

46.Wild Beasts – Hooting And Howling
A bit like other songs of theirs on this list, I don’t know whether I love the vocals, the laid back but nevertheless quite danceable beat or that really nice guitar sound they have.  Cracking album.

47.The Leisure Society – The Last of the Melting Snow
The Leisure Society made a bit of a rod for their own backs with this song.  By virtue of its Ivor Novello Award nomination it shot a tiny band on a tiny label right into the limelight, and infortunately the rest of their material just didn’t cut the mustard.  The album was just plain weak, and I found myself forgetting about this song because of it, which is criminal because it is absolutely brilliant.  There is a reason it got them so much attention.

48.Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were
For a band with two drummers and four guitarists to make such nuanced and subtle music is downright weird.  This is probably ‘the pop song’ from their fantastic Matter EP, and that head-nodding rhythm and the gorgeous vocal lead out make this one of my favourite songs of the year.

49.Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers – Beating St Louis
Shilpa Ray’s voice plus accordian.  Job done.  Honestly, for someone with pipes like these to be accompanied by the macabre accordian moaning which dominates this song is simply a cast-iron recipe for Toad-pleasing.

50.The Smiles and Frowns – Mechanical Songs
Another song which sound like it would be drifting around the abandoned site of a funfair which had gone horribly wrong, this song is from the band’s excellent debut, and also available on eminently desirable white vinyl 7″.  Buy one, and make your friends slightly nervous by playing it all the time.

Download the all these songs as a zip file by clicking here.

1-10 / 11-20 / 21-35 / 36-50

It’s just vaguely possible that there are some amazing gigs taking place somewhere I know not where in Edinburgh this week, but in all honestly I do not give a tinker’s cuss.  It’s Christmas, you should all either be wrapping presents, buying the bastards, or just cooking something nice and stopping in with friends and family with some nice music.  Far be it from me to lecture people on how to enjoy themselves but… well, you know me well enough by now, I’m going to do it anyway aren’t I.

So honestly, balls to gigs this week, there’s really no point in worrying about them is there, it’s just not what this time of year is for.  I’ve seen a few emails recently saying things like Happy Holidays and people making reference to non-denominational Winter whateverthefucktheywereonabout and all that, and I know they mean well, but fucking hell, I am about as uncompromising an atheist as you’ll meet (ie I find it very hard not to see religious belief as a form of learning disability) but Christmas?  It’s not even a fucking Christian holiday.

I’ve never been offended by being wished happy anything, and I went to a school where that might have been Ramadan, Chinese New Year, Chanukah, Christmas, some solstice or other, or whatever the fuck else.  Who fucking cares?  It’s just a greeting and someone wishing you well, get the hell over it you fucking coward.  As long as no-one asks you to personally give a shit, then someone else having different beliefs to yours and celebrating their own festivals does not fucking oppress you.  So yeah, happy Christmas, whatever.

Personally, apart from the Pagan celebration of light in the darkness of Winter, which has a rather magical quality of its own, just symbolically, I couldn’t care less about the religious implications of Christmas.  It’s not a Christian festival, it was simply adopted by the Christians because they realised that they had far more chance of foisting their religious babble on populations they wished to convert if they respected and adapted to existing rituals, it has nothing to do with anything in the fucking Bible and anyone who tells you that ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ is basically a fucking idiot.

Apart from those of us in the Northern Hemisphere needing the celebration of light and warmth to combat the cold and the snow and increasing absence of sunlight (welcome to the shortest day of the year, incidentally) there is another big benefit to the Christmas and New Year period which I really appreciate.  It’s the punctuation of the year.  One thing about living in a society which is still fairly homgenous is that the Christmas and New Year breaks are pretty much celebrated by everyone, or at least acknowledged by everyone, and consequently pretty much all of society just stops and pauses for breath.

Life gets pretty fucking hectic, and things develop a sort of helter skelter momentum of their own and you can go on holiday, but the fact that you and everyone around you kind of has to take a break and put their feet up for a week seems to punctuate the natural forwards motion of life for just long enough.  So as long as you can ignore the rapacious commercialism and observe the break on your own terms, something I have very little difficulty in doing, then that week just stopping and doing nothing, looking back on where you were this time last year and musing on where you might be this time next year is just a relaxing, peaceful and nurturing way to recharge the batteries and draw breath before it all goes mental in the New Year again.  Which it always does.

So I’ll appreciate the next couple of weeks and all the silly rituals people, including myself, choose to observe.  It’ll be nice just to do nothing for a while and feel no guilt about it whatsoever.

Burl Ives – Wayfaring Stranger

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Neko Case – Wayfaring Stranger

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Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod
Audio: below

Shenandoah Davis plays the piano, and needless to say, we don’t just happen to have one in the house.  So given she was on a Summer tour of Europe, and given we’d invited her to Edinburgh to record a Toad Session we needed a Plan B.  That Plan B came in the form of Penicuik Town Hall.  Our friend Ben comes from Penicuik and his dad was able to secure three hours in the Town Hall for us to rock up in the Toad Van, unpack like some sort of alcoholic SWAT team, record our session, and bugger off before we were chased off.

Fortunately it has all worked out extremely well, with the usual videos below to be watched, or alternatively you can find them on the Song, by Toad page at either Vimeo or YouTube.  As you probably know, we always make individual videos of the songs and then an overall video of the whole day – sort of like Jools Holland, but with more gin and far less boogie-woogie piano.

The excellent photos were taken by Dylan from Blueback Hotrod and Fiona Buckle, and the main set can be found on the Song, by Toad Flickr page, with Dylan’s full set available on his own site.  As ever the session tracks are all freely downloadable and pass-roundable, and the podcast tracklist can be found at the bottom of the page.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #100 – Shenandoah Davis Toad Session

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Shenandoah Davis – Proof (Toad Session)

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Shenandoah Davis – Our Favourite Idols (Toad Session)

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Shenandoah Davis – Milagros (Toad Session)

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Shenandoah Davis – We, Camera (Toad Session)

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Below I have embedded all the videos, starting with the overall session video, and followed by those for the individual songs.

Toadcast playlist:
01. Shenandoah Davis – Proof (Toad Session) (04.25)
02. Hello, Broken Arrow – Golden Fools (10.57)
03. Karen Dalton – Katie Cruel (13.46)
04. Shenandoah Davis – Our Favourite Idols (Toad Session) (20.37)
05. Grand Hallway – Blessed Be, Honey Bee (24.49)
06. Shenandoah Davis – Milagros (Toad Session) (36.56)
07. Christopher Bell – All My Ghosts (40.31)
08. Anni Rossi – Glaciers (47.47)
09. Shenandoah Davis – We, Camera (Toad Session) (58.44)

[Sorry, permissions appear to be a little broken - go here to view in the meantime]

I confidently sat down to write my Friday Fives this week and to introduce the Candy Claws‘ virtual tour video only to realise that I have managed to fuck things up.  I am a week late.  For some reason I had it absolutely fixed in my head that it was supposed to be this Friday, so all I can do is apologise profusely to the band and to Kev from Indiecater Records and hope that playing it this week will serve the purpose at least reasonably well.  Honestly lads, for some reason I was convinced it was supposed to be this week, I’m really sorry.

Your job, as readers, is to may up for my idiocy by taking extra time out of your day to listen to Candy Claws’ music and hence try and make my apologies for me.  And buy the album too, while you’re at it – the whole thing can be previewed here and it really is very good.

In other news did anyone see pictures of the Queen getting on a train this morning?  Christ she looks like a fucking bag lady.  I alternate between tolerance of and annoyance with the royal family.  They can be hugely entertaining, and of course they bring money into the country, but we pay for the cunts and frankly I think it’s time we started demanding a little more for our money.

Shortage of teachers or nurses?  Send in a minor royal for a few months to cover.  Traffic lights out in London town, get Phil the Greek to pop round and do the hand signals thing for a while.  Let’s face it, apart from buggering the servant and beating up foreigners he’s not going to be doing anything else with his time.

We could even save the NHS money by insisting that Charles follow his own guidance on alternative medicine.  Deny the stupid old fucker actual medical care and see if his sugar pills and anticlockwise kidney massages cure him of fucking cancer.  No? Good, now we can stop wasting money on them and he’ll be dead so we won’t have to keep repairing him in his dotage like we did the Queen Mum.  Actually, with her belligerence and monumental gin habit, she and Phil the Insulter are the only two I have any real affection for.

So, this is the last Friday Five before Christmas.  I promise to put one up on Boxing Day too, just for those of us who will need the internet to escape the gluttony.  Honestly, how many sherries with boring Uncle Brian can you really handle anyway – you know you’ll need your Five Fix!

1. What use could the Royals be best put to?
2. Favourite Royal (from any nation, past or present).
3. How much of your Christmas shopping remains to be done.
4. At what point does the self-loathing of gluttony kick in for you around Christmas time.
5. Fuck it, link to a silly picture on the internet just for shits and giggles (just paste the URL into your comment – WordPress will do the rest).

Here is my one and only concession to the world of Christmas.  I tend to avoid Christmas songs, except for Phil Ochs (miserable) and Tom Lehrer (caustic) but for the last Friday Five before the day itself I thought fuck it, why not.  So happy fucking Christmas you fuckers, that’s all you’re getting.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Traveling Salesman’s Young Wife Home Alone on Christmas in Montpelier, VT

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The Felice Brothers – Christmas Song

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Saint Etienne – I Was Born on Christmas Day

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Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol

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Phil Ochs – No Christmas in Kentucky

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Hmm, some scrappy bits of news to add this week, and no better place to do it, so here it goes.  Firstly, some quick podcasty things, and then some new award stuff.

The Contrast Podcast have begun their Festive Fifty countdown, with this week’s episode announcing 34-50 in the list, and you may notice a couple of familiar names in there – namely, Aidan Moffat and Meursault.  Keep an eye on the forthcoming episodes as they count down to number one.  The Contrast Podcast is so called because it is assembled from intros and songs sent in by bloggers and podcasters from all over the place, so there is no one single presenter, although Tim deserves a massive debt of gratitude for herding this great big flock of digital cats.

I have been asked to introduce a song a little later in the countdown, so I can promise you that there will be plenty of Toad favourites featuring higher up this list.  It’s quite an honour actually, because the Contrast Podcast represents a pretty impressive cross-section of the internet-based music chatterati and given this is voted for (obviously) by contributors and listeners then you must be doing something very right to end up on it.

In other podcasty news, Jesus H. Foxx will be making an appearance on The Waiting Room this weekend.  DC recorded a session with them ages ago (although I still don’t think he beats my record for procrastination) and it will be broadcast on WOXY on Saturday at one in the afternoon UK time, I think, and then re-broadcast on Sunday at nine.

This was recorded during their tour earlier in the year and frankly I have no idea what to expect.  The Foxx were recently included in some torrent playlist thingy of new indie so it’s, er, nice to see them moving up in the world.  Next stop – Limewire!

And finally, the 2009 BAMS have been announced!  Hooray!  What’s that?  No fucking idea what I’m talking about?  Thought not.  Lloyd from Peenko decided to poll Scottish Bloggers and Music Sites (see, B.A.M.S., get it?) to see what our favourite album of the year was.  And the results are now in, and read as follows:

1. The Phantom Band – Checkmate Savage (61)
2. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion (54)
3. De Rosa – Prevention (53)
4. King Creosote – Flick the V’s (51)
5. Withered Hand – Good News (45)
6. The Twilight Sad – Forget The Night Ahead (43)
7. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls (40)
8. Beerjacket – Animosity (38)
9. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More (32)
9. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career (32)
11. My Latest Novel – Deaths and Entrances (28)
11. Malcolm Middleton – Waxing Gibbous (28)
13. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – s/t (25)
14. You Already Know – s/t (24)
14. Broken Records – Until the Earth Begins to Part (24)
16. The XX – s/t (23)
17. The Antlers – Hospice (21)
18. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE (19)
18. And So I Watch You From Afar (19)
20. Wilco – The Album (18)

Personally, not all that close to my own list, I must confess, but I really like the idea in general, particularly given the general lack of respect the Scottish music scene appears to be getting from the London glossies at the moment.

The Phantom Band had this to say about their triumph:

“This makes us feel very honoured because the opinion of people out there giving opinions is what matters most, rather than the financially influenced press.

It always amazes me that people would take it upon themselves to go out and champion a band or an album or a band for no material gain, but it gives me faith in human nature. Blogs and reviews have been the only advertising we’ve ever had. Apart from all those people who got online and promoted us, we’d like to thank those little almost-stale doughnuts you get in big tubs from Sainsburys for keeping us fat during the recording.

We obviously also have our Producer Paul Savage and the wonderful people at Chemikal Underground to thank for letting us do what we want. These guys are the quiet heroes of Scottish music for sure.”

And everyone who voted can be found here:

17 Seconds, AyeTunes, Dear Scotland, Earz Mag, Elba Sessions, Glasgow Podcart, Hooligans Lament, Jim Gellatly, JocknRoll, Jockrock, Kowalskiy, Last Years Girl, Love Shack Baby (wait, what?) Manic Pop Thrills, My Portiswasp Says, Off the Beaten Tracks, The Pop Cop, Products of a Gaseous Brain, Song By Toad, The Blues Bunny, The Daily Growl, The Spill, The Steinberg Principle, The Vinyl Villain and Under the Radar.

‘Haha, fuck you, we’re not your pop bitches’ seems to be the attitude to this brilliant and brilliantly odd EP by Animal Collective.  After the runaway and surprisingly broad sucess of Merriweather Post Pavillion they seem to have decided to make it damn clear that weird, insanely catchy songs for mandexed* hipsters to dance to is not a pigeonhole they are willing to be stuffed into just yet.

Maybe it’s one of the benefits of hitting the mainstream as a relatively mature band.  Grizzly Bear are the same: overnight successes maybe, but they are certainly not wide-eyed ingenues, and they certainly didn’t come out of nowhere.  Consequently, the idea of being massive, global hit parade bands for a while probably seems slightly surreal and, a little like the Flaming Lips with Embryonic, they seem to be nursing the desire to reclaim their music from the charts by releasing something really fucking weird, to remind the world at large, and maybe themselves a little, what kind of a band they really are.

What Would I Want? Sky is probably the closest they get to Merriweather, with the rest of the EP more submerged in electronic washes punctuated by the odd, surreal burst of sound which seems to emerge almost from the Middle Ages.  The main difference is the lack of that percussive rhythm (I say percussive because a lot of it was electronic, rather than actual percussion, but you get my point).  There are times when this actually reminds me of that sort of chillout indie music which was sort of popular around the time the Beta Band emerged in the mid-nineties.  Bands like Delakota suddenly pop into my head, although I don’t think I’d want to compare them too directly.

This is actually more consistent than Merriweather Post Pavillion, which I thought tailed off quite badly towards the end, but in solving the lows it seems to have not quite located the highs either.  There’s none of the euphoria which they managed to generate with their last record, but then again this isn’t exactly supposeed to be pop music so in a sense I guess that’s kinda the point.

Animal Collective – Bleeding

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

*Man spandex – thanks Dylan, that one’s going in the dictionary.

Dan Willson is clever fucker, really he is.  I always think indie Christmas music fails somewhat, primarily because all the pain and unhappiness which I tend to like in music clashes with what tiny of fragment of Christmas spirit may still survive within me.

With that in mind, Avalanche Records have managed to pull something spectacular out of the bag with their Alternative Christmas charity album.  It’s a fucking great compilation, really it is – enjoyable and actually quite festive-sounding, without being at all lame.  I don’t use that word very often, but indie Christmas music generally does sound rather lame, and this record really doesn’t.  God knows how they’ve done it.

The proceeds all go to a local charity, and to Avalanche’s own charity in aid of African street children, and the record can be bought here.  If you want an antidote to the sort of cod-classical shite or painful pop garbage which gets liberally shovelled around at Christmas I guarantee you will not do better than this.

Which brings me to the jewel in the crown of this compilation: Withered fucking Hand.  There are some great songs on this – donated songs from eagleowl, Rob St. John, Frightened Rabbit and Broken Records, and a couple of specially recorded ones by Song, by Toad Records bands The Savings and Loan and Meursault – but Dan has written one specially and it’s amazing.

In typical Dan fashion, he manages to batter the shite out of the modern concept of Christmas, whilst still generating a strange sense of optimism.  In his skewering of modern, identikit Christmases you can hear the inverse – the echo of some idealistic Christmas which exists in Dan’s head and to which reality is signally failing to live up, and the picture he manages to paint as some sort of negative of the one he actually depicts manages to give a reassuring warmth to a song which might otherwise be really rather depressing.

It’s not though, it’s heartwarming, maybe because that idealised Christmas which exists in our heads is actually the best thing about the whole bloody festival to begin with.

Withered Hand – It’s a Wonderful Lie

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It’s hard to review this single, not because the basics aren’t pretty clear (it’s lovely, I like it a lot, go and buy it please) but because I am finding it very hard to figure out how to express exactly what I feel about this record.  Actually, scratch that, I am finding it very hard to express exactly what I feel about eagleowl as a band, truth be told.

When I played Laughter, the b-side to this single, on the podcast a couple of weeks ago I remember describing eagleowl as having a very similar quality to Withered Hand, in that they just seem to have total integrity – they come across as being the only band they could actually be;  as if they would actually be incapable of sitting down and styling themselves after a certain fashion.

It’s very much as if there is precisely no layer of artifice between them and their audience at all – no fourth wall, as the theatre community might put it.  What that does, of course, is demand that you return the favour.  The emotions are so naked that to engage with the music you tend to have to drop your own guard as well, which makes music like theirs hit home so very much harder than almost any other band I could mention.

The other thing about eagleowl which I love is that to a degree they force you to accept them on their terms, not your own.  It reminds me of reading a book in that sense – you actually have to sit down and clear your mind or you are unlikely to take anything much from the experience.  As such, I find that listening to eagleowl always puts me in the right frame of mind to listen to eagleowl, and so I have never listened to anything they’ve done with less than complete attention.  This gives the carefully assembled details of their work the chance to reveal themselves one at a time in the unhurried way in which this band operate.

Which brings me onto this particular release.  This may not really be a Christmas song per se, but it does embody that envelopment and sanctuary which your own home takes on as the conditions outside become more and more unpleasant.  Even the cover image of the candle in the dark reinforces this feeling.  This song basically expresses everything I love about Winter and Christmas in general: the restlfulness of being home (be it chez Toad, or visiting the folks or in Manchester with my Granddad – they all have their different but equally comforting homely qualities), the deep satisfaction of being curled up on a couch in a warm living room when it’s freezing cold and blustery outside, and that indescribable, incomparable feeling of rightness you get when snuggling up to a loved one late in the evening after a good meal and enjoying the fact that you really have nothing at all to do in the hours between now and bedtime.

I don’t really know how more meaningfully I can evaluate this music.  I could describe the change in how Malcolm is using his violin these days, or the interplay between male and female vocals or any of that stuff, but it’s never what I end up caring about when I listen to eagleowl.   They just sound right; this just sounds right.  And that’s all that really needs saying about any of it.

eagleowl – Laughter

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Baaaaaaart, help!  It appears that there is actually not one single musical event happening this week in Edinburgh which I personally would feel motivated to attened.  The only thing I’ve managed to find which I would actually like to go to is the Twilight Sad in-store performance at Avalanche Records tomorrow at one o’clock but erm, with it being one o’clock in the afternoon that might prove to be logistically challenging given I have a day job.

Generally when I write these listings, no matter how thorough I think I’ve been, ginger eagleweasel Bart pops up in the comments to set me straight about something wonderful which I have missed.  Maybe it’s my paranoia, but I always seem to read a slight smirk into his tone of voice too, the smug bastard.  In any case, come on Bart, if ever your truffle-snuffling spidey senses were needed it’s today.

Bruce Sprinsteen – 57 Channels (and Nothing On)

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So, I thought I might tell you what I am doing this weekend.  I wouldn’t bother reading this if you don’t like football, but you might enjoy the heartwarming story anyway.  On Saturday is the Sporting ICAPB Burton-Barry Cup Final, and I will hopefully be dragging my blubbery carcass around a footbally pitch for at least half of that match.  After that there will be (shit) curry and drinking. Read the rest of this entry »