Song, by Toad

Archive for April, 2010

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Friday Is Hopelessly Lost

RIGHT – lifeboat helpers, thank you very much for volunteering, we need as many bodies as we can get.  Tomorrow Mrs. Toad cooks roast lamb, as it’s nice and Springy these days, and we get in a gallon of red wine and after pestering the good people of Stockbridge for their spare cash we shall eat and drink and record a podcast and make merry.  Our house (email if you don’t know where that is) between 10am and 4pm please!

In other news it is the eagleowl EP launch tonight, at the Roxy Room.  Hairy bollocks that EP is good, and my review will appear here next week (when it’s actually available to buy, as per usual), but if you want to get your sweaty little palms on one then tonight is the time to do it.

Last weekend while Mrs. Toad and I turned her fortnight stranded in the States (Pittsburgh, poor girl) into a romantic weekend in Paris she suggested that I do a Friday Five based around travel disasters – we’ve all had them.  Unfortunately I got the email far too late to actually do it, but it was a good idea, so I thought we might just use the idea this week.

The Friday Fives are all about taking the opportunity to waste a good day’s work by fannying about talking bawshank on the internet remember, so don’t worry about the comments section on this site being the usual old cronies, this is a de-lurking amnesty so please introduce yourselves and say hello.  No nasty, gory pictures of shredded limbs this week either – I actually got complaints about that you know, not harsh ones, but complaints nevertheless.  Which is a good thing really, it was quite nasty, but then that was the point.

1. Favourite boat-based work of fiction, novel or movie or poem or whatever.
2. What’s the best you have made of a travel disaster?
3. What’s the most needless travel disaster you have brought entirely on yourself?
4. Most hair-raising or barely-functional form of transport you have taken.
5. Crappest place you have travelled to either on holiday or for business.

These songs are from the eccentric but nevertheless enjoyable compilation CD released about six or seven years ago called ‘Biba – Champagne & Novocaine‘.  I don’t really care what it was about but it had some skinny girl’s naked arse on the outside (and no-one wants to see a skinny girl’s arse really, do they) and an oddly good mix of tunes on the inside.

Marilyn Monroe – I’m Through With Love

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The Kinks – Celluloid Heroes

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Sparks – This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

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Tiny Tim – Tiptoe Thru’ the Tulips

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Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band – Cherchez la Femme

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The Scottish Enlightenment – Pascal EP

This is not only a bloody good EP, it is also the resurrection of an extremely promising band I feared might be slowly drifting into obscurity, as well as my introduction to a really exciting-looking new Glaswegian record label: Armellodie Records.

One of the first Scottish bands I unearthed for myself when I started music blogging was The Scottish Enlightenment.  They were about to releases their first single, Eyes, on Moojuice Records and I was really quite excited by their neat intellectualism, and guitar sounds which seemed cut from very classic indie cloth indeed – I am a classic indie kid after all.

The Scottish Enlightenment – Eyes

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They went very, very quiet for a couple of years after that, however, and I have to confess I rather thought they’d given up the ghost.  Bands can lose momentum really easily in this business, and for a passion which requires so much determination, self-belief and encouragement, that loss of momentum is very often fatal.

So, roll on a couple of years and step forward Armellodie Records, home to some very interesting bands, not least freshly relocated Glaswegians Super Adventure Club, a band I don’t always like exactly, but who I have a lot of time for and am glad to see working and releasing and showing the kind of energy any music scene needs in order to remain invigorated and vital.

Enjoying a fresh lease of life, suddenly The Scottish Enlightenment seem to have hit upon a rich seam of productivity – they have an EP of new (and largely leftover) songs, recorded during sessions for a new album, which is also due out shortly and to be preceded by a new single as well.  For a band who seemed, from the outside at least, to have been up to very little for the last couple of years it becomes clear that whatever they were doing, they certainly weren’t sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.

The Pascal EP is, as I said earlier, songs which for one reason or another didn’t quite end up on their forthcoming album, but it certainly doesn’t sound like a bin full of cast-offs.  The sound has settled a lot since the earlier recordings I heard, and comes across a lot thicker and slower now, almost as if it was wading through treacle.

Whilst that could rob the music of its energy, I think it’s actually worked out really well.  It’s still quite old-fashioned guitar-based indie, but in slowing down it sounds just a little more confident and sure of itself.  It depends a great deal on single guitar notes, which are now dropped into the songs without hurry, allowing the simple but infectious melodies to sink in at their own pace.

David Moyes’ (I think) voice is also from the classic indie school, being just a little nasal, restrained, and about as far from histrionic X-Factor caterwauling as you could want.  It’s like the rest of the music – not pushy, not aggressive, not in your face, and perfect for what the band seem to be trying to achieve.  This EP hangs together really well, shows the band have courage and determination in working through the slight burst in their bubble, and artistic creativity in evolving their sound as well.  I am looking forward to the album a great deal – there is a lot to be admired here.

The Scottish Enlightenment – All Homemade Things

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Armellodie Records (Comes as a very sexy, very limited edition CD if you order sharpish)

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Sit Still and Shut Up

This is the new Great Lake Swimmers video, called Stealing Tomorrow, from their live session recorded in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall.  I have always liked Great Lake Swimmers in a tepid sort of way.  They can be beautiful, but there are times when I have found them a little boring, I have to confess.

I learned an important lesson about that, though, from Sam Amidon a couple of years ago.  When Campfires & Battlefields (long-time Toad reader and contributor) first introduced me to All Is Well I liked it, but I never fell in love with it anything like I did when he played to a spellbound Bowery crowd in 2008.  There was something about the silence in between the notes, of which he plays very few, listening to them gently die into silence and the emphasis on the rather brutal lyrics, which absolutely knocked me sideways.  I rarely listen to music in such intense isolation.

Ever since then I have to remind myself how little genuine attention I give to music.  I listen at work whilst doing my job, whilst walking through town, whilst deciding whether or not to write about it, and on the bus to work in the morning.  Little of that is ever done with absolute full attention, devoid of any distractions.  In fact, that’s why I like vinyl.  I don’t care too much about the crakles or that kind of stuff, and I am not an audiophile in particular, but I love that it is very hard to do other things whilst listening to records on vinyl.  You almost have to pay attention.

A friend of mine here at work saw the Great Lake Swimmers in Glasgow a while ago and said that they were stunning.  Watching that gorgeous video I find myself reminded a little of the Sam Amidon gig, and what Andy told me about Great Lake Swimmers.  It’s so slow and lovely that I feel I might be missing the point of the band if I don’t go and sit down and listen to them with the shutters closed and nothing around me.  I’ve listened to all of our releases like this – just sitting in the middle of the floor, facing the speakers, and soaking it in.

Neither you nor I will have time to do this very often, to sit and just soak music in like this, but every now and then a band comes along who remind me how satisfying and important a thing this is to do.  I am going to go and see the Great Lake Swimmers live before I say anything else uncharitable about them.  Their new album is on eMusic here, if you’d like to give it a try.

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It’s Lifeboat Time Again

Around this time of year Mrs. Toad has developed a strange habit of getting off her lazy arse and actually doing something for a change.  That something is collecting for the Royal National Lifeboat Association.

The RNLI is a spectacular dodge of responsibility by the government in that they allow such a crucial rescue service to remain entirely dependent on charity and on the work of volunteers.  This is frankly unbelievable if you ask me, but certainly increases the urgency of supporting the people with the courage to volunteer and the commitment to do the work.  Imagine if the fucking fire brigade were a charity!

Anyhow, somewhat incredulous outrage aside, once a year volunteers hit the streets to shake a tin and collect for the RNLI.  Mrs. Toad runs the Stockbridge collection, and we would really appreciate help from any of you who feel you can spare a couple of hours of your time this weekend.

It’s pretty simple, Mrs. Toad and I will cook a big old roast lamb, and people can turn up whenever they like and spend an hour or two (or whatever you can spare) shaking a tin at various locations around Stockbridge, and we will feed you wine and roast lamb for your efforts.  We will also record a podcast (which is inevitably rather messy – here’s last year’s) at the end of the evening, which is supposed to feature sea songs and various stuff like that.  It’s pretty good fun, honestly, so if you fancy coming along between 10am and 4pm this Saturday (1st May – not Sunday, as I originally posted) and making a bit of a contribution then please let me know.

Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (Live on 6Music)

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Live in Edinburgh This Week – 26th April 2010

After a balmy and beautiful weekend in Paris and a couple of warm days in Scotland I am finally persuaded that Spring might just be upon us at last.  Our daffodils – out in January last year – are finally blooming, and I am not wearing a coat to work these days.

Having the edge go from the air and that little bit more sunshine than usual tends to give a spring to people’s step, and even this week’s gig listings are playing along by being nice and benign: busy, but not crowded, with a few interesting little gems thrown in there and a few nailed-on crowd pleasers.

Whatever happens, if it stays nice and sunny like this, I will be spending about as much time outside as I possibly can.

Monday 26th April 2010: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, performed by The Scottish Ensemble at the Queen’s Hall.

The Queen’s Hall website describes Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet as “one of the iconic works of the English experimental tradition”. I don’t mean to betray myself as more of a philistine than you already suspect, but the only reason I know about this is because of Bryars’ collaboration with Tom Waits.  It looks really interesting though, and a bit of a break from the usual moaning indie-folk pish I go on about on this site.

Tom Waits & Gavin Bryars – Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet

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Tuesday 27th April 2010: Adelaide’s Cape at Cabaret Voltaire.

Sorry people, this is in May, I am an idiot.

Friday 30th April 2010: eagleowl EP launch with John Egdell & The Douglas Firs at the Roxy Room.

Apart from the fact that eagleowl are fucking brilliant, and apart from the fact that their new EP is absolutely gorgeous, there are a couple of other very good reasons to be at this gig: John Egdell and the first live manifestation of The Douglas Firs, the fantastic ‘other’ project of Jesus H. Foxx drummer Neil Insh.

eagleowl – Into the Fold (Toad Session)

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Saturday 1st May 2010: Jonquil at the Roxy Room.

Jonquil have evolved somewhat over the last year or so apparently, so I have rather less idea what to expect from them than back when they were doing distinctlyfolk-poppish things.  They’re a touch more rhythmic and harmony-laden these days though, from the sound of it.

Sunday 2nd May 2010: Woodpigeon, Laura Gibson & Wounded Knee at Cabaret Voltaire.

This is a bit of an alt-folk all-stars lineup, isn’t it.  Woodpigeon have rather close ties to Edinburgh actually, and I believe Mark is rather good friends with quite a few people around these parts so this should almost be like a hometown gig for them!

Woodpigeon – Songbook/The Sound of Us Playing Together

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Good Morning Britain?

[My turn for a Sunday Supplement. Don't forget Sundays are a blank page for you to write your own article and enter the world of Toad. Submit your ideas to sunday(at)songbytoad.com]

My drinking companion had encountered a conundrum. He explained to me that he had decided to buy a gift for someone to celebrate her achieving British citizenship after emigrating here some time ago from one of the colonies. He went on to describe the struggles he had endured trying to find a suitably ‘British’ gift. He wanted something that encapsulated and defined the British experience, yet everything that came to mind somehow related to only one of the home nations, while alienating the others.

My only suggestion was a Mini with the Union Jack painted on the roof. He said he wanted to keep it under a fiver.

It is interesting how difficult it is to define Britishness nowadays. A generation or two ago it would have been simple, ask my grandad. He’s a proud Welshman, and watching him, at eighty-nine-years-old, belting out Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and Sospan Fach at a rugby international will dispel any doubt about that. Yet as a career soldier who saw combat in the Far East, and now as a Chelsea Pensioner, he has always clearly stated he’s British first, then Welsh. His generation saw the British identity and way of life, whatever precisely they may have been, under attack from hostile foreign forces; and that external threat galvanized those defending this little island. The benefits of a phalanx of unity far outweighing any vanities we may have been tempted to indulge by our internal borders.

The question of what it means to be British is under examination again as the general election campaigns steadily grind down our patience and tolerance. Each party prominently attaches a GB sticker to the bumper of their bandwagons, and the leaders each try to stake their claim to the identity of these four nations, racing to fly the Union Flag proudly from the summit of their manifestos. It all makes me feel a bit queasy.

I wonder, however, whether it’s really that important anymore. We’re no longer under attack from hostile forces from over the channel. We actually get on quite well with the Germans, French and the rest of them, both on a diplomatic level and a personal one.  The people of each home nation are having fun indulging in their individual national identities. The Welsh and the Scots have been at that game for a while now, and the English are beginning to catch up, finally celebrating everything great about England instead of trying to batter the rest of us into submission with that ill-defined notion of Britishness we seem to have laboured with and then abandoned.

It is indeed an odd identity crisis we suffer. What gift would you have bought?

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Toadcast #119 – The Popcast

Tomorr… yesterday I flew out to Paris to see Mrs. Toad, who has been stuck in God Bless America for the last two weeks because of Iceland’s seismic indiscipline.  We are going to have dinner and walk together and hold hands and generally act like a couple of idiots.  More or less like we always do.  For a couple of curmudgeonly old fuckers who spend their entire lives swearing at one another, we are a pretty sentimental pair, really.

This podcast is mostly based around my Dad and his music.  For my early years I was well into my Mum’s stuff, but as I got older I got more into my Dad’s kind of stuff – Tom Waits, Dylan, Neil Young and all that.  When I really, really got into music it was never into contemporary, modern or trendy stuff, it was always the old shite my parents were into.

I repay them the favour nowadays, or at least, I try to, but I never really picked up on music from my peers, it was always from my folks.  Hence this podcast.

Toadcast #119 – The Popcast

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01. Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (05.16)
02. The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (13.27)
03. Willie Nelson – Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys (16.53)
04. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Walking Song (24.12)
05. Tom Waits & Thelonious Monster – Adios Lounge (32.54)
06. Elton John – Ballad of a Well Known Gun (41.21)
07. Bob Dylan – Days of 49 (46.07)
08. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden (53.49)
09. The Builders & the Butchers – Barcelona (57.51)
10. Jackson Browne – Fountain of Sorrow (66.15)

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Friday Doesn’t Want to be Blown Up, Thank You Very Much

Whenever people discuss landmines they always show you pictures, either of the device itself, which is a harmless enough looking tin can, or they show you ‘plucky survivors’ with nicely sealed stumps and big grins – people who are presumably just happy not to be dead.  You don’t see a lot of the destroyed bodies of the people who are victims to these things – which is to say that because people seem to want to show us stories of courage in the face of adversity, we seem to miss out on understanding just how many human souls we utterly destroy when we discard the rules of normal everyday life.

The results of the American and British genocide in Iraq have been bad enough, but the US still refuses to sign up to an international ban on landmines and cluster munitions.  Between that and their continued insistence that they should have the right to torture people and imprison them without trial, I don’t think there’s very much argument that lobbying to try and limit the brutality represented by the picture above is needed.  Press release follows:

The Plug Five Project is a new non-profit initiative to promote the work of the anti-landmine charity MAG (Mines Advisory Group). Each month, the most blogged about bands will curate a new edition of Plug Five, a secret email-blog of recommendations, which will be delivered into email inboxes around the world at exactly 1pm on the last friday of every month – Blogs Not Bombs Day.

Issue 01 of Plug Five will include band and artist recommendations from John Vanderslice, Wavves, A Hawk and Hacksaw, Om (Emil Amos), Woods, King Creosote, Crystal Stilts, Imaad Wasif and many more.

As part of an effort to clear an area the size of San Francisco of landmines, guest bloggers are also offering up their current recommendations of bands and artists. Issue 01 will include contributions from Largehearted Boy, Culture Bully, PIXELHORSE, the Culture of Me and of course Song, by Toad.

Subscribers can also look forward to some exciting new plans being developed for the Plug Five Project, including a foray into the worlds of film and literature, collecting secret recommendations from its leading lights. In addition, readers should watch this space for a unique competition to win a signed 1973 LP recording of Charles Bukowski live in San Francisco, exclusively open to Plug Five subscribers.

To obtain the secret link for Plug Five, go to http://plugfiveproject.tumblr.com where you will be instructed on the next steps.

I know that was a bit spammy, but apart from drinking beer and having fun I don’t think we really make much of a contribution to the world around here, so please sign up and help out.

And apart from that, this is the Friday Five of course.  So I am either in Paris with Mrs. Toad fucking out two weeks of tension brought on by geographical deprivation, or alternatively I am sat in Edinburgh fucking airport gnashing my teeth and slowly going crazy.  So delurk and introduce yourselves, and chip in with your five.  Lurking is all well and good, but there’s no real point in the long run, is there.

1. What will next year’s bear/crystal/fuck/wolf band word be? Please give an example.
2. Favourite river.
3. Favourite soap opera.
4. Foreign accent you mimic far more often than you really should.
5. Favourite sandwich.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Every Night I Die at Miyagi’s

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Scout Niblett – Ruler of My Heart

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The Blue Aeroplanes – Big Sky

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Mark Lanegan – Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl

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Pink Mountaintops – Plastic Man, You’re the Devil

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The Music is Not Enough

A gentleman called Timothy London sent me through some interview questions the other day, basically giving me the opportunity to rant about how people who really want to be famous can just fuck off, which is something I am always only too happy to do.  The interview will be compiled with several other and published, I presume on his site, in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, there was a question he asked which led me to digress a little and start rambling about a familiar topic – why is the big shiny end of the music industry so fucked?  The question is below, as is my answer, as well as a little bit of extra stuff at the bottom.  Isn’t that crybaby cool?

- The music industry is looking for economic models for the future; latest figures show another large drop in album sales, particularly in the States, I can imagine a certain amount of panic in various boardrooms…  Can you see what you are doing being part of a ‘new’ industry, or, is it closer to the tradition of boutique labels various enthusiasts have set up over the years?

Personally, I think it’s both.  Alternative music (of all stripes – I include dance, modern jazz, you name it, in this bracket – anything unpalatable to the mainstream) only ever made a lot of money when it was providing fodder for the mass entertainment industry.

The guts have been ripped out of that kind of music now because things like X-Factor and Pop Idol have discovered how to deliver essentially the same product (kiddie pop, disco-lite and water cooler chat music) in a way which the bulk of the population seem to find far more compelling, so if you are just selling the music itself, you can no longer compete.

Consequently, all that we’re left with is an entertainment industry which is less interested in ‘just’ music, which is a very one-dimensional product compared to that kind of interactive, multi-media model, and has taken its huge audience with it.  So, with mainstream entertainment no longer as closely aligned, to a large extent the new music industry ‘is’ boutique labels, with a few people having the potential to make money by sniffing out the potential crossover acts.

But in general, do I see myself as beaing part of re-inventing the selling of music for a new century?  In some senses I do, in the way that the fans, the facilitators and the creators are all pulled together into one space – the blog, the gigs, etc.  This is something the incumbent music industry is going to have to learn to do very, very fast indeed.  But in general I’d say no, I am not looking to reinvent the wheel.  I am a small label, I want to remain small, in control of my own destiny, and with a manageable, sustainable level of commitment – pretty much the same as any small label throughout history.

So that was my answer, and as usual it ended up slightly off topic, but it led me onto this thought, which is that the music purely and simply is not enough anymore.  The tradtional music industry is floundering, while small labels and DIY enterprises thrive, and the celebrity industry (which the big labels used to have a major role in creating for us) is also, sadly, in the rudest of health.  Why is this?

Well, my opinion is that a very significant aspect is that both the stools ‘twixt which the music industry seems to be falling offer significantly more than just music – they are multi-dimensional, multi-media, interactive things, which is why they are successful.

Pop music in the form of Pop Idol and the X-Factor and so on offers more than just music to bond over, it offers television and web interaction and, most significantly, it offers both participation and big, messy soap opera to go with the music.  There is a big element of music which is less about the tunes themselves, and more about having something in common with our peers, giving us shared experiences and making us feel part of a group, and all these extra dimensions which the X-Factor and its diseased ilk provide mean that as pop music it offers so much more than Britney or Christina ever did.  Although Britney, soap opera… never mind.

Anyway, at the DIY end of the spectrum you have the same thing.  Fence Records may be resolutely analogue, they may shun digital distribution and talk about hating the internet, but they are still a very Twenty-First Century record label in the way they have, aided considerably by the forum on their site, built and cemented a community around the label itself.  It is a lot more than just music.

Ditto myself.  If our label just sold records and that was that, I don’t think we’d get very far, but we try and do a lot more, provide community, give people space to bicker and crack wise, and make people feel a part of it all.  We also try and give you as many ways as possible to get into Song, by Toad, be it live gigs, talking pish on the Five, podcasts, student radio, lots of video… basically, being multi-dimensional, multi.. all those things I said up there, basically.

We also, like the X-Factor, do not define our success entirely by the number of records we sell.  We want to grow, certainly, but last year readership on the site remained fairly static, for example.  Is this a bad thing?  Well in a sense, but the podcast listenership grew considerably, the sessions took a major step forward and we pretty much started a record label from scratch (our first release was not much more than a year ago, remember) so it would hard to argue that we didn’t move forward.

Technology caught the major labels napping, but it wasn’t just that they never caught up with what other people could suddenly do, but surely it’s at least as significant that they never exploited it to see what they themselves could do either.

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Braeley Whaley – Goo Bird EP

Hmm, this is rather interesting.  It’s tough to describe, though, and I doubt it’ll be for everyone.  It’s experimental and odd, prone to weird noises and odd, rhythms, but still with an underlying melodiousness such that there’s nothing aggressively obscure about it.

At times the vocals are harmonious and lovely, and the band seem to have decided to dress their music in a blanket of kindness, to ameliorate some of the odder moments they indulge in.  Peculiar ambient noises provide a sort of undercurrent to the music, with chimed percussion skittling about in the shallows, presumably computer generated, but not unwelcomingly technological in any way.

In some ways the atmosphere of this EP seems slightly at odds with the approach, in that it is very warm and enveloping music, but most aspects of it have been constructed from elements which do not obviously lend themselves to that kind of result.  The lapses into warm washes of noise, the peculiar sounds which litter the songs… it all suggests something far harder to digest than the welcoming embrace of what you actually find yourself listening to.

So it’s ghostly, there’s a touch of the macabre toy story about it, and it’s far from pop music.  But after several listens I find myself liking this an awful lot.


Braeley Whaley – Flat Chest Rock

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Braeley Whaley on Bandcamp (listen and download for free from here)

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