It seems like a very long time since I have given you anything like a news update on Song, by Toad Records, and that’s because I usually keep these things restricted to times when I have something to give away, like an mp3 or a new video or something like that.

In this case I don’t have any such thing, but there has been a lot going on so I thought I should probably give you a wee update anyway, because somewhat amazingly, we have no less than five new signings to announce (I hate that word, but you know what I mean).   So, in order of their forthcoming releases:

King Post Kitsch

I have been a fan of Charlie’s for some time, since Lloyd from Peenko very kindly introduced me to his music a year or so ago. He’s just moved up to Glasgow from London and is putting together a new band, if you’re interested and can drum or play guitar.  On the 16th May we’ll be releasing a four-song single Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone on 7″ vinyl, and then his debut album The Party’s Over comes out on the 13th June.

The Japanese War Effort

I hesitate to use words like ‘signed’ with Jamie, because he’s such a creative wee bastard that he’ll probably turn up on things released on half a dozen different labels over the next few years.  Anyhow, he has agreed to let us release the absolutely blinding Surrender to Summer EP on 10″ vinyl, and although we don’t have a date set just yet, I am thinking that the tail end of June makes sense – it is called Surrender to Summer, after all.

Lach

Yes, for some reason the gentleman who invented the New York anti-folk movement which, as well as kind of defining an entire genre of music, nurtured the early careers of the likes of Jeffrey Lewis, Kimya Dawson, The Moldy Peaches, Beck and Regina Spektor, has decided he wants to release his next album on Song, by Toad Records. Ramshackle Heart is coming out on the 18th July, and Lach will be reprising his stellar turn at the Edinburgh Festival again, both as a one-man show as well as bringing back the Anti-hoot.

Rob St. John

Having recorded his album in just two and a half days in February, Rob is going to have to wait until the Autumn to see it released.  I am not sure of the title yet, but we have a release date of 26th September and a plan to put it out as a gorgeous gatefold vinyl 12″, with Rob’s own photography forming the bulk of the album artwork.

Lil Daggers

This one isn’t quite what you would describe as a done deal, although it is agreed in principle, in the sense that we’ve asked if they’d like us to release their stuff over here (the band themselves are actually from Florida) and they said yes.  So that’s about as done a deal as we usually have, here at Song, by Toad Records.  Anyhow, we’ll be putting out their 7″ King Corpse EP over here sometime in July, followed by their self-titled debut album, probably sometime in October or November depending on what we all decide together when they get back form their current tour.

Crucially, King Post Kitsch and Lil Daggers are ‘Approved By Mrs. Toad’, a phrase you can expect to hear a little more of from time to time around these parts.  Basically, it means that she likes them because they make a racket.  And here, because I had to give you at least something to download for free, is the promotional track their US label Livid Records is using to promote the US release of Lil Daggers: Slave Exchange.

Lil Daggers – Slave Exchange

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Fucking hell, it’s been battering it down for the last few days – ‘torrent’ial, see, nothing to do with the naughty internets!  We’ve had snow in the morning and pishing rain for the rest of the day – fucking rotten.  Combine this with our worryingly leaky roof and honestly, it’s a bit of a surprise I am not in a worse mood.

As it is, however, I feel relatively chirpy.  There is footie tonight, and I will sit up late with some wine and make mixtapes for… well, for no obvious reason whatsoever I have to confess, apart from the fact that I am getting fed up of being embarrassed by the music taste of my nineteen-year-old self whenever I randomly select a tape to play in the van.  Also, making tapes is a nice way to listen to vinyl singles which might otherwise be neglected.

Direct download: Toadcast #165 – The Torrentcast

01. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got No Sole (00.29)
02. Lab Coast – Really Realise (06.54)
03. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Gay Train (17.49)
04. Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang – Island Brothers (24.19)
05. Bob Dylan & the Rolling Thunder Revue – Romance in Durango (29.12)
06. Dolfish – Your Love is Bummin’ Me Out (35.56)
07. Daniel Knox – Ghost Song (39.59)
08. The Honorable Worm – Behind the invisible hedges, into the unimaginable fields… (43.29)
09. Elbow – Lippy Kids (52.37)
10. Honeydrum – Those Babes (63.17)

Blah blah blah talky talky… as festival season starts to slowly warm to its task for the coming year, so too does that other staple: the industry chat-fest.

In many ways it is classic music industry wastage: money raised and spent on people talking about doing things instead of actually doing them; the classic overhead.  A bunch of people only tangentially involved in the making of music are always more able to raise money than those actually making it, not least because they are business people focussed on business, whereas bands are artists who should be focussed on making music.

I’ve been to quite a lot of these, and even begun participating in them recently, and the above paragraph is the cynical voice in the back of my head which will probably never be entirely silenced. I have seen a lot of people be extremely entertaining at these things, but actually useful?  That’s another question.

Then the other voice kicks in and starts to say things like ‘hang on, are you saying they’re a waste of time, then?’  And actually the answer is no.  So far from these chat-a-thons I have managed to ummm… well, find the lawyer who negotiated our distribution deal for us, meet the publishing guy who, as a favour, helped us get a wee chunk of cash for Meursault for having one of their songs in a documentary movie in the States, get me invited down to Manchester to Unconvention, where I found a load of great bands and met people who helped us book two of the dates on Yusuf Azak’s tour, threaten to punch the manager of a bar who was being a dick while one of our bands played (alright, maybe not that one), meet a couple of 6Music presenters who have subsequently played our music, as well as the guy who runs Hype Machine radio… and there will be many more, but those are the ones which pop to mind off the top of my head.

So I cringe at many elements of these events, and I am terrified of being, when invited to speak, one of those people who talks engagingly and entertainingly for an hour, but who only really succeeds in making themselves look witty and charming (yes, I know, not much danger of that, let me say it for you), without being any actual practical help.  But when I look back at what I’ve actually got from them, albeit over many many events, they are actually starting to look like a pretty bloody good use of my time.

I’m still nervous of making a tit of myself at them though!

And we are once again at de-lurking time of the week, so please step out of the shadows and say hello, and give your answer to five stupid questions and then… well, it’s Friday afternoon, this is the internet, you know what to do!

1. How sick are you of people mentioning SXSW by now, as a percentage?
2. Name an entertaining and affable but utterly useless person.
3. When are you most likely to completely clam up.
4. Last most incredibly boring thing you had to sit through.
5. You wrote it off, but it was quite good really.

The Just Joans – Please Don’t Talk to Me

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 

The Dead Kennedys – Your Emotions

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Walkmen – Stop Talking

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

George Pringle – Extremely Verbal After Midnight (Demo)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Pierces – Boring

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I called myself a novelty-whore in a review a little while back, and it’s something which I’ve been a little wary of for a while now: that I am so absorbed in the small-scale DIY end of the music industry that I have somehow lost my taste for famous bands.  Or worse, that I somehow filter out their excellence once they hit album number three or thereabouts, and henceforth hear only the sound of boredom.

I do wonder, sometimes, what my younger self would have made of disappointing recent albums by the likes of Grinderman, Iron & Wine, Bright Eyes and now, it would seem, REM.  I remember reviewing an album by the Rolling Stones many years ago – one heralded as the tedious “blistering return to form” by the proper music press -  and I think I described it as sounding ‘a bit like The Stones covering The Stones’ or something roughly along those lines.  Well the new REM is a bit like that.

I just can’t help but wonder if the me from six or seven years ago who got most of his music from Uncut or Word might have been more impressed with these albums – maybe I’ve just been pulled away by getting my nose too close to the grindstone, but I have genuinely lost almost all interest in bands of this size.

I just read Sean from Drowned in Sound say this on Twitter: “the Ladytron interview is getting serious traffic on DiS at the moment! And people wonder why we don’t DO little bands”.  I have the same issue here, but Sean is trying to run a business, and I am… well I am kind of, but not really.  Big bands mean more traffic, and the fact that I have stopped caring about reviewing albums by the likes of the above, or the new Mountain Goats album (avvvvverage) means that I am doing without the spikes in traffic these high-interest releases bring with them.

I take the opposite approach to DiS though, which is something you can do if you’re a bit smaller: I am absolutely not prepared to second-guess the content on Song, by Toad by the amount of readership it will attract.  Ruth, who does the Fresh Air show with me, pointed out how blogs haven’t called such and such a band (I forget who) out on being shite, and I said that many probably had, just by omission.

I used to write negative reviews on this site, but in all honesty, at the moment I really just can’t be arsed.  I sat down with that Bright Eyes album, and just couldn’t force myself to listen to it all the way through, never mind actually bother thinking of anything meaningful to say about it.  But I’ll take the hit in traffic just to keep the site focussed on things I genuinely give a shit about.

And this year, that means I have reviewed almost no major bands.   REM, Mountain Goats, Bright Eyes, Iron and Wine… just one really booooring record after another after another.  And I wonder if I have just been drawn so far away from mainstream music that I just don’t have the attention left over to properly absorb this stuff anymore.  But deep down I can’t help but suspect that it’s just down to the fact that some very famous bands have released some very, very average music so far this year.

I am Ruthless for this week’s show on Fresh Air Radio, so it will just be me prattling on by myself instead.  I have a John Darnielle tribute to the assault on organised labour in Wisconsion, I have the original version of that song, and I have some Withered Hand, in honour of his SXSW visa troubles.

Other than that, I am pretty worn out from a night of epic drinking in Stockton (which is not even Middlesbrough) last night after the excellent seminar thingy hosted by The Generator at which I (inevitably) drank and talked far too much.  There is a certain inevitability to these things, isn’t there.

Live from 8pm UK time – click here to listen.

As per usual the playlist will appear below as I play things, and feel free to swing by the comments and have your say.

1. Lil Daggers – Give Me the Pill
2. King Post Kitsch – Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone
3. Meursault – And Butter Would Not Melt (from Jonnie Common’s Deskjob)
4. Withered Hand – No Cigarettes
5. Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head
6. John Darnielle – There is Power in a Union
7. The Louche FC – Only in a Dream
8. Irk the River – Mind That Child
9. The Son(s) – Radar
10. REM – It Happened Today
11. Billy Bragg – There is Power in a Union
12. Elbow – Jesus is a Rochdale Girl
13. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got no Sole
14. Clem Snide – Pale Blue Eyes
15. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart
16. Dam Mantle – Grey
17. Dolfish – Your Love is Bummin’ Me Out
18. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog

The 100 Records project allegedly (and after past embarrassments I tend to be somewhat leery of taking stories about this entirely at face value) arose when Sonny Smith survived a near-drowning.

According to Endless Nest Records, who released this rather excellent 7″ EP, he began a novel, Adelard the Drowned, which somehow mutated into the 100 Records project: one hundred singles, complete with b-sides, by a hundred fictitious bands, complete with cover art and back-story.

This EP is four of those songs collected together, and is a lovely wee record.  Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die is probably my favourite, with its gorgeous guitar, but Cathedral in the Desert is pretty bloody excellent too.

Looking at this insanely ambitious project, and the fact that Smith’s other band, Sonny & the Sunsets, have signed to the awesome Fat Possum (Toadly tribute here), and you can’t help but get the impression of someone with pretty much boundless creative energy, bursting with ideas and projects and all sorts.

I love people like this, and I think the internet has done great things to encourage this kind of lateral thinking about music, recording and releases.  What a crazy, brilliant idea. You can download a compilation of a few of these songs on a compilation which is available on Amazon mp3 here, but in general I strongly urge you to explore further because we can’t have too much of this kind of thing as far as I am concerned.

Sonny Smith – Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

100 Records Website | More mp3s | Buy the 7″ from Endless Nest Records

I first wrote about these guys a while back, when I bought their Claws Overhead EP on rather lovely white vinyl.  Back then I described them thus:

“It feels like it’s grumbling away at me, almost as if Josef Fritzl’s daughter turned out to be an amazing synth pop band and you can just hear her cries for freedom through the floorboards as the medication slowly kicks in and she drifts off into a narcotic stupour.”

This new EP strikes me as a bit of an odd one, I have to confess.  Partisan Records work with Mountain Man and have just signed the excellent Sallie Ford, and from my admittedly rather cursory background check they don’t seem to be a major-owned pretend indie label, they do seem to be the real thing.

So why they’d be releasing a new EP containing (admittedly remixed versions of) three songs from the four on the Claws Overhead EP, along with three new ones, I really don’t know.  It’s not a problem of course, this is still an excellent record, and I have just ordered my limited edition vinyl copy, but it seems like a slight overuse of existing material to me, and one which might make sense if the label were a faux-indie, grooming them for a move up the ladder with their debut full-length and wanting to make sure every last drop of goodness and market-testing had been squeezed from their early material first.

That is pure tangential rambling of course, and certainly doesn’t seem to have any basis in fact, so maybe the Claws Overhead mixes were just early and a bit incomplete, and the band simply wanted the chance to improve on them a bit.  In any case, if you didn’t buy Claws Overhead, I strongly recommend you buy this.

The music is glutinous and slurred, almost like it is waking from a deep sleep and struggling to orientate itself properly.  It breaks back and forth from sluggish (not in a bad way) and textured to surprisingly hummable pop music, and this equivocation is probably what I find so engaging.  It’s as if they could happily write a bouncy pop record if they chose to, but they prefer this kind of elusive middle ground.

My own relationship with pop music matches that quite nicely, as luck would have it.  I am rather stupidly suspicious of pure pop, but not all that interested in songs which are so obscure as to eschew the pop aesthetic altogether.  Uncut Diamond beautifully combines evocative, dreamy atmospheres with occasional splashes of surprisingly bright synth-pop.  If their debut album can tread this particular tightrope as effectively as these two excellent EPs then it could be very, very good indeed.

Warm Ghost – Claws Overhead

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Partisan Records

Jay St - Borough Hall by Joel Zimmer

I thought that today I might just step away from the music for a bit and digress a little, because I happened across a photographer the other day who impressed me as much and as instantly as any band I have heard in a long time: Joel Zimmer.

Just to be absolutely clear, however, I know nothing at all about photography – no technical expertise, no historical knowledge, no formal education – nothing.  So this is not supposed to be a reasoned critique.  Technically this guy may be clumsy, and creatively he may be a rip-off, I have absolutely no idea.  What I do know, however, is that I was pretty bloody stunned when I first happened across his pictures on Tumblr.

Bokeh Bunch by Joel Zimmer

I may not be able to critically evaluate these pictures in anything like an informative or meaningful way, but there are a few things about them which immediately grab me.

Depth of Field. His depth of field is incredibly narrow (if that’s the right term), and he uses it amazingly well. The picture above is so incredible, in my eyes anyway, because of the contrast between the sharp focus on one or two of the fairy lights and the blurry haze of the rest.

Sweat by Joel Zimmer

Use of Colour. Almost every picture uses really vivid colour in one way or another.  Generally speaking I am much more inclined towards black and white photography, which Zimmer does use from time to time, but in general I find myself absolutely captivated by the bright, strong colours in his pictures and how even in a mess, they seem to make an impact.

ATM by Joel Zimmer

Mundanity of Subject Matter. I used to take a lot of pictures as a kid, and whenever I did I found myself thinking ‘yeah, but of what?’  In this case the subject matter is often incredibly mundane, and even the composition of the pictures themselves can seem a little haphazard and random, but he still seems to have the ability to take pictures of the most ordinary things and make them striking. One of my favourite photographers, André Kertész, also had this ability in bucketloads, albeit a very different style

So there you go.  Me talking about something I don’t really have the expertise to discuss.  But hey, I was really struck by these pictures, I really think they are amazing, and if I am allowed to digress on the subject of politics then I should also be admitted the odd excursion into other things I’m not really qualified to talk about as well.  And please go to Joel Zimmer’s blog or his Flickr page and have a good look at his other stuff.

So, I spent the morning tidying up my desk and the office, and I now think I know why tidy people are tidy: it makes you feel enormously efficient, without ever actually having to accomplish anything!  Sly, skiving bastards!  It’s like people making a great outward show of their piety, whilst generally acting like judgmental, ungenerous bigots.  Never trust tidy people, they are just trying to mask their ineffectiveness – there’s a new axiom to live by!

Also, in today’s bone-headed news update of the week, apparently Edinburgh legend Withered Hand is being denied his visa to play SXSW due to US immigration deciding that he is not a musician of extraordinary ability.

I rather think people would be more inclined to take national border control more seriously if governments didn’t consistently assign their stupidest citizens to police them.  I will take this shit seriously when you demonstrate through your recruitment policies that you are also taking it seriously, you arse-clowns.  People are welcome to like and dislike whatever music they wish, but this seems to be seriously implying that those people who organise SXSW and those in Creative Scotland who sponsored Dan’s application are of lesser ability to judge the artistic merit of a band than some random, knuckle-dragging, frustrated karate kid yahoo in US immigration.  Are you fucking kidding me?

Come to think of it, maybe if we petition UK immigration we might be able to do something about that over-promoted pole-dancer Beyonce Knowles being invited to play Glastonbury.

Anyhow, for those who may need some good music to diffuse the simmering rage this nonsense has provoked, here is what is going on in Edinburgh this week:

Death Vessel & Rozi Plain tomorrow (Tuesday 8th) at the Electric Circus has been cancelled, sadly.

Wednesday 9th March 2011: Meursault, Washington Irving & Graeme Clark at The Caves.

Would it be fair to suggest that most of the people reading this have probably heard of Meursault?  I suppose it would, but with a new drummer, (kinda) new bass player, new violist and a departed electronics/guitars/pretty much anything else player then I reckon no-one (not even me) has actually seen all that much which might resemble the current band.  And yon Graeme Clark – surely not the former bass player from Wet Wet Wet? Surely!

Meursault – Sleet

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Wednesday 9th March 2011: Napoleon III at the Electric Circus.

Signed to Brainlove, one of the UK’s best small independent labels, Napoleon III got all sorts of giddy reviews for their debut album Christiana at the tail end of last year, and I think this will be your first chance to see them up here.

Napoleon IIIrd – The Unknown Unknown

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Friday 11th March 2011: Y’All is Fantasy Island‘s last ever show, with Loch Awe & Two Wings at Sneaky Pete’s.

No more YIFI.  These lads were one of the most prominent bands on the Edinburgh DIY scene when I first came here, so give them a last hurrah at Sneaky’s and then go out and get horrible pished afterwards.  And I know nothing at all about Two Wings, but there’s a track of theirs embedded below: really fucking weird, eh, but in a good way!

And for those who fancy a bit more of a racket, I don’t know enough about any of these bands to properly recommend the gigs in particular, but Plastic Animals are playing Cabaret Voltaire on Saturday 12th and Forkeye, Fatalists and Parallax Scrolls are at Henry’s the same night.  Both look worth investigating, but I have to admit general ignorance here, sorry.

I really am running out of stupid names for these fucking things.  I’m sure I’m going to end up just numbering them in future, but for now you’re going to have to put up with the bloody silly names I’m afraid.

In my effort to squeeze eleven songs into an hour I actually don’t ramble very much on this one, only to find out that the podcast ends up being much less than the usual hour and a bit, for a change.  Do I really talk so fucking much the rest of the time?

Anyhow, this is a fucking ace podcast of new music.  I don’t generally pay too much attention to how cool (or otherwise) these things might be, but I reckon any haircut merchants out there might rather enjoy this one.  For the rest of you, those without Haircuts with a capital haitch, well, just get on as best you can.  Let’s face it, if I love it all, it can’t really be all that cutting edge, can it.

Direct download: Toadcast #164 – The Roadcast

01. FOUND – Machine Age Dancing (00.25)
02. Girls Names – Seánce on a Wet Afternoon (07.00)
03. Sonny & the Sandwitches – A. Grassley – Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die (12.19)
04. The Honorable Worm – Wouldn’t Mind Dying (14.46)
05. Li’l Daggers – Ya Tu Sabe (22.54)
06. The Louche FC – Back Bedroom Casualty (29.27)
07. Milk Maid – Such Fun (33.24)
08. Brown Brogues – Treet U Beta (35.56)
09. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog (41.07)
10. Zed Penguin – This Town (46.49)
11. Manners – Knives (56.44)