No, seriously, a cartoon combine harvester, I kid you not.  What sort of ridiculous synaptic misfire is responsible for that image, you ask?  Or at least, I pretend you ask. Well here’s a needless insight into how these Friday Fives come about for you, seeing as I pretended you asked.

These things are all about finding one of those weird tangents your brain shoots off on at times, and embracing it.  So I was having a piss this morning… no, too much information.  There I was this morning, contemplating how efficient I had been with my inbox this week.  I generally have an ‘On Trial’ folder for unreviewed or undecided mp3s or albums and it can get a bit too full.  By the start of last week it was so bad it contained a second folder call ‘New’, containing all the previous week’s zip downloads and so on.

Now, you will have noticed, as did I, that that is a slippery slope, and a potentially infinite set of Russian Dolls full of new music.  So this week I systematically went through all the top level albums and either reviewed or deleted them, so yesterday I was able to unzip all the folders in ‘New’, move them to ‘On Trial’, and nip this little problem in the bud.  I still have an overflowing inbox, but I feel that it is at least back under control again, which is a relief, because I like to give everyone a fair listen rather than miss them because I have too much to listen to.

So I was standing there having a p… no, there I was contemplating this week’s efficiency and I smugly compared it to being like a combine harvester.  Ho ho, I thought to myself, more like a combine harvester wielding a giant axe.  Yeah, a combine harvester with an axe, that’s what I was like.  And the only place I could imagine seeing a combine harvester with an axe was one of those Disney films like Cars or some such, where there would probably be a big bad combine harvester (probably a thug, so not very bright) wielding and axe and using it to threaten our plucky hero, who is probably something wholesome and American like a Dodge or a Chevrolet*.

So, yes, a cartoon combine harvester dreamt up while I was hav… , that is how this week’s five was born.  And you thought it was magic, eh?  Sheesh!  So if that’s how clever the five tend to be, there’s no excuse not to delurk and chip in five frivolous answers to these questions, and then while away the afternoon bickering about them in the comments.

1. Favourite computer animated film (these can probably all be ads or music videos and stuff, why restrict ourselves).
2. Favourite hand-drawn animated film.
3. Favourite live-action version of a cartoon character.
4. Favourite hero from one of those Disney/Pixar new animations.
5. As a kid what was your favourite picture book?

This week’s five songs are from a compilation called 12″ 80s.  No I don’t really get it either, don’t worry, I’ve not suddenly tried to become cooler than I really am.

Stephen Tin Tin Duffy – Kiss Me (Mixe Plural)

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Lloyd Cole – My Bag (Dancing Mix)

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Echo & the Bunnymen – Never Stop (Discotheque)

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ABC – Tears Are Not Enough (12″ Mix)

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Kid Creole & the Coconuts – I’m a Wonderful Thing (Baby) (12″ Mix)

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*As opposed to something which actually fucking works, like a Volkswagen, but those are made in Socialist Yurp, aren’t they.  Which might be why they work in the first place.

When I played Lord Huron to a friend of mine he said that it was so close to early Panda Bear or Animal Collective as to be a little uncomfortable.  I never really listened to that stuff, so I really have no idea, but I thought I’d mention it just in case.  Myself, on the other hand, I approach this with more naive ears, and I like it an awful lot.  Really, a very awful lot, if there is such a thing.

If I were to throw out a glib comparison, and why the fuck not, I guess I would describe the music as being what Fleet Foxes might produce if Vampire Weekend’s percussion section were playing along with them.  Don’t worry, this doesn’t sound anything like Vampire Weekend, but I reckon you probably know what I mean.

It is blissful, dreamy Summer style music, with distant, echoey vocals which nevertheless manage to exude great warmth, and oddly assembled backing tracks which includes really nicely shuffling percussion as well as plenty of artificial noises, which skitter across the songs like nervous beetles on a glass table.

The whole EP is just supremely laid back, unconcerned music – music which seems to transmit its capacity to leave the problems of life for another day to you so completely that thirty seconds of it will calm you down, get you to make a cup of tea, and stop worrying.  I don’t want to make a song available for free download as there are only three songs, and they can be bought from Bandcamp for a mere $3, so there’s no excuse not to buy it.  And it would be money very well spent – I am really enjoying this.

I really like it when people are enthusiastic about music.  This EP was sent through to me by a PR friend of mine so excited that he didn’t put anything in the email beyond a download link and a single line: “This is good, promise”. It made me laugh, and he was right.

The Mariner’s Children are releasing on the same label as Rachel Dadd, who I first saw sharing a stage with Rozi Plain something like three or four Homegames ago.

Their music is basically folk-pop, if you’re looking for an easy definition.  Well, it’s acoustic pop anyway – I have lost track of what makes people call things folk music at the moment, but it tends to require little more than the presence of an acoustic guitar and some sort of other instrument of whatever kind.  In this case, while the choruses are lush pop, a lot of the violin riffs sound pretty folky to me, so that counts.  We’re only talking vague generalisations here anyway.

There’s an urgent beat to this most of the time, with the flat slap of the drums keeping the songs, particularly the quicker ones, anchored pretty firmly.  Flourishes come from the violin, and general depth and fullness of sound from cello and harmonies.

Even the quieter songs tend to built to a helter-skelter pace by the end, although not in the furious gospel stomp style in which The Mumford lads seem to have cornered the market; in this case it tends to be more of a reckless clatter.  When they do slow it down, as in the lovely Golden Pine (in the video above) the interplay of the strings and vocals is really lovely, but when the female vocal joins in too I am pretty much sold.  You could probably play pretty much anything to me in that style and I would like it, so I found myself drifting off into something of a reverie by the end of it, only to be sharply woken up by the sudden thud of drums moving at pace, as It Carved Your Name into the Ground kicks off.

These two songs really are the highlights of the EP for me, from the lovely to the pacey in two quick steps.  Good stuff indeed.

The Mariner’s Children – It Carved Your Name into the Ground

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MySpace | Buy from Broken Sound Music

I have never really clicked with purely instrumental music, from classical to pop, it usually needs words for me to really be able to engage with it.  Oddly enough, this is true even when the words are either indecipherable or, sometimes, too abstract for me to really understand, as is fairly often the case.  I love Bob Dylan even when I have no fucking idea what he’s going on about, which is a lot.

When I see it live, however, I suppose I at least start to understand how I should listen to instrumental music, even if I am not always able to actually learn this lesson in practise.  I saw RM Hubbert for the first time at Haarfest this year (see video here), and was absolutely mesmerised by his peformance.  His chat was pure Scottish – self-deprecating, witty, sometimes a little intense, but entirely charming nevertheless – and his music was gorgeous.

His entire album is embedded for streaming at the bottom of the page and can be listened to on his Bandcamp page here, but I have still found myself not quite as enamoured by the recorded versions despite knowing I enjoy his music.

The Phantom Band may not be an instrumental band, but I find myself with a similar relationship to their stuff.  I saw them live at Homegame a couple of years ago and loved it.  Their debut album was voted album of the year by the readers of Clash Magazine – a hugely impressive a achievement for a pretty low-profile band on a small Scottish indie label – and for all I loved bits and pieces, I never really fell for the whole record.

Their new one is out on Chemikal Underground pretty soon, and after listening to my promo copy again and again, a similar relationship seems to be emerging.  I am just not that into the album, but listening to the rhythms and the chanted vocals, I can easily imagine absolutely loving the material live.

The Phantom Band – Walls

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There’s something hypnotic about the thump of the drums and the repetitive layers of guitar when they play, and for some reason I have yet to really experience that impact with the recordings.  Maybe it’s similar to the relationship I have with instrumental music: the experience of intense attention, just letting it all wash over you with no other distractions, is just how I should experience the band.

My attention at a gig is (or should be) one hundred percent, whereas at home, even when explicitly making time to listen to music, it rarely is.  I’ve clicked with music live on a few occasions, when the recorded version hasn’t quite grabbed me, and it’s often to do with that immersive feeling of giving myself over completely to experiencing the music.  I wasn’t even that taken with Sam Amidon the first few times I heard All Is Well, but his performance at the Bowery a couple of years ago changed all that in an instant.

Maybe, of course, I shouldn’t worry about it.  Some bands are rubbish live and I’d rather just hear the album, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that certain kinds of music don’t quite do it for me on record, whereas live I absolutely love the stuff.

Those poor PR fuckers must despair of me.  More accurately, they must long for the days when the people they sent stuff to had an obvious deadline, so they at least had half a clue if their work had achieved anything or not.  Dealing with myself, and most other bloggers too I would imagine, must be infuriating.  I have been sitting on this mini album for ages, dipping back in and out, and waiting until I was confident enough that I knew what to say.

It’s reassuring, however, to see Soft Cat’s label also guilty of such vagueness.  On the band’s MySpace page the CD of this album is described as being available ‘soon’ and the version available on the label’s BigCartel site seems to be a cassette version.  So, erm, not sure, sorry.  It’s really, really good though, so at least the band have fulfilled their side of the bargain, and with some aplomb I must say.

The only real misstep, I would say, is the uncharacteristically upbeat song When My Brother Reaches Me.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s the right decision to break up a quite downbeat record at this point with something a little jauntier, I am just not that fond of the song.  Pretty much everything else, however, knocks the nail neatly on the head, as far as I am concerned.

It sounds a little like Fleet Foxes, heard through the veil of a deep sleep from which you haven’t quite awakened.  It also sounds just a little like the dreams you had weren’t all that pleasant, but that the act of waking has dispelled most of the fear, leaving only a lingering sense of unease yet to dissipate in the relief of finding yourself warm and cosy in your bed.

There’s something thick about the atmosphere of the songs the band construct, with harmonies and rich strings swelling here and there to provide lush, understated drama which flits in and out of the music when required.  For the most part the songs are carried by Neil Sanzgiri’s imprecise, lovely vocals and a gentle strum of either guitar or banjo.  I think of it as quite an acoustic album actually, but if you sit and listen there is rarely a moment when flutes and strings or backing harmonies don’t bring their own touch of mystery to the sound.

I am rather left with the feeling that I listened to these songs whilst driving through a landscape I have somehow forgotten.  The emotions they conjure are strong, but the images elusive, leaving me with the feeling of an old memory I can’t quite shift to the front of my consciousness.  Gorgeous.

Soft Cat – Silver Babies Sun

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Soft Cat – Five Months Waiting

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy direct from Friends Records

I was so disappointed with both the music on the last Rilo Kiley album and with Jenny Lewis’ sex-kitten cavorting which accompanied the PR effort that I ended up developing a real dislike of the band.  This is possibly due to me being a bit of dick I suppose, rather than any fault of the band, but I really didn’t like the actual tunes much either so the results would have been much the same I guess.

Anyhow this album, recorded by Jenny Lewis and her fella Johnathan Rice, seems to straddle the pop instincts of Rilo Kiley and the soulful gospel-folk of Lewis’ solo work.  Unfortunately, I don’t actually know enough about Rice’s own work to give you an idea where it might sit as far as a fan of his music would be concerned.  In general though, as will surprise precisely no readers of this site, I tend more towards Jenny Lewis than I do to Rilo Kiley, and this fact is pretty much all you need to know to predict my reaction to this record.

Generally, when they go upbeat and get into their boy-girl, borderline doo-wop pop tunes then I kind of tune out.  Not that it’s no good or anything, just that I don’t find it at all emotionally engaging, so for all it’s pleasant enough my attention tends to drift.

Given that they are bumping uglies and are both successful musicians in their own right, I guess I am not surprised that there is a little more blissed out dreaminess to this album than any real sense of driven artistic adventure, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad record.  There are some cracking moments on this, notably opener Little Fly, and songs like As a Sprout and Wild is the Wind.

Overall I think there are far too many indifferent, middle of the road efforts like Winter Sun for me to ever end up forming a deep or particularly lasting bond with the album as a whole, but it’s an enjoyable listen with some great moments.  In fact, it’s an album which feels like it was conceived on a lazy, contented Sunday afternoon, even down to the cover art, and that is probably the best way to listen to it as well.

Jenny & Johnny – Little Fly

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Jenny & Johnny – As a Sprout

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

Belle & Sebastian are one of my favourite bands, so I am pretty gutted that it feels like our relationship is comprehensively and irreparably broken.  That sounds rather idiotically melodramatic, but this feels a bit like breaking up with someone, seeing them hanging around some new friends and finding them so utterly unlike you that the breakup takes on a kind of finality, in the sense that if that’s what they really enjoy, then no amount of talking about it is going to make you right for each other anyway, so might as well just let it go.

You’ve probably guessed I’m talking about Norah Jones by now, haven’t you.  If Stuart Murdoch wants to make music with Norah Jones, then he is probably not making music for me anymore, and if I am going to react like this to him making music with Norah Jones then he probably won’t care in the slightest that he isn’t making music for me anymore.  And nor should he.

I remember seeing the first posters for Belle & Sebastian going up around Glasgow, and not being entirely sure they were real.  The artwork was so distinctive, despite being so simple, and the name of the band and the names of their songs had such an otherworldly air to them that it took a while for me to be sure they weren’t a spoof or a cinematic project or… well something other than a straightforward indie-pop band anyway.

My girlfriend at the time became enamoured with them, put a handful of songs on a series of mixtapes, and my own infatuation quickly followed suit.  There was something mischievous and enigmatic about their fey playfulness which made even its most sugar-sweet incarnations seem a little subversive.  It was as if underneath every pretty, breathless stanza there might be a tale of domestic abuse lurking.  It’s hard for me to personally put my finger on, but they just had that magic, even if the music often sounded like the most wide-eyed, innocent thing in the whole world.

So given that their appeal was a little tricky to pin down in the first place, it’s inevitably going to be a little tricky to articulate exactly what I think they have lost.  I could say that this lacks any kind of essence, any kind of essential life-force, but then it would be hard for me to pinpoint exactly where I thought that resided before.  This album basically lacks the urgency to exist which the drive to make themselves known seems to give younger musicians, and without that inner flame, all we’re left with is the sugar-coated outer shell, resulting in an album which is so flaccid and suffocating I can barely bring myself to listen to it.

That compelling desire for self-expression simply seems to have evaporated, and I’d imagine it might well have.  How, as a successful, established older musician do you maintain that hunger?  Few can do it.  So I guess Murdoch simply isn’t making music for that market anymore, that excited, hungry listener with a passion for hearing something weird and unsettling which will make them sit up and take notice and spend two months figuring out if they like it or not.  Or maybe he is, but it doesn’t feel like it to me on this evidence.

What it feels like is an album by a band who have evolved into something I was never going to like, whether it was a good or bad version of itself, so in a sense I am really in no position to praise or criticise this record.  But one thing is for sure, Belle & Sebastian and I are very clearly not on the same page anymore because I think this is awful.

Belle & Sebastian – Come On Sister

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Belle & Sebastian – Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John (feat. Norah Jones)

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

There’s a shitload of news today, but let’s start with that naughty bit of the headline, shall we?

The National have announced that an expanded version of High Violet is to be released on November 22nd.  If, like many of us, you own the album already I urge you to download the new material illegally, or email 4AD and demand they send you the tracks for free.  Having initially been lukewarm on this record, I have since come to think of it as one of my favourite of the year, but for fuck’s sake, the fucking thing’s only been out for, what, six months?  Is my version already obsolete, and am I really going to have to buy the whole fucking thing again?  This is grasping huckstersim of the worst kind, and exactly the reason people started to hate the big labels (and George Lucas – in fact, especially George Lucas) in the first place, because cajoling people into buying the same thing again and again is technically referred to as ‘ripping the the right royal fucking piss out of your fanbase’.

Born to Be Wide is at the Electric Circus again on Thursday.  There will be another round of the excellent Charity Shop Disco (where DJs pick records from the Oxfam music shop and you can buy what you hear), as well as round-table chatty stuff based around A&R.  Guests will be Hannah Overton from XL Records, Stewart Henderson from Chemikal, Kenny McGoff from Columbia and Yvonne McLellan from Island.

The Scottish Music Awards are now accepting nominations and submissions and so on for 2011.  Canada has the Junos, darf sarf has the Mercurys, America… well, doesn’t really have anything, and now it seems we will be making a square go of kicking off our own up here. So if you want to submit your stuff or make a suggestion, there are forms at the bottom of the front page of the site.

My Sweeping the Nation interview has just been published, as has one with new blog Five Minutes With… so for those of you who haven’t had quite enough of my incoherent and self-contradictory burbling over here, pop over there to have a quick scan of even more of it.

The Music Alliance Pact was started by Jason from the Pop Cop and recently reached its one-year anniversary.  The Pact itself is a coalition of bloggers, each from a different country, who regularly compile a collective post containing one song each from their respective countries of origin.  Apart from reminding us that decent independent music isn’t all anglophone, it also serves to magnify the reach of Jason’s personal choices several-fold.  Being on a single blog post is one thing, but being featured in the MAP puts you in something like three dozen.  To celebrate, Jason has made a compilation available at the above link, including songs by every band he has featured in the MAP since its formation, many of which are exclusives recorded specifically for the occasion.  Happy birthday!

So there you go.  Honestly, what are the fucking National thinking?  I am tempted to guess that in this case it wasn’t really their choice, more the record label, but of course I really don’t know.  I mean, this is a total piss-take isn’t it?  Can anyone think of a decent excuse for this sort of balls?

I very nearly reviewed Hot Panda’s debut album, not least because I have to admit I really like the artwork.  I was not, ultimately, quite into the album enough to really want to write about it though, whereas this time the reverse is true.

The artwork, whilst a nice image to be sure, is just another in a long, long, loooong line of cover designs which use vintage ‘found’ photography and (generally white) block capitals for the typography. Whilst this tends to look very nice, and in this case they’ve gone to the extra bother of using a more elaborate font and drawing a white diagonal line through the middle of it, I am starting to become a little tired of the lack of imagination being show by graphic artists at the moment.  I love these pictures too, but I am not sure just imitating everyone else really cuts the mustard if a band have asked you to do their artwork.  Anyhow, I (hugely) digress; there is, of course, some music to be discussed here too.

So, what is it that I ended up liking about this album after not quite clicking with its predecessor?  I am not sure.  It’s a bit of a mess alright, but a good one, and the long, slow-burning intro to an album which bounces around with reckless energy highlights the kind of well-judged way the band have wielded the various tools at their disposal throughout the record.  They have the capacity to go right over the top, with off-kilter, high-tempo, yelping punky pop, but there is a lot more to them than that, and they tend to use their more full-frontal material with well-judged restraint.

In general the album drifts about from rather pretty dream pop, with an eighties indie inflection, to the kind of mental stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  I think one of the things I like best is the blend of the old and the new.  There is, as I mentioned before, a very eighties indie feel to some of the slower songs, whereas a love of abrasive old punk seems pretty prevalent in a lot of the more boisterous tunes, which can at times remind me slightly of Liars actually, but the percussion, stuttering rhythms and electronics seem very modern, and the blend is well managed indeed.

A couple of the songs don’t quite do it for me I have to confess.  The Ghost isn’t a track I find as compelling as Mindlessnesslessness, for example, and in that latter period of the album the pace could do with being punctured just a little somewhere as it does get a bit too much after a while.  Nevertheless, small quibbles aside, I have been really enjoying this album and think I had better go back and listen to their first one again now!

Hot Panda – Shoot Your Horse

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Hot Panda – Mindlessnesslessness

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Maple Music

I am still trying to figure out whether I am more or less busy now that I have liberated myself from the enormous inconvenience of a job which actually deigned to pay me money for my efforts and embraced idle dilettantism.

Mrs. Toad was cruelly subjected to a weekend with my side of the family this weekend, while I went off gallivanting at UnConvention Salford, and then popped out to meet a couple of new Manchester friends on Sunday.

Oddly enough, she and my mother seem to have developed an oddly functional dysfunctional relationship, based largely around telling one another to fuck off every half an hour or so.  Given that my mother and I are quite similar, and my relationship with Mrs. Toad is also largely based around us telling one another to fuck off every ten minutes, I suppose this should be no surprise, but there was something oddly heartwarming about hear my wife say ‘Oh fuck off Maggie’ to my mum on a regular basis as they prepared Sunday lunch yesterday.

It’s a pretty quiet week this week though, so I am hoping to get caught up on some design work for our next two releases and sort out a mailing list for the first Yusuf Azak single, due out in a couple of weeks.  So there.  That’s the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for you.

Saturday 9th October 2010: Archie Bronson Outfit & Victorian English Gentleman’s Club at Cabaret Voltaire.

This is a post of pure ignorance I am afraid, but there is little else on this weekend and having had a listen to the MySpace pages linked above it sounds like this could be raucous and excellent fun.

Saturday 9th October 2010: Woodenbox & The Stormy Seas at Electric Circus.

The last time I saw Woodenbox they were making a full tent bounce like a happy pack of Andrex puppies at Rockness.  They seem to be adding members everytime I see them, and with that, more and more of that reckless enthusiasm to their wilder moments.  I guess you’d probably describe them as Americana and leave it at that, if you wanted a pigeonhole, but the brass section, whilst not quite as mariachi to my ears as it seems to be to others, gives their live set a real sense of pop joy.