When do the clocks go forward again? It feels like it should be soon, because the bite’s gone out of the cold, and you can see green shoots here and there on some of the plants, but I guess it’ll be a while yet, unfortunately.  Still, it’s actually light out when I leave work these days, which is a positive sign.

The post-Christmas gig lull seems to be slowly coming to an end as well, which is good news.  It’s actually a rather busy week this week, with the funs spread pretty evenly, instead of all clumping together on a single evening, as they have been wont to do of late.  How considerate of them.

Firstly, Frabbit are playing Cabaret Voltaire on Wednesday with Ross Clark and Dupec, but there’s little point making a fuss about that one seeing as it’s already sold out. I thought I’d mention it though, in case you’re the sort who can wangle guesties to this sort of thing.

Oh, and Song, by Toad is back on Fresh Air this evening, going live at about 8pm I think, but more of that later.  During the meanwhilst…

Monday 15th February 2010: Jesca Hoop, Run/Lucky/Free & the Wintergreens at Sneaky Pete’s.

There’s a touch of the alt-country power pop to this lineup, some of which strays outside my personal taste a little.  I was first introduced to Jesca Hoop by DC on The Waiting Room a year or so ago, and although I have not listened to lots of her stuff, I like the stuff I do know.  It’s a nice mix of influences, from old folk, to a bit of country, to radio pop and it’s all blended together very well. Maybe not for the sulkier indie kids amongst you, but still a good one, this.

Jesca Hoop – Summertime

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Tuesday 16th February 2010: Robin Grey at the Forest Cafe.

Robin Grey’s stuff doesn’t exactly demand attention – it’s not forceful or attention-seeking or anything like that – but it deserves it.  He is largely an acoustic singer-songwriter, although he’ll be playing with a band tonight.  I think the difference with Robin is in his confident, unassuming style.  He’s also a really strong lyricist so I definitely recommend taking the chance to see him play if you can.

Robin Grey – The Finchley Waltz

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Thursday 18th February 2010: Hexicon, The Just Joans & Cancel the Astronauts at the Wee Red Bar.

The third Gentle Invasion gig in about a week brings the easy acoustic pop of Hexicon to the Wee Red Bar, supported by The Just Joans, who must write the most Scottish lyrics of any band in the world, and indie-poppers Cancel the Astronauts.

The Just Joans – What d’we Do Now?

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Thursday 18th February at Cabaret Voltaire: The Mill with Ambulances and Carrie Mac, followed by Hot Club de Paris live at Sick Note.

There’s a lot going on at Cabaret Voltaire on Thursday with the excellent Ambulances bringing their easily-paced, old-fashioned indie to the Mill, alongside Edinburgh’s Carrie Mac.  After there will be Sick Note with Hot Club de Paris, who have kind of slipped off my radar in the last year or so.  They’ve a new album which is there or thereabout though, so this is probably a good time to catch up with them.  The new stuff on their MySpace sounds pretty good, so it’s all quite promising.

Ambulances – Come With Us

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Hot Club de Paris – 3:55am

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Friday19th February 2010: First Aid Kit & The Last Battle at Sneaky Pete’s.

Scandinavian ingenue Americana alt-folksters, with Edinburgh’s most upandcomingest folk-pop band makes for a pretty cast-iron lineup if you ask me.  This has been a long post though, and I am bored of writing about gigs, so to see what I make of First Aid Kit, just read my recent review of their album.

First Aid Kit – Hard Believer

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[Sunday Supplements this week are brought to you by Campfires & Battlefields, to whom I owe an enormous apology due to the fact that I have been sitting on this post for ages, interrupted first by Christmas, then disorganisation, then ineptitude... you get the picture.]

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers are pretty special if you ask me. They’re all the rage in London, Ontario. Olenka Krakus is the mastermind, the singer, the composer, the lyricist, the guitarist, the accordionist (sometimes), the glockenspielist. She came to Canada from Poland, and her songs are a compelling blend of Eastern European and North American influences. She sings with smoky tension, mostly in English, but sometimes in the Polish or French of her youth. She tells poignant stories of handsome soldier boys, fleets of loud frightening machines made of scrap iron, and sweet-faced children in the Warsaw breadlines. I wish I had heard her long ago.

Olenka also appears to have a wide circle of talented friends. The Autumn Lovers are a revolving cast of characters, but they all can flat-out play. Apart from Olenka’s guitar there’s violin, viola, cello, mandolin, lap steel, accordion, clarinet, saxophone, upright bass, percussion instruments of all kinds, glockenspiel, triangle, banjo, bottles knocked against wood, snapping fingers, and truly moving harmony vocals. They make a clatter that would do Tom Waits proud, providing an expansive counterpoint for Olenka’s intimate tales.

So far Olenka & The Autumn Lovers have released one self-titled full-length record and two EPs, all of which were released in 2008. Of the tracks here, Soldier’s Waltz and When We Were Children are taken from the full-length while Papillon comes from the Papillonette EP, which has a lovely lonesome country vibe. All three records are available for purchase at CD Baby, and the full-length is available for digitial download at Zunior.com. You really owe it to yourself to get this. Apparently recording has begun for the sophomore full-length as well, and a 2010 release is envisioned, which is immensely good news. These songs really speak for themselves. Enjoy.

Olenka & The Autumn Lovers – Soldier’s Waltz

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Olenka & The Autumn Lovers – When We Were Children

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Olenka & The Autumn Lovers – Papillon

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[Sunday Supplements this week are brought to you by Campfires & Battlefields, to whom I owe an enormous apology due to the fact that I have been sitting on this post for ages, interrupted first by Christmas, then disorganisation, then ineptitude... you get the picture.]

I don’t think I’ve ever heard (or heard of) a band from Montana before, so I felt a real thrill of discovery when I happened upon Wartime Blues during one of my recent forays into the darker corners of myspace. As you might expect from a Montana band, they are fresh-faced, flannel-clad, mostly, and sincere. There are eight of them, which is roughly six percent of the total Montana population, and I have no idea where they came from, but . . . DAMN.

The style is riffed-up, open-handed Americana, with accoustic and electric guitar, bass, and drums complemented by lots of good banjo, mandolin, cello, and keys of all sorts. It frequently rocks without apology, but just as often shows a restrained tension that sounds like it would translate really well live. Fans of Wilco, Band of Horses, Balletesque by The Young Republic , or Willard Grant Conspiracy will feel more than comfortable in their company, I think. The singing and songwriting duties go to Nate Hegyi, a southpaw guitarist with a real gift for hooks and a gravelly, powerful voice that belies his apparent youth. In fact, the whole band seem to be quite young, but they play with real maturity and sensitivity, like they’ve been doing this for ages.

Wartime Blues just released their debut full-length, entitled Doves & Drums, and you can find it here for the American equivalent of a fiver. A steal. The first tune below is the title track from that album. The second is a brooding slice of gorgeousness called Harelip, which comes from a powerful 2008 session they recorded for Snow Ghost, a really interesting independent music service based in Whitefish, Montana, which gives up-and-coming bands access to state-of-the-art recording equipment and spaces. The rest of the songs from that session are available for download here, and there’s a video there as well for one of their best songs, called Saul Whitewater. Tell me what you think.

Wartime Blues – Doves & Drums

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Wartime Blues – Harelip (Snow Ghost Session)

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Website |Buy |SnowGhost Session

Hooray for us – possibly the vilest and least romantic Valentine’s Day Podcast yet!  And before anyone whinges about that picture, go to fucking Wikipedia and complain, because that’s where we bloody got it from.  I know!  Scandalous!  Someone should complain.

So erm, yes.  I don’t think we left anyone unoffended this year.  I sincerely hope not because I don’t like to think of people out there nurturing an anticipated false outrage complex only to be let down.

We do not like romance, we do not like being told when to have fun by people who are simply hoping to exploit our disposable income, we do not like it being implied that being single is some sort of failure, we do not like people measuring their self-worth by how much their partner can be emotionally blackmailed into spending on them, we do not like having to live up to commercially defined standards to demonstrate that we love one another, we do not like having to skip the football just cos we’re supposed to behave one some particular day or other, we do not like fucking teddy bears or fucking chocolates, we do not like sitting in tumbleweed-infested restaurants whilst people glance nervously around them wondering if they’ve done it right, and we do not like having a list of things to live up to before our relationship is considered functional thank you very fucking much.

We do like lazy Saturdays in the garden, swearing at the fire for twenty minutes trying to get it to light with damp logs, meals with friends, new places, listening to vinyl so loud the floor shakes, a bit too much to drink with people that we really like, laughing/shouting at films, arguing about the side of the bed, swearing blind it’s not your turn with the chores when you know damn well it is, drinking coffee in the garden when it’s sunny, slagging off almost everyone, shouting at reactionaries on TV, emailing one another stupid stuff all day, insulting the cat, surprise cups of tea, buying shit on the internet when we’re drunk, only coping with the washing mountain when it threatens to start a SARs epidemic, watering the plants mere minutes before death and walking hand in hand through the park and peering at cool old dudes chuntering around at the allotments or sailing model boats in the park pond.

Oh, and getting pished and recording offensive podcasts for Valentine’s Day… enjoy!

Toadcast #108 – The Boabycast

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01. Cracker – Mr. Wrong (03.10)
02. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key (09.57)
03. The Smiths – Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (17.11)
04. Eels – Love of the Loveless (20.16)
05. The Clash – Brand New Cadillac (29.40)
06. Bill Hicks – Pussywhipped Satan (31.41)
07. Evan Dando – Hard Drive (44.33)
08. The Coathangers – Nestle in My Boobies (48.11)
09. Virgin of the Birds – She’s in the Moon Again (59.10)
10. David Cross – Your Baby is FUCKING BORING! (65.59)

There is a betting shop under the house next door who once offered us something like seven or eight grand, or something like that, to build a fire exit out of their place into our back garden.  Quite apart from whether or not that compensation would actually match the resulting devaluation of the house, which it probably wouldn’t have, the idea of having Ladbrokes employees peering into our garden while we were sitting out there with a cup of tea didn’t really sound appealing.

Also, they claimed that the door would be alarmed, but we didn’t really have a lot of faith in that, and rather feared the employees finding a way around this and spending a lot of time smoking fags in our back garden.  In the words of Han Solo: “No reward is worth this!”

Anyway, betting shops have always kinda fascinated me.  They always look so desperate, like the people inside are clutching to the last tiny strand of courage they have left and vesting it all in some ropey old nag in the 4.30 at Doncaster.  It’s that haunted, defeated kind of look and the 1980s cross-channel ferry decor that just makes them look like the most appalling joy-sinks imaginable.

In any case, gambling is something I have never been drawn to in the slightest, primarily because games of chance are governed by mathematics and in the long run you will lose, and when it comes to placing bets based on close inside knowledge, I always seem to be surprised no matter how much I know about the topic in hand.

I mean, I know football inside out, particularly the English Premiership and I seem to have absolutely no ability whatsoever to predict the results.  I know the Scottish music scene pretty well these days, but would I honestly have faith in my ability to pick the Next Big Thing Out of Scotland?  No, probably not, not to the extent that I’d bet on it anyway.

Now you may say that in starting a record label that this is exactly what I’m doing, but I’m not, I’m making a different kind of bet altogether.  I have noticed over time that for all I like alternative stuff, my taste still conforms to a certain part of the mainstream, and I am betting that if I just stick to releasing stuff I really like, rather than trying to second-guess a band’s potential for making it big, then my natural overlap with the mainstream will mean that we release enough music people like to make the whole venture financially sensible.

That’s the theory anyway.

So, there are some good gigs this week, so please attend them and take the opportunity to take photos of hipsters looking hip and enter them into our competition to win a copy of the wonderful Communion Compilation.  Just email your pictures (old or new) to me at songbytoad -*- hotmail.co.uk, and we’ll pick a winner in a week or so.

Oh, and please do de-lurk, that’s what this thread is for, y’know.  You’ve read the comments before, you know the kind of clowns I’ll be stuck with if you don’t!

1. Ever bet on anything and won?
2. Which kind of gambling might you be tempted by?
3. Kind of gambling you’ll never understand.
4. What are your odds of scoring on Valentine’s Day?
5. Name your favourite underdog of all time (doesn’t matter what field).

The Pogues – Bottle of Smoke

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The Clash – The Card Cheat

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Bob Dylan – Rambling Gambling Willie

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Bruce Springsteen – Meeting Across the River

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Hem – Betting on Trains

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Music companies still don’t like people discussing music, it seems, and Google are a very dangerous company to give control of your information because they cannot be trusted.

Google have recently been deleting, wholesale, entire music blogs, representing years of work for no profit by people who are in some cases explicity operating one hundred percent within the law, and in other cases with the tacit approval of the music companies whose nuisance complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have actually caused what tweeters are calling #musicblogocide2k10.

About six months ago, if you remember, the music companies started abusing the DMCA, using it in a frivolous, scattershot manner to harrass music blogs as a nuisance technique for disrupting independent music conversations.  Effectively, they would make copyright complaints to blogs hosted on Google’s Blogger service under the DMCA, which pretty much obliges Blogger to delete the post in question, irrespective of the legality of the post in question.

After the resulting outcry amongst bloggers (whose writing is their intellectual property, remember) Google backed off slightly, insisting that they would simply revert accused posts to draft rather than delete them, and that they would start notifying bloggers when they removed their posts rather than simply deleting them and hoping writers would never notice.  It still remained on record as a Terms of Service violation however, and now the inevitable has happened: some blogs with multiple complaints to their name have been dubbed repeat offenders and simply deleted.

Put that way it all sounds pretty tame, doesn’t it.  It’s pretty clear that mp3 blogs operate in something of a legal grey area – some of the tracks we post are shared with the blessing, and even encouragement, of the copyright holders, some with their tacit if unwritten approval, and some directly against their wishes.  Some offer downloads of full albums for free, and are completely illegal as well as being, as most bloggers would agree, very damaging to artists, labels and even bloggers themselves.  Why is it an issue, then, after a legal complaint about an illegal act and with a record of repeatedly flaunting the law, if a writer is simply shut down?  It’s not an issue, actually, for me, when put like that, but that is an almost totally inaccurate portrayal of the reality of the situation. Read the rest of this entry »

Send in your photos of ultra-hip persons and win vinyl!

I’ve never done a competition before, but if you are going to break your duck it might as well be for a headline like that.  Communion is part club part record label, run by a couple of the guys from Mumford and Sons and Cherbourg.

They’re releasing a compilation of live performances from their nights on 12″ vinyl and I happily have a few to give away.  Looking at the tracklisting below, I reckon this is going to be really rather nice.

So, to win one, send me a photo of someone incredibly, achingly, crotch-crushingly cool, and I’ll post them on next week’s Friday Five.  It doesn’t need to be a new one – if you happen to have one in your Facebook stuff already then that’s no problem, but the subject of the photo has to be incredibly hip (or at least trying really hard).  Mostly this will be about taking the piss, so no need to put much work into it, just bung me a funny photo and I’ll post the shortlist next week.  Email address: songbytoad *ahem* hotmail.co.uk

Johnny Flynn – ‘In The Honour Of Industry’
Jay Jay Pistolet – ‘Vintage Red’
Marcus Foster – ‘Circle In A Square’
William Stokes Feat. Marcus Mumford – ‘Zion’
Pete Roe – ‘Bellina’
Broadcast 2000 – ‘That Sinking Feeling’
Benjamin Francis Leftwich – ‘More Than Letters
Jeremy Warmsley – ‘How We Became
Brendan Campbell – ‘Maudlin Reverie’
Alessi’s Ark – ‘Hands In The Sink
Mumford And Sons – ‘Sister’
Matthew And The Atlas – ‘Deadwood’
Alan Pownall – ‘Take Me’
Elena Tonra – ‘Peter’
Beans On Toast – ‘Things To Do Before You’re Thirty’
Kurran And The Wolfnotes – ‘Pounding’
Peggy Sue – ‘February Snow’
Andrew Davie – ‘Lie Down In The Blood’
Rachel Sermanni – ‘My Friend Fire’
Jesse Quin And The Mets – ‘The Sculptor And The Stone’
Matt Corby – ‘Light Home’

This really does seem to have snuck out into the public domain almost by accident. The Magnetic Fields are a big deal – or at least, I would have thought so – but I have heard barely a whisper about the release of this new album. For some reason, the places where I tend to discuss music have been awfully, awfully quiet about it and I can’t help but wonder if a couple of relatively uninspiring recent records have dampened the interest in The Magnetic Fields in general, or whether the music world is simply becoming less and less interested in the achievements of the oldies*.

The title, Realism, is presumably sarcastic – or at least, it is for the most part. Musically, Stephin Merritt has in the past recorded in a pretty gritty manner, but this is just the opposite. Songs like Hootenanny and Doll’s Tea Party are whimsical to the point of silliness, and neither the music nor the lyrics exhibit any of the harshness you might lead yourself to expect from the title of the Record.

Lyrically it’s not all like that, though, with the opening and closing tracks actually delivering a little of the bleakness I had initially anticipated. In fact, the closing line of the album, about drinking during pregnancy, ends things on a really jarring note, but for the most part the record relies more on wistful regret to deliver its bleaker messages, rather than any kind of unflinching or shocking realism.

This has often been the Magnetic Fields’ way, of course, and despite the lusher orchestrations and less tinny production, this reminds me a fair bit of their ealier stuff, before the grandiosity of 69 Love Songs, the faffing about of I and the growling of Distortion.  I wouldn’t go revering to that cherished old phrase ‘blistering return to form’ or anything, because this album isn’t anything like confrontational enough for that kind of statement, but it does feel like as unified and coherent a record as Merritt has made for ages.  It feels, I suppose, like it isn’t trying too hard, and like it is comfortable with itself.

That impression bleeds through into my relationship with the album as well, in that it is a record I am enjoying in a very unintrusive manner.  It all just kinda works, and it may not rock my world, but I slipped into a very comfortable place with this album surprisingly quickly.

The Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Know What to Say

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The Magnetic Fields – The Doll’s Tea Party

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

*Except for Uncut of course, for whom it is clearly still March 2001 – Jack and Meg, are they really sister and brother? Who noes?

Allow me to introduce the latest release on Song, by Toad Records: Maxwell Panther’s debut album Do You Feel Different Yet?

I know we are more known as a grass roots label who try and nurture local talent (assuming we’re ‘known’ for anything at all, that is), but before the eminently Scottish and highly anticipated releases from Cold Seeds and Meursault later in the year I have two album by non-Scots whose work deserves a lot more than to be lost in the more immediately local focus we tend to engender.

One of those albums is the stunning He Was Such a Quiet Boy by Trips and Falls, and the other is this.  The first time I heard Maxwell’s music I described it as being “rough as a bear’s arse, but fucking ace” and that is still about as good as I can do.

I was a little concerned about how to release this, frankly.  It is indeed rough as a witch’s tits, and so I know it’s not exactly going to become a runaway commercial success, and I know a lot of people will basically just hate it.  I do not care, however.  I love it, and so we’re releasing it, it’s as simple as that.  Maxwell may not record in a polished style, but that’s never been something which has bothered me: basically he is a really bloody good songwriter and that’s the only important part.

We’ve had some really nice reviews so far (from Chris at the Skinny, Aye Tunes, The Devil Has the Best Tuna and Radio Exile) and they all seem to feel the same thing I do: it just somehow works.  This music has charm, wit, warmth, just enough bitterness to be interesting and just enough self-deprecation not to be too self-absorbed.  Music like this either connects with you, or it doesn’t, and from the first time I heard Maxwell Panther’s stuff it just felt right to me.

The other thing about Maxwell is that to judge him on this album is kind of missing the point.  These songs exist in different guises, he records things here and there all the time, kind of like sketches.  As such his music kind of exists all together as a single entity, more than in the kind of defined chunks we would call EPs and albums, and maybe that’s why this music connects with me so much.  Maybe it just feels like more of a conversation, and maybe the recording style actually helps that, in that it is pretty obvious there is no barrier between the musician and the listener.

So Maxwell Panther may not be bothering the charts any time soon, but his idiosyncratic, observational meanderings have a kind of awkward charm which I find completely compelling and I think they really deserve to be heard.

Maxwell Panther – My Ex-Identity

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Maxwell Panther – Lost Soul on a Roll

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Maxwell on: MySpace | Bandcamp | Buy from Song, by Toad Records

We have a clear few days to get some work done this week, before the weekend’s flurry of giggery. There are some devious Austrians sneaking about Scotland this week, partly having a holiday, and partly shooting sessions for They Shoot Music.  Apart from Mrs. Toad and I recording our annual anti-Valentine’s day festival of hate, we will record a podcast with them while they’re here, and then leave them to go off and do some stuff with Jesus H. Foxx, Meursault, Withered Hand, a trip up to Fife to see the Fence Records chaps, and then some time in Glasgow where I am not honestly certain who they are recording – hopefully some Yusuf Azak though.

Anyhow, apart from the gigs mentioned below, there’s also the rather intriguing listing at Sneaky Pete’s where a certain band called Toad appear to be playing on Friday with The Ritalin Kids and Be Like Pablo.  I assure you it has nothing to do with me performing music of any sort, so feel free to attend in perfect safety.

Thursday 11th February 2010: eagleowl, Hailey Beavis & The Stormy Seas play Leith Tape Club at the Iso Lounge.

One of Edinburgh’s most enjoyable low-key gig nights, The Leith Tape Club, has a really good lineup this month.  I think eagleowl will be playing as a somewhat reduced lineup: after their recent four-piece gigs, I think they will be back to two for this gig, but for those of you who missed their Vic Galloway session on Radio Scotland last week, here’s their cover of I Am Nothing by Withered Hand from that session.  It’s all about sharing out the PRS money apparently, because Dan covered one of their songs when he played the show a while back.  All about the money, eh?  Typical.  I knew them when they used to have integrity, man.

eagleowl – I Am Nothing (Withered Hand Cover – Live on BBC Radio Scotland)

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Friday 12th February 2010: The Late Call, The Last Battle & Emily Scott at the Wee Red Bar.

The Gentle Invasion have been awfully quiet of late, so without knowing anything at all about The Late Call, I’ve got to be pretty confident that they’re good, to drag them out of semi-retirement.  The Last Battle’s stock is rather high at the moment, and I’ve not seen Emily Scott play since last year’s Homegame, so I think I’ll be along at this one for sure.

The Last Battle – Oh Best Beloved

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Friday 12th February 2010: FOUND, Three Blind Wolves & Over the Wall play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

FOUND are teetering on the verge of a new album (I think) and are somewhat reduced in number these days.  Judging by Versus a couple of weeks ago this isn’t going to hold them back though, and I am really looking forward to hearing their new stuff.

Over the Wall – Floods

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Saturday 13th February 2010: Kid Canaveral, BabyGod & Cancel the Astronauts play Trampoline at the Wee Red Bar.

It’s all about the indie-pop at Trampo this month.  Euan already previewed this gig extremely well in his Sunday Supplement, so no need to go on about it here again.  Kid Canaveral have nearly finished work on their debut album though, which is good news.

Kid Canaveral – Good Morning

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