A couple of weeks ago I was whingeing about not being able to get going after Christmas, and this week it’s a similar, but different whinge: so much is nearly ready to get going on!

The new Trips and Falls album is being mastered and should be ready to assign a release date in the next few weeks, hopefully.  Animal Magic Tricks is just agreeing the final mix and sequencing for her record, but we’re still waiting on the last of the mixed songs to be approved by the lady herself before we can move on to getting it mastered.  And although agreed in principle, we are just finalising the details of an official offer to Lach, to release his new album, Ramshackle Heart, over here, and that record goes for mastering just as soon as we finish batting the contract back and forth over minor matters of punctuation and US vs English spelling.

These things just take time, it’s not that anything is being done badly – just the opposite in fact – but I am on the verge of being incredibly busy, but for the time being still waiting for it all to kick off.  Once it does, of course, I things around here are going to be just as mental as ever, but for the time being that sense of antici… pation is just bubbling away.

So I, like you, have little better to do this afternoon but waste time fannying about on the internet.  And tomorrow, of course, is our first gig night – down at the Wee Red, with The Scottish Enlightenment, Johnny Reb and Morris Major.  The Wee Red has a pretty early curfew remember, so get there by half seven if you want to catch the first band.

Alternatively, if you find yourself in London Song, by Toad Records’ new signing (if you can really call it that) Rob St. John is playing at Shhh! at the Local tomorrow night.  Local pals Conquering Animal Sound are playing too, as well as the excellent Tasseomancy, and DJ sets from the Line of Best Fit and Anthony from GDLI.

1. Find a picture of a hat which looks even sillier than a leather fedora.
2. Favourite totally miserable fucker music.
3. Favourite loud-as-balls music.
4. Which of your music makes you look the coolest…
5. …and the least cool.

These five songs are from a mixtape of British music I made for my brother at the tail end of the nineties.  Back when Snow Patrol were actually a pretty good band.

Lionrock – Straight at Yer Head

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Arnold – Fleas Don’t Fly

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The Divine Comedy – Thrillseeker

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Snow Patrol – Fifteen Minutes Old

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Delakota – The Rock

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Music can express so many beautiful things. Depression, love, yearning, hope… and in this case clinical insanity.

The title of this post is something a very good friend of mine said to me a good few years ago now, when I was talking to him about what I do and don’t write about on this blog.

Most of the music I hear a buzz building about on the internet I tend to have a listen to, and end up shrugging and thinking, ‘well, s’alright, innit’.  However, on this blog I am trying, in a sense, to document the actual process of listening to and enjoying music – to write out the inner monologue of a music fan, I guess.

Finding some of that music to be no better than alright is a part of the process I’ve never really know how to discuss properly, so I am going to give it a go here, with three mini-reviews of albums which I was extremely interested to hear, but which all kind of disappointed me in the end – you, on the other hand, might disagree and end up loving them.

The Beets – Stay Home

This album, to be entirely fair, is not just ‘alright’, it is pretty good if you ask me, but I still haven’t really, properly clicked with it yet, despite constantly feeling like I am on the cusp of doing so.  It’s got a really nice, ramshackle, Phil & the Osophers feel to it, those lo-fi production values I tend to fall all over myself for, and a really loose feel to the playing.

I keep waiting for something to happen, though.  For them to get loud, for them to turn a phrase which makes me double take, for them to write a killer riff I can’t stop humming… anything, really. It just doesn’t though.  This album feels a bit like one with all the right ingredients, but something kind of missing in the recipe.

The Beets – Hens & Roosters

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Shilpa Ray & her Happy Hookers – Teenage and Torture

All the right elements are here again – a rough and ready version of rock ‘n’ roll, with plenty of fire and Shilpa Ray’s amazingly brilliant voice to drive it all home.  So what’s not doing it for me?  As per usual, you can rarely be entirely sure about these things.

Put simply, though, this could do with a dose of Grinderman, if you ask me.  It needs to be more extreme – louder, rougher, dirtier both in recording and in bed, more threatening, more unhinged.  Listen to it and you’d be well within your rights to wonder what the fuck I’m talking about.  This has passion, right, just listen to Shilpa belting it out!  It does have passion, I guess, but for some reason as far as I am concerned it fails to generate any.

Shilpa Ray & her Happy Hookers – Dames a Dime a Dozen

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Tennis – Cape Dory

Alright, I’ll be honest, never mind not quite clicking, this one I just plain don’t get at all.  Fat Possum are one of the great independent record labels, but with this one I have to confess, I am just kind of baffled.  It’s rubbish.  Or, more to the point, boring.

It’s got a nice old-fashioned pop sense to it – like Elk City in a sense – but no discernible character, and no memorable melodies whatsoever.  I don’t get it at all.

Tennis – Marathon

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Two Syllable Records are, somewhat under the radar, building a really good back catalogue, with releases by bands like Inlets, Candy Claws and, my favourite, That Ghost.

I’ve reviewed Ryan Schmale’s work on this site before, with pretty considerable enthusiasm, and this review isn’t going to be much different.

I’ll agree with the label’s own blurb that this album is more sombre and introspective than what has come before from Schmale.  I think I’ll add that there’s a touch less of a rough edge to it as well.  It still sounds really lo-fi, but there’s definitely something of a more welcoming feel to it than I might have imagined before – it’s even kind of mellifluous at time, which really shocked me.

You know when you speak to someone really introverted and shy and sometimes that shyness causes them to snap at you, and you don’t really know where the hostility has come from?  Well I think there was a bit of that about the earlier That Ghost records, whereas this, for all it retains a lot of the shyness and introspection, seems to have turned it inward as if it no longer blames you for its feeling of isolation.

In some senses I suppose Song Out Here could do with a little of that bite back.  A bit of that attitude, perhaps.  I am not going to whinge too much though, because I am really enjoying this album, just that around half or two-thirds of the way through, once the different sound has been established and allowed to settle, it might have been nice to just give things a little shake, to break the spell.

Nevertheless, this whole album has the feel of being in a cosy cabin in the mountains (I blame fucking Bon Iver for this image popping into my head) where all might not be well, but is nevertheless under control.  There is still the feeling of isolation, still a grey sky, but it is one that is being regarded from the relative comfort of indoors.

That Ghost – To Like You

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That Ghost – The Older Removed by request

MySpace | More mp3s | Pre-order from Two Syllable Records

Well my first listen to this record brought a palpable sense of relief that the last record had been decisively consigned to the rearview mirror.  Some people may have loved it, but it felt to me a lot like an album which was smothered by the weight of its own grand concept.

This is immediately and obviously conceived, or at least recorded, with a far lighter touch than its predecessor, which is a very good thing.

The problem for me, though, is that for all their grandiose ambitions misfired occasionally, when it did click, it made the band great.  Sometimes if you’re going to aim high, you have to accept that a few failures are the price to be paid for the extent of the heights you can achieve when it does work.

This record, for all I am glad it is not as involved or overblown as The Hazards of Love has unfortunately, in reining in its more flamboyant excesses, also lost its character.  The songs are all just so very plain, and at worst (the drearily mid-paced country pop lite of Rise to Me, the horrible Ooo-oohs on Calamity Song) they accept far too much of their aesthetic from bland adult orientated acoustic pop.

There are a couple of real highlights, such as the delicately lovely January Hymn and the more strident  Down By the Water.  But in general these are rare moments of sparkle in general mist of songs which just never grab me, no matter how many times I listen to them.

The Decemberists’ sound has fallen somewhat foul of fashion, but once these trends blow over and once the last five to ten years of music are consigned to more distant history, I am sure I will listen to Picaresque, Her Majesty, Castaways and Cutouts and at least half of The Crane Wife again with genuine pleasure.  This record, whilst never really being offensive by any stretch of the imagination, strikes me as one I am unlikely to feel compelled to listen to again from the second I publish this review.

The Decemberists – Calamity Song

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The Decemberists – January Hymns

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Website (buy the album here too) | More mp3s

I have always been a little wary of Celtic Connections, because my interest in folk music sort of peters out as it gets closer and closer to purely traditional forms, which dominates a fair bit of the festival.  Not that they don’t give loads of airtime to the crossover of folk into contemporary pop music, because they very much do, it’s just that only a certain percentage of the lineup is ever really going to appeal to me personally, that’s all.

Anyhow, the not very folky at all Broken Records played last night with The Burns Unit, and it was reviewed by Lloyd from Peenko.  That’s dangerously close to being ‘legitimate’ rather than just a random hack fannying about on the internet, so congratulations to Lloyd, and I am delighted he enjoyed Broken Records.  With the exception of the glorious Since We’ve Fallen Out I really don’t like the Burns Unit I have to confess, but the more stripped down stuff in the video above is lovely nevertheless.

In other news, Vic from Muruch (one of those mysterious friends you end up with these days who you know only via the internet – she could be Scarlett Johansson, Rosie O’Donnell or Jerry Springer in disguise for all I know) got in touch to say that she was helping Mountain Stage do some PR for their event and wondered if I might feature it.  And you all know how I feel about nepotism…

So yes, Mountain Stage are a two hour live performance music show, which gets syndicated across National Public Radio all across the US, and they have an event at Celtic Connections this year.  The bill is comprised of Mavis Staples, Dougie MacLean, Joy Kills Sorrow and Mollie O’Brien & Rich Moore, takes place at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall this Friday, the 21st January, and tickets can be purchased here.

So, enjoy, Glaswegians.  I am staying here until next Thursday, when I might raid your fair city for some beers, which apparently you have in abundance.

I never really knew much about Edinburgh band Deserters Deserve Death, never mind seriously getting into their music.  They appear to have vanished now, and in their place appear Edinburgh School for the Deaf.

Going to their MySpace or Facebook fan pages there seems to be little reason given for the change of name, whether it be simply a new direction for what is essentially the same band, or a re-jig enforced by a shuffle in personnel.

In any case, I was in Avalanche Records on the Grassmarket the other day (getting my traditional lecture from Kev about how I was doing everything wrong and destroying the nation’s independent record shops in the process) and I happened to catch a glimpse of a very nicely designed EP, just out of the corner of my eye.

I know nothing about the band, but a lot of my friends whose music taste I trust seem to have been ‘liking’ them on Facebook recently, so I thought that for three quid I should give it a go.  And a good thing too, because these guys seem to have some really promising stuff.

The first thing I noticed was of course the extreeeemely fashionable growl of ultra lo-fi recording, particularly in the guitar sound.  I have grown to be a bit wary of my own enthusiasm around this kind of grumbly noise, because I suspect there are times when I can be sufficiently smitten by the engineering of a record that at times I neglect to check whether or not the actual songs are any good.

In the case of Edinburgh School for the Deaf, generally, it works.  Listening to the EP as a whole I might be tempted to suggest that I think they could do with a few more moments here and there where something breaks through the overall fug of the scuzzy, shoegazey sound.  That’s more my way of saying that they might not be quite there yet, but they most certainly seem to be heading in the right direction, rather than a pointed criticism.

In fact, if you go to their MySpace page then you can have a wee listen to a couple of tracks – Love is Terminal and Of Scottish Blood and Symphonies – which are, in my view, at least as good as if not better than the tracks on the EP, with the former a cracking pop tune, and the latter a slow-building epic  This is a very promising sign, and suggests there might well be plenty more to come from these guys.

I think that with this kind of music the biggest challenge is not to let the songs be overwhelmed by the sound.  Melody isn’t always the first thing you think of growly shoegaze but, however minimal, I think a judicious use of melody is often the key to making the songs stand out from one another properly.  Edinburgh School for the Deaf have certainly got the sound nailed, and if they can continue to write good songs then I reckon we could have another very promising band on our hands here.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – 11 Kinds of Loneliness
(from 11 Kinds EP)

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Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Love. Is. Terminal.
(naughty MySpace rip)

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These things never really seem to last so I guess I better say something nice about it while I can: it’s really quite a pleasant morning here in Edinburgh today.  Presumably by the time I hit ‘Publish’ all that will have changed and we’ll be back to the shitty old January we’re all so very familiar with around these parts.

Still, at least the old live music machine is coughing and spluttering its way back to life.  Just wait until the second week in February though, because judging from my calendar that’s when it really does kick off something chronic.

In only tangentially related live music news, Fence Records today announced that tickets for Homegame are going on sale this Saturday at noon – presumably hoping the fact that absolutely everyone in the fucking country is flat broke at this time of year will keep the resulting rush under control, unlike last year, when their server crashed within five minutes of tickets going on sale, having already sold out.

Monday 17th January 2011: Mama Rosin, The Stormy Seas & Barret Wise at Sneaky Pete’s.

It’s a really rather varied lineup this one, but it’s raucous as hell and should be excellent fun for those of you itching to get out to see some music after a very slow start to the year in these parts indeed.

Tuesday 18th January 2011: Woodpigeon and friends’ secret acoustic show at the Forest Cafe.

This show has literally gone from my Facebook feed to this post within seconds, consequently I know nothing about it apart from the fact that Woodpigeon are good, and that lots of Mark’s friends are in bands which are equally good, so I highly recommend this one.  There are some benefits to being tardy with a post I suppose.

Withered Hand & Woodpigeon – I’m Set Free

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Saturday 22nd January 2011: The Scottish Enlightenment, Johnny Reb & Morris Major at The Wee Red Bar.

Our first monthly Ides of Toad night, with plenty of guitars.  Broddy guitars, in terms of the Scottish Enlightenment, raucous guitars from Johnny Reb and jangly guitars from Morris Major.  I have already gone on about this gig at plenty of length, so I shall remind you once more that tickets can be bought here, and hope you all turn up.

Johnny Reb – Nine on the Line

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Saturday 22nd January 2011: The Lowly Knights, We See Lights, Washington Irving and Micah Vincent at The Lot.

I remember my friend Matt from Northern Ireland going on about the Lowly Knights at great length when we were both at Fresh Air Radio a couple of years ago and this is, I believe, the first time they have come here and of all night to do it, it’s on a bloody night when I have my own gig on and can’t go and see them.  ARSE! Still, the Lot as a venue will be gone by the end of January, so this might be your last chance to enjoy it.

I’ve been itching to do this podcast for a while, but only now got my arse in gear to do it: record a podcast straight from vinyl.  It’s a bit of a nuisance, because I have to switch back and forth from the mic, for the chatty bits, to the USB input for the records… oh never mind, you don’t care about my logistical hassles do you.

The nice thing about vinyl is that the playlist is not simply going to be an inbox dump of whatever new indie has arrived this week, simply because I don’t have all that much new music on vinyl.  Some, but not lots.

Also, the electicism factor is massively increased, partly because my vinyl collection is downright eccentric, and partly because the very act of leafing through completely unsorted piles of records seems to make me lots more likely to pick something absolutely random which fits with nothing else at all and really has no excuse being anywhere near a haircut indie try-hard hipster podcast.  Which is of course exactly what this is.

Direct download: Toadcast #157 – The Vinylcast

01. Windsor Davies & Don Estelle – Whispering Grass (from It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum) (00.29)
02. Eat Skull – Heaven’s Stranger (06.27)
03. The Shop Assistants – Safety Net (12.50)
04. Beat the Devil – Mr. Ray (15.14)
05. King Creosote – The Right Form (25.47)
06. Seefeel – Faults (34.12)
07. The Japanese War Effort – Ribbit (39.09)
08. Edna McGriff – The Fool (44.29)
09. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Heart Like a Wheel (51.19)
10. Jimmie Lunceford & his Orchestra – Well Alright Then (62.43)

I really should have mentioned this before, but if there are any bands out there who want to play Glastonbury, they have until the 5pm on Monday 17th to apply through the Emerging Talent Competition, which can be entered here.

I’ve had a lot of emails this week since my name went on that list.  They’ve all been really nice emails, not an arse amongst them, but the music has been a very long way indeed from the kind of stuff I listen to, so I do find myself wondering a little at my suitability for this kind of thing.

Anyhow, I am guessing that if you are in a band and reading this then we probably have vaguely similar taste in music, so please apply.

There’s also the Scottish Music Awards coming up as well, and they are open for nominations.  This is something else I will be on the judging panel for (yes, I know, but they asked me, alright, so fuck off).  Again, it would be nice if you would go here and nominate some good stuff, because it would be nice to have as much good stuff in the nominations as possible.  I am looking into the possibility of adopting a mysterious alias, or even pretending to be Simon Cowell for a bit, so I can vote for myself in every category. The voting is open until the end of January, so hop to it.

Anyhewwww… I was browsing 17 Seconds this morning and I happened across a post where Ed mentioned a radio discussion in which decade people would most like to have lived, given the choice.  Most people chose the Fifties because of most people being fucking idiots and thinking it was like it is on rose-tinted, revisionist TV programs.  Read Brighton Rock (okay, not quite the Fifties) if you want to be disabused of such delusions.  Ed himself plumped for the Seventies, citing the amazing musical moments he would have been able to experience first hand.

However, as Ed himself implies with his last sentence, we often don’t realise what the moments of great import are, even as they happen around us.  I wonder how many of those amazing moments Ed would have actually recognised as being significant, even as he hypothetically experienced them for himself.

I was at T in the Park in 1995 or 1996 when Pulp and Radiohead were the headliners (alright, not Glastonbury, fuck you Ed!) but for all I thought both bands were incredible I certainly didn’t think of it as some sort of special moment which would live well beyond that particular year.  I remember being really excited when I first started using Napster, but did I have any idea what a significant movement I was participating in at the time?  No, of course not, it just seemed like a cool widget and I got into a shitload of new bands because of it.

So without further ado let’s get busy wasting what remains of the productive hours of the week by answering five stupid questions and then getting on with talking pish on the internet which is, let’s face it, pretty much what the internet was invented for.

1. Which unsigned band (or tiny label band if you like) would you most like to see win the Glasto competition thingy above?
2. Which current band do you think will be remembered for years?
3. Which current band do you think will be forgotten far faster than you would have thought when they were big?
4. Name something of global importance you are kinda impressed at having been around to witness.
5. Name a fictional world you would most like to inhabit.

The five songs this week celebrate the genius of Stephin Merritt.

The Magnetic Fields – Drive on Driver

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Future Bible Heroes – Death Opened a Boutique

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The Gothic Archies – Smile! No-one Cares How You Feel

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The 6ths – Night Falls Like a Grand Piano

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The Divine Comedy – The Dead Only Quickly

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