If you really want to become knowledgeable about music, the only way seems to be to read liner notes.  I glanced at the ones which came with Swimmer One’s latest album and who should I see but Pete Harvey.  Who I’ve seen onstage with The Leg, Meursault, Animal Magic Tricks, Willard Grant Conspiracy and Christ knows who else.  In Edinburgh terms, he is the Bart Owl of the cello. The loss of liner notes is one of the most unlamented changes to music in the digital age, but I think it should be mentioned.

Swimmer One remind me quite strongly of another Edinburgh indie band: Ballboy.  They also remind me, somewhat oddly, of late nineties indie nearlywases Strangelove; there’s something in the slow piano and the way the vocals border on a croon which calls them to mind from time to time, although the comparison is far from complete.

Ballboy come to mind with the lyrics.  Gordon McIntyre may be a little more wry and humorous, but there is something in the day to day conversationalism of a lot of it which suggests a certain commonality underneath it all.

They’ve been around a little longer than most of the current crop of Edinburgh bands, but Swimmer One embrace a lot of the same things, albeit in a very different way.  To hear that a band was combining the orchestral and electronic would surprise no-one these days, but on Dead Orchestras it is never done in the deliberately obtuse manner bands have a habit of adopting nowadays.  Here the orchestration and the electronics serve the same function: they expand like an embrace, softening any of the harsher messages of the album.  In fact, they work almost exactly like the last lyric of the whole record: “everything will be okay, just not in the way that you expect it.”

Swimmer One – The Erskine Bridge

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Swimmer One – All the Hits

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Website | Buy direct from the band (and stream entire album)

In many ways I picked an unfortunate time to move to Manchester.  The baggy/Madchester/whatever you’re supposed to call it scene had pretty much peterered out by the time I got there in 1993, and consequently the whole movement pretty much passed me by.

Actually, I’ve never heard any of the people involved in what we call Madchester do anything other than spit when it is described as a scene, so despite having been used as a handy way to bracket a large number of bands for years now, it doesn’t seem like there was that much unity or communication between the various people lumped under that description.  Not that I would know, of course.

Anyhow, my school in Austria didn’t really have what you might in Britain or the US call hipsters.  There were a couple of left-field arty sorts who moved, like the rest of us, in very loose groups.  But these groups were never that well defined, as you see in American high school movies, and although it could be an odd place it was never particularly cliquey – at least not as far as I particularly noticed.

One thing that was certainly true, however, is that the music listened to was generally pretty woeful.  It was Vienna, and the stereotypes about European pop music were broadly applicable: generally dance music and metal seemed to dominate, with a strong showing by MTV pop.  MTV wasn’t as bad back then as it is now – if anyone even mentions MTV in a PR email to me these days it gets instantly deleted – but it was still pretty boring.  It was rare that I ever discovered anything from my classmates, and tended to get a bit further by exploring with my Dad, or just going into music shops and poking around.

Most record shops in Vienna had decks so you could take a pile of vinyl (or, increasingly towards the time when I left CDs) and stand in the corner, listening to all sorts.  I spent hours doing this, and that became the way I tended to find new stuff.  Anything from a vague mention in some classroom or other to a pretty album cover would be dug out, and I would stand there until my feet got sore just listening to new stuff.

So stuff like Madchester, so important over here, never made even the barest impression in Vienna.  I joke about coming to Manchester in 1993 and introducing people to this great new band The Stone Roses, without realising that they’d been the biggest band in the country for the last four years, but that was absolutely true.  Barely a single person at my school had ever heard of them.  A strange Croatian girl I knew from the art room mentioned the band just once, having visited England with her family that Summer, and I dug them out in one of my favourite record shops and fell in love with the album.  But I promise you, I was the only one.

It was pretty much the same with the Inspiral Carpets.  I don’t remember hearing about them, but my parents bought me one of their cow t-shirts, so when I saw the same logo on a record I thought ‘hmm, might try that one’.  I really liked it.  Not loved, but really liked, and the constant whine of their signature organ sound was something I found really exciting.

A bit like the whole of the Madchester movement, however, I never really clicked with the band entirely.  I moved to Manchester, as I said, just as it was petering out and Britpop was moments away from being invented so the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets and few others kind of passed me by.  This feels like a shame in retrospect because I reckon if I’d have been in England at the time I might have really got into the whole scene, although I am not sure why.  I still have a few Inspiral Carpets songs here and there on compilations – mostly on tape, actually, which I am suddenly re-discovering because our new van only has a tape player – and every time a song of theirs comes on I absolutely love it.  And yet every time I’ve tried to buy a whole album it doesn’t quite have the same effect.

Just one of those things, I suppose.

Inspiral Carpets – She Comes in the Fall

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Inspiral Carpets – Saturn 5

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Inspiral Carpets – Uniform

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Website | Wikipedia | Back catalogue on Amazon

Not quite as reputation-threatening as that Glasgow band Sexy Kids, nor as frustratingly difficult as Girls, but I still had something of a raised eyebrow when I typed this one into Google – unwarranted as it may have proved to be.

Girls Names describe themselves simply and accurately as making ‘disposable noise pop songs’.  More literally this means they make songs which are incredibly infectious, loud, messy and hugely enjoyable.  No fluff to be found here whatsoever.

This is a bit of an introductory post, because the release I have been listening to is the one pictured, which has long since sold out, having only been released in May on Tough Love Records.  Tough Love are one of the sharpest sniffers of new music around and having their seal of approval is quite an accolade – I’d probably compare it to Moshi Moshi in that respect.

Their next release is on Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks who are sufficiently fashionable to be releasing Beets and Wild Nothing.  Most of what they release is heavily, heavily retro-influenced but while it may not be musically all that innovative, there is an unmistakeable verve to most of it – a sort of offhand, reckless energy that it is impossible to meet with much cynicism.

Girls Names play a scuzzy mixture of sunshine pop and a heavily punk-infused indie music (particularly the vocals).  It all sounds very much like it was played in a tumble drier in someone’s basement and recorded from the house next door, and this, as you all know, is a style I very much like.

If I were to compare it to anything, I might be tempted to suggest a little of Phil and the Osophers in places, but in general this is more of a piece with the rasping interpretations of sunshine pop we’ve seen around recently from the likes of The Love Language and Harlem and bands like that.  I remember after Britpop faded there was a brief stutter before a rejuvenated version of punky garage blues exploded out of Detroit, and after the somewhat over-elaborate excesses of the likes of the Decemberists (who I love at times, don’t get me wrong) this direct, simple racket is fucking great to hear.

Girls Names – Running Scared

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Girls Names – Blood River

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Well, I am now eight working days away from shiftless unemployment becoming a wildly successful entrepreneur, and as mental a move as this might be I am very, very excited to get going.  I am an obssessive type, as you probably know by now, and I need projects to get just a little bit too focussed on, so this should be perfect.

Anyhow, the inital lineup for the Edge Festival has been announced.  So far so moderately interesting, with bands like Eels, The Low Anthem, Broken Records and Beirut on the bill.  These things tend to get better as they get closer, so I reckon that’s a pretty bloody solid start – now we just need to talk Eels into a Toad Session!

Eels – Not Ready Yet

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In other news, The Pop Cop (see image, but with added sexy) is back online.  After Google decided that simply being accused of something was at least as good as actually doing it and deleted the Pop Cop’s entire original site there was an extensive campaign on Jason’s behalf, but Google did precisely nothing.  I know the appalling DMCA obliges them to remove material accused of copyright violation (not actually in violation of copyright, you understand, merely accused of being so) but it does not dictate their customer service policy, and I have to say their ‘fuck off customers’ approach is an interesting one.  Not entirely novel of course, the music industry have been at it for years, but interesting nevertheless.

Oh, and in terms of festivals, the Leith Festival is now underway, with eagleowl and Blueflint at the Village tonight.  That’s a really nice venue actually, and I really do recommend getting along if you can.  The rest of the musical events can be found here, so have a dig through them – Leith is by some distance my favourite place for a pint in and around Edinburgh, and the Leith Festival will hopefully be less overrun by Southern students and their zany antics than the Edinburgh Festival.  Zany fucking antics.  Yeuch.

Oh, and at the Roxy on Wednesday 16th we have Pekko Kappi and Alasdair Roberts in another Braw Trails gig -  a collaboration between Tracer Trails and Braw Gigs, as well as Lissie, Alan Pownall and The Boy Who Trapped the Sun at the Electric Circus.

Alan Pownall – The Others

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And then on Thursday we have El Mató A Un Policía Motorizado, Debutant and Plastic Animals at the Voodoo Rooms, which also looks rather interesting. And that, Toaderinos, is that.

[The wonderful Jenny Soep returns this week with more of her spellbinding illustrations, and one or two interesting matters to raise. This post was originally pencilled in for last week, hence some of the dates needing correcting, and Jenny apologises and explains further below. Even though Jenny did in fact get the article to me on the Sunday as promised; in the end, unfortunately, it arrived a little too late to be published: my inbox records the email's arrival at 11:58pm!]

Hello there. A Sunday Supplement, written on the Sunday. I’m not best known for my regard for deadlines and always live on a last minute shoestring. I was once described as having ‘a somewhat elastic sense of time’. It’s true. I live on my own little planet which runs on Jenny Time. But it is never boring and a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences. Which apparently is great for artists. Which I might be. But it’s also how I draw live music.

I feel very privileged to be writing something for this blog. It’s a fantastic blog and I’m crap because I don’t read it enough, much as I don’t religiously follow anything in particular. But I’ve seen enough of it, and know enough of the taste of its writer to know that he gives an intelligent and considered fuck about music and it’s creators. It’s also refreshingly honest.

Now being this ‘music illustrator’ – existing in this little niche I’ve been creating for myself – I’ve been asked to submit the Sunday Supplement with completely free reign on what I could write about. Last time I commented on the fact that I wasn’t going to write anything and was purely going to have a visual journal of Matt Groening’s fabulously put together ATP festival, which was wonderful to the point of my being a little hysterically radiant after witnessing so many quality bands I liked. I did however write a shite load more than was initially intended.

This time I am going to offer drawings of lesser known local bands from Scotland who I feel should get a mention. So I’ll supply images of the following musicians/bands I particularly think are destined for greatness, if not pretty much there already. They are all worth checking out.

Washington Irving, a folk pop group, young fresh and getting richer in sounds and words and self each time I see them. They’ve recently released an EP, with a great cover designed by Ryan Hays, called Little Wanderer, Head Thee Home.

The John Knox Sex Club who incidentally share the drummer with Washington Irving. They are so good live, front man Sean Cummings whipping himself into a frenzy with rantings and gnashings of teeth. I haven’t heard their recorded stuff yet, but they’ve got a very nice looking CD box which I quite fancy aquiring super soon.

Adam Stafford, Y’All is Fantasy Island and Size of Kansas band leader, film maker and creative collaborator. The film The Shutdown, directed by Adam and written by Alan Bissett, recently won the San Francisco International Film Festival award for Best Short Documentary. The soundtrack is of Alan’s unmistakeable Falkirkian voice augmented beautifully by Adam’s soundscapes. It’s great, I just saw it today at the marvellous Words Per Minute at Creative Studios in Glasgow which saw a top little solo headline performance from Adam.

John B McKenna is another great chap of experimental sounds and wordsmithery. I’ve drawn him playing by himself, and in collaborations. This picture was drawn live and projected on a big screen as interior decor for the Verden Whistle Test event in Edinburgh a teeny while ago. Great little project by the Ten Tracks initiative.

A girl, I need a girl. Well I’m going to include my little digital sketch of Lucy Cathcart Frödén from The Social Services which I drew on my new iPod Touch. It’s not the best drawing in the world, quite obviously. But I’m learning. And I really liked their music. Will draw them on paper and aim to get all of them next time. But this is when they were playing at Mono last Wednesday (2nd June).

Panda Su. She’s great. This is a digital drawing I did on my Nokia mobile phone. I’m sure you’ll have heard great reviews of her. I’m not known for my wordage of music. I’ll leave that up to the most excellent wordsmiths that exist already. The pictures I post online aim to be a stamp of great music and if it’s not really my sort of music, there’s definitely an intriguing story attached that’s worth looking up. The pictures serve as pointers for you to look them up, or as memory triggers for a gig you have attended.

So there you go, an element of a few technologies and styles of drawing, and a tiny smattering of those local bands in my immediate musical consciousness.

However, the real issue burning in my mind at the moment is one unrelated to any great bands I’ve drawn recently, and is also a reason for the tardiness in this posting.

Yesterday (Saturday 5th June) I attended the demonstration in Edinburgh to free Palestine, decry the killings aboard the aid flotilla, and request an international boycott of Israel.

My week started with an awareness of limited knowledge on the situation, and has since concluded with hopefully a much more educated understanding.

When the time came at the end of the march and demonstration – a massive turnout of 5,000 people – for significant speakers to say a few words, I had to agree with most of what was said. Certain valuable points were met with roars of approval from the crowd of demonstrators, however their lack of voice to support one impassioned speaker with his hope to retaliate to Israel’s recent act by returning in increased numbers of ships but with lethal intent. ‘We will kill you!’ was met with silence from the listeners which though still spoke measures, should have been peppered with disagreements.

I do not believe in ‘getting even’ which is what another speaker suggested, but the overall message rang true. Israel needs to accept talks with the democratically elected Hamas to heal the fractured state of Palestine and work on a solution of communal living in peace. South Africa managed it, Northern Ireland managed it, and as much as Britain and the USA have played their part in the mess in the first place, and though the atrocities committed by both sides must not be forgotten, they now need to assist in persuading Israel that it is a necessary action for the peace and well-being of these two states.

The aim behind the aid flotilla was to gain international attention and focus on the totally unjust situation Palestine is in, and work towards ending the blockade.

As Henning Mankell put it (the Swedish writer of Wallander and one of the peace protesters aboard the aid flotilla):

“So as not to lose sight of the goal, which is to lift the brutal blockade of Gaza. That will happen.
Beyond that goal, others are waiting. Demolishing a system of apartheid takes time. But not an eternity.”

This is another chatty podcast, recorded in the hostel room of the lovely (and somewhat creepy) Lloyd from Peenko and Ian from Have Fun at Dinner on Friday afternoon at GoNorth.

In terms of creepy, we were all kind of  creeped out by the industry reacharounds which seemed to be going on left right and centre though.  Who do you know, who likes who best blah blah blah blah blah.

I think that me and everyone I know have all decided to just fuck all this industry bollocks and do what the fuck we please.  Honestly, it’s all just far far too much eating of crow for me.  Fuck.  Right.  Off.

Toadcast #126 – The Schmoozecast

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01. Woodenbox With a Fistful of Fivers – Draw a Line (03.49)
02. Fiona Soe Paing – Deep Song (14.45)
03. The Seventeenth Century – Roses in the Park (17.40)
04. Kid Canaveral – And Another Thing!! (24.58)
05. Miaoux Miaoux – Snow (34.23)
06. Admiral Fallow – Subbuteo (38.18)
07. Mitchell Museum – Tiger Heartbeat (48.45)
08. Randolph’s Leap – Squeamish (57.53)

I am at an industry-fest and there is a lot to be gained from these things, but sometimes the avalanche of new people to interact with kinda gets me down.  When I started writing this blog absolutely not one single fucker ever read the thing.  In fact, I wrote about music for about two and a half years on my own website which had precisely no readers at all, because I can lay a website out adequately, but search engine optimisation eludes me completely.

I started writing on the pretense that my little brother, who lives in Boston, could now read about the music I was listening to without waiting for me to send him a little packet of compilation CDs twice a year.  This was something of a fig leaf, however, and one which I did at least acknowledge to myself deep down, ineffectively trying to protect my modesty from the rather geekier truth.

I wrote album reviews on my old website for over two years with not one single reader.  Looking at how things are now, where an album review going uncommented for a few hours makes me just a little jumpy, I find that kind of amazing.  No comments (I didn’t know how to do that), no readers, no actual reward of any sort beyond clattering out reviews of albums no longer than about ten sentences long for no other reason than that I enjoyed writing.  I still enjoy writing.  This blog is a tad focussed at the moment, but I promise you I could witter on for hours about more or less any subject you could mention and just enjoy the process of turning buzzing thoughts into paragraphs.

Musicians get this too – so much work that they have to remind themselves what the fuck they’re doing this for.  For me this moment is right about now.  Schmooze, schmooze, schmooze… ack, fuck off somewhere quiet and sit down and have a pint and wash the constant fucking name-dropping one-upmanship out of your fucking hair with a few dozen gins.

The first time anyone started reading Song, by Toad was a while after I moved over to a Blogspot account, which was some time in 2006, and was when one or two of my favourite bloggers started talking about the site and telling their readers that they should pop over and have a read.  That was a weird thrill – that first incoming link.  I’m not even sure who it was from, but first real comment, first proper link, you remember these things.

1. What do you grit your teeth and get through during your working day?
2. And how do you wind down from it?
3. When did someone last acknowledge something you were doing out of the blue and make you happy.
4. Who is the recipient of your most often suppressed “FUCK OFF!”
5. What do you do for the sheer pointless satisfaction of it?

Peter Gabriel – Biko (12″ Version) From Jim at the Vinyl Villain.

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Thomas Mapfumo – Mwoyo Wangu From Davy at the Ghost of Electricity.

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Beulah – Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand From Marcy at Lost in Your Inbox.

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Pavement – Frontwards (Live) From Tim at The Daily Growl.

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Richard Thompson – 1952 Vincent Black Lightning From Ed at 17 Seconds.

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I got an email today from Cogstar, one of our readers. He didn’t want anything really, just to congratulate the Meursault lads on getting that slot at Glastonbury, and to ask if I’d be there so we could have a pint. And fuck me I was relieved to be talking to an actual real person instead of a music industry fucking contact for a fucking change.

I miss Mrs. Toad.  Can you tell?

Olaf and Derick, who run Born to Be Wide in Edinburgh most of the year, have brought their seminars to the annual GoNorth industry get together (ie piss-up) in Inverness, and I was at their DIY musicians chat today and thought I might post some of the advice given.  Some to disagree with, admittedly, but mostly not.

I think the most important piece of advice can be summed up in a single word and a single misunderstanding: networking.  Networking is the single most important thing you can do in this business, and some of the people who shrink from it the most are the people who are the best at it.

Most shy, face to the ground, please don’t speak to me indie kids recoil from that term like Scientologists from irony, but actually a lot of them are quite good at it. And it most certainly does not mean brazenly approaching people you don’t want to talk to and trying to whore your band to them, whilst they look about awkwardly, trying to escape.

All it means, and this point was made by almost every band present: just talk to your friends and ask them stuff.  If good bands play your town, talk to them about where to play in their town, offer to put them on next time they play and they can do the same for you.  And you don’t need to force conversations or impose yourself on people you don’t want to talk to, it just involves asking certain questions of people you know and like.  Would you grudge putting on a gig for a friend who was coming through?  No you wouldn’t.  So would your pals grudge putting on a gig for you in their city, or putting you in touch with a promoter who would do a really good job for you?  No of course not.  And if you find three or four people like that, that’s a tour.

And then when you’re on tour, just ask the bands you play with who they’ve worked with who has been good.  Then email them.  And even more importantly, be available to the fans after your gigs.  Just hang around and have a pint – you’d be surprised how many people come up and offer useful advice – who could put you on, who might do a communuty radio show in town, who might do this that or the other.  It’s not about pushing yourself on people or stepping out of your comfort zone – just let people who want to help help.

Personally, this works well for publicity as well.  You all know someone who writes a blog, has a show on student radio, might write for a local publication, or knows someone.  Be liberal with your promo copies.  Use Bandcamp, which allows you to sell CDs as well as downloads, as well as giving journos free downloads. Let people hear your music.

I’d personally agree with all of this, but I’d add one caveat: be really, really fucking organised.  Do all these things, but please try and coordinate them a little.  Send your pal at student radio in Bristol a copy a couple of weeks before you turn up and play.  Get your friend who takes good photos to take a few promo shots before you even record your album, so that anyone who you send the album to has all the tools they need to give you some coverage – the music, some pictures and a one-sheet biography.  And there’s no point getting a gig in London if you’re based in Edinburgh because the travel will cost you a fucking fortune.  Get a night in Manchester on the way down and one in Birmingham on the way back up if you possibly can.

But the one point that everyone made, and one which every DIY artist, label and everyone else has to accept: it takes fucking ages.  It will be slow and it will be tiring in a lot of ways, but if you are going it alone you can, but you have to have the stamina, and not be discouraged by how slow it is.  Because it may be slow, but at the end of the day it will be really fucking satisfying.

Four albums into his career, and I am about ready to elevate Micah P. Hinson to the Toad Pantheon of Unchallengeable Greatness.  Red Empire Orchestra seemed to lack a little purpose at times, almost as if Hinson himself were slightly uncertain about the album, and I do not like covers at all, so All Dressed Up and Smelling of Strangers didn’t really click for me either.

This, however, without being a drastic change, slaps down those niggling doubts pretty fucking decisively – it’s fucking great.  You know who Hinson reminds me of?  Sam Amidon.  I’ve interviewed both now and both are opaque, intimidating people, hugely generous with their time and conversation, but with a kind of hard edge to them which a stupid question, a waste of time or a glib frivolity could easily cause to bubble to the surface. Lovely guys both of them, but if they came to think that you were an idiot, I get the impression there would be little else to be had from either but a cool dismissal.

Musically they remind me of one another too, particularly in the combination of relying heavily on straightforward songwriting embellished so lavishly and beautifully with classical orchestration, and all the time with that same undercurrent of bite which makes their respective personalities so striking.

One of the things which seems to make artists lose their flair in old age is that anyone successful enough to still be making music that long seems to have their desire, their need, dissolved slightly by that very success.  Hinson strikes me very squarely as someone whose fire burns so fiercely that even the salve of finding true love is unlikely to ever dampen it.  When you speak to him he just simmers with passion, and in his music that simmering boils over time and again, despite the presence of more soft-focus bliss such as the uncomfortably unguarded Dear Ashley.

This album feels, at heart,  like a beautifully constructed alt-folk album, swirled about by gorgeous classical instrumentation. And yet if that’s what it is, it is one which has been twisted, distorted and enraged by noise and chaos, as if the underlying beauty were always in danger of being consumed by the fury which seems to bubble from the exact same well which makes the beauty so intense.

It is perhaps a little more abstract, this album, than his previous ones.  It relies less on songs, per se, and more on long, building instrumentals, which seem to carry the emotional arc of the album more than the lyrics themselves.  He starts and ends with these, beginning with the lovely Call to Arms and ending with the twelve minute microcosm of The Returning, which eventually draws the sting of the seven minutes of aggravated guitar, before lapsing into more soothing strings of what feels like turning the last page of an emotionally devastating book.  It’s all done, it’s half four in the morning and there is already a greying light in the sky, but you’re through it now and can finally go to sleep.

Micah P. Hinson – Seven Horses Seen

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Micah P. Hinson – The Returning

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from Full Time Hobby

The Great Arcade Fire Hoax?  It is this:

“The prevailing belief amongst j0urnalists that the Arcade Fire invented music. They invented bands with actual instruments, and anything vaguely epic.  None of these things existed before Funeral, and therefore any band exhibiting these characteristics must necessarily sound like the Arcade Fire. “

When Broken Records first emerged they were a lot folkier than they are now, and of course Rory does regularly play both violin and accordion, so I can see how it would have been confusing for journalists, but the ‘Scottish Arcade Fire’ tag applied to them was as amusingly stupid as it was utterly ubiquitous.

Now, to me that made it really quite funny, particularly as quite a few real journalists have an hubristic habit of sneering at bloggers for being ill-informed fanboys, incapable of writing anything with economy, balance, context or objectivity.  Consequently, watching them be collectively stupid, unimaginative, lazy and just plain incapable was something I found highly entertaining. Not so much the band, of course.

Jamie from Broken Records is a sensitve wee soul at the best of times, but the Arcade Fire comparisons went from amusing to tedious to really fucking annoying rather quickly for him.  And then he began to notice that it wasn’t just Broken Records.  Every band – every single fucking indie band – which wasn’t either indie rock or pastoral ‘alt’-folk got compared to the Arcade fucking Fire, particularly if they picked up an actual instrument or made a lot of noise at any point.

Now, as a writer myself I laughed tolerantly at this particular idea.  Yes, millions of bands get compared to the Arcade Fire, but I too have spent ages wracking my brain for a comparison I can feel in my bones but just can’t quite put my finger on.  So I know how maddeningly elusive these things can be, and I’ve certainly made some weak comparisons myself in the past.

Then the Meursault reviews started to come in and yes, you guessed it, Arcade Fire comparisons were being made left right and centre, to the point that Bearded Magazine even brought them up by explicitly refusing to make the comparison, so the fuckers were still mentioned: “This follow-up to their critically-acclaimed debut album, Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues sees the seven-piece move away from the Arcade Fire comparisons which flew in from all directions after that first release.”

Now, when Meursault are being compared to the Arcade Fire, things really have descended into parody.  “The Scottish seven-piece, whose sophomore album sounds a lot like music, owe a heavy debt to music through the ages, with their latest album full of ideas borrowed liberally from, er… music.”

But how the fuck did they do it?  I mean, as Jamie rightly points out, the Arcade Fire basically just sound like Echo and the Bunnymen but with more folk instruments and a bit of David Byrne for good luck, so how the fuck have they hoodwinked the world of journalism into believing that they invented… well, pretty much everything? Anyway, everyone knows that was Tom Waits.

Broken Records – Nearly Home

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Arcade Fire – Ocean of Noise

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Meursault – Salt Pt.1

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Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon

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