The Party’s Over, the debut album by King Post Kitsch, was released this week and can now be bought from our website, Avalanche Records on the Grassmarket and (as of the weekend) LoveMusic and Mono in Glasgow.

As is our habit with this sort of thing we are giving away another free song to mark the occasion: in this case the splendid Fante’s Last Stand, which has been played on Gideon Coe’s show on 6Music a couple of times this week.  Marc Riley also seems to be a fan, and the blogosphere in general has been incredibly generous, with the latest splendid reviews coming from Incendiary Mag in Holland, as well as Tidal Wave of Indifference and Peenko somewhat closer to home.

I hope you enjoy.  I promise we’ll get him out and about playing live just as soon as we can.

Direct download: King Post Kitsch – Fante’s Last Stand

King Post Kitsch – Fante’s Last Stand by Song, by Toad

This is rather nice.  It’s really simple too, and looks (the rigours of stop-motion animation notwithstanding) like it wasn’t too tricky to make, either.

I have been wondering this about music videos recently: what exactly makes a proper ‘music video’ these days?  A while back that was easy: it was something awesome for MTV.  Since the rise of the internet, though, videos have started to serve a very different purpose.

Now, instead of being for television, 99% of the ones I watch are made for the internet.  They’re an awesome tool to have at your disposal – people email them to each other, embed them in Facebook, link to them on Twitter, and idly browse them on YouTube, making a music video a really good way to get your music out to people.  These days they can get away with being so basic that in many cases YouTube users simply post the song with no more exciting visuals than a picture of the album artwork.

So if you can get away with that little, surely we can make our own videos  for Song, by Toad Records bands easily enough – I mean, we have the equipment, because we use it for the Toad Sessions already.  That makes it sound easy, but it really is harder than that.

As every lo-fi band out there at the moment demonstrates, the production values really aren’t all that important, as long as the tune is good and the melody is strong.  Somehow, however rough or polished, a song has to stick in your head.

For a music video it’s presumably much the same: if the concept is sound, people seem pretty easily able to see past any shortfall in production values, provided those shortcomings are honestly embraced rather than pretended away.

And I suppose, despite being the reason it’s easier than it seems, this is also the reason it’s harder than it seems: no amount of affordable technology is going to give me a good idea for a music video.  Sure, I could probably execute one well enough to just about get away with, but the more I think about it the more I am certain that I could no more conceive of a compelling music video than I could write a good pop song, no matter how much cheap technology I get my hands on.

Right, welcome to the revamped, retooled and rewritten version of yesterday’s very brief exercise in commercial opportunism:

Yesterday: Milk Maid, PAWS & Plastic Animals at Henry’s Cellar Bar – Fiver in, and it was fucking awesome!

I have to confess, I was mildly terrified about putting on a gig in Edinburgh on a Monday night, particularly at pretty short notice, but it was really busy and I had an absolute blast.

It turns out Mrs. Toad loves PAWS.  I told her she would!

Anyhow, we now have the whole rest of the week to deal with, and as you have possibly deduced from the graphic I will be engaging in a bare minimum of fun – until Friday, that is.

Wednesday 15th June 2011: Wu Lyf at Cabaret Voltaire.

This has got to be the trendiest gig in Edinburgh for fucking ages.  Wu Lyf are one of these bands who were snapped up by a posh label before they were out of their proverbial musical nappies, or at least that’s kind of the impression I get (with, admittedly, precisely zero basis in actual research). On that basis alone this could make for an interesting night.

Friday 17th June 2011: Meursault, Inspector Tapehead & Beerjacket at The Caves.

Meursault’s already bulging tour bus will swell to nine occupants for this gig, I believe, making them even more unwieldy than a stampede of startled cows. A venue as striking as The Caves, however, is probably the best possible place for that kind of grandiosity and I am really looking forward to seeing them at full tilt.  Due to a series of increasingly annoying coincidences I haven’t seen Inspector Tapehead for a good while now, so I am really looking forward to that, as well as my first chance to see Beerjacket.  Tickets can still be bought in advance, either from here or from Avalanche Records.

Meursault – Flittin’

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Friday 17th June 2011: Edinburgh School for the Deaf album launch at Sneaky Pete’s.

If only some arse hadn’t put Meursault, Tapeheads and Beerjacket on just round the corner I would most certainly be here on Friday.  As it is I will try and dodge along the street and catch as much of their set as I can while Inspector Tapehead and Meursault change over.  I don’t, admittedly, know ESftD’s music all that deeply but what I have seen, particularly live, has been intense, loud, epic, rough as tits and absolutely excellent.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – 11 Kinds of Loneliness

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Saturday 18th June 2011: ‘Armelloday’ – Armellodie Records all-dayer at Avalanche Records.

A series of in-stores arranged by Glasgow’s really rather brilliant Armellodie Records, with the running order as follows: Cuddly Shark, 2pm; Le Reno Amps, 2.30pm; Something Beginning With L, 3pm; The Scottish Enlightenment @ 3.30pm.

The Scottish Enlightenment – The Universe is Drifting Apart (Toad Session)

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Saturday 18th June 2011: The Douglas Firs, Something Beginning With L & Plastic Animals at Sneaky Pete’s.

Plastic Animals were excellent last night, and the new Douglas Firs album really is splendid, so this one is shaping up to be an excellent late-night bevvying follow-up to the Armelloday event at Avalanche during the afternoon.

The Douglas Firs – Grow Old and Go Home

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For anyone wishing to sneak back and forth between the Edinburgh School for the Deaf gig and the Toad one at the Caves, I am roughly expecting stage times to be along these lines: Beerjacket 8pm-8:30pm, Inspector Tapehead 8:45-9:15 and Meursault 9:30-10pm, and apparently Edinburgh School for the Deaf are onstage at about 9pm, although that is just something I heard down the pub so don’t hold me to it.

Also, bear in mind that Meursault and Inspector Tapehead don’t have the simplest of all setups, so fifteen minutes changeover time might be really quite optimistic.

This week’s podcast is named the Northcast because I was just up in Inverness at GoNorth, which is I suppose the biggest official Scottish music industry chatfest.

I am getting better at these, I have to be honest.  The music industry is heavily based around status and I do not do well when I suspect people might be looking down their nose at me, consequently my first few were quite a challenge to escape from before I picked a fight with someone I shouldn’t, but as my general stature within music, and Scottish music in particular, has slowly grown I am finding these events easier to handle.

It also helped that as well as helping Lloyd from Peenko and Jason from the Popcop curate one of the stages, I did some one-to-one mentoring sessions (yes, I know!) and was on two of the panels myself.  That in itself gives you a kind of status which means people seem less awkward if it comes time to approach them asking about something they can do for you – I suppose it just feels like you’re on a more equitable footing.  And in general this makes me less jumpy.

None of this stops you drinking far, far too much at these things though.

Direct download: Toadcast #178 – The Northcast

01. David Thomas Broughton – Nature (00.06)
02. Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Orpheus Descending (07.09)
03. John Knox Sex Club – Katie Cruel (14.57)
04. Post War Glamour Girls – Ode to Harry Dean (Concrete Hearts) (21.00)
05. Tim Minchin – Storm (24.46)
06. The Pineapple Chunks – Look Back in Horror (40.01)
07. Scott Hutchison & Rod Jones (Fruit Tree Foundation) – I Forgot the Fall (45.23)
08. PAWS – Jellyfish (52.40)
09. Kid Canaveral – And Another Thing!! (55.29)
10. Crystal Swells – Goethe Head Soup (63.15)

Really! I’m working from home (I wouldn’t take fresh strawberries into the office), but it’s actually been quite busy this morning so the fives are a bit late – I’m sorry.

Matthew’s up in Aberdeen for GoNorth, nursing a weapons-grade hangover probably, so he’s handed over the five to me this week, which was nice.

Oh, and – credit where credit’s due – that cartoon is pinched from The Oatmeal. Check out their website if you’re not familiar with it, very clever and ever so funny.

So here’s your five pertinent questions.

1. What’s the best work environment you’ve ever had?

2. What’s the biggest pitfall I should watch out for working from home?

3. What would be your ideal place to work, and what would the job be?

4. What did you want to be when you grew up?

5. How close to achieveing question 4 have you got?

*There were going to be five musical tracks for your listening pleasure too, but it turns out SoundCloud have installed new DMCA tripwires to prevent you sharing what it thinks might be copyrighted work unless you can confirm you’re the owner. It used to let you put up what you wanted, then it might catch up with you after a couple of weeks and send you a nasty email, now it stops you before you can publish the tracks online. I’ve just wasted an hour and a half on it and really should get back to proper job now.. So just questions this week unfortunately!

Is conventional the new experimental?  After FOUND confusing me by releasing an album of relatively straightforward indie rock, here comes David Thomas Broughton, a man so idiosyncratic he has made a few friends of mine storm out of gigs in a rage, with an album which can only be described as a tight pop record. I am, once again, shocked by something sensible.

Where previously the melodic treats in Broughton’s songs were dished out sparingly, swathed in digressions and layers, with Broughton seeming to actively try and find out how far he can push his audience at times, here they are upfront and unhidden.

For those of us that loved him that seemed to make it more special – I always enjoyed the experimental looping, the weird ways he found to integrate odd noises into his songs, and even the confusion he could cause at times.  And then when those moments of beautiful melody emerged it was just like a shaft of sunlight through dark clouds – that moment of clarity that proves you were right about something all along.

For those who hated him, those moments seemed to be proof that he was just dicking about; that he could easily write proper songs if he wanted to and was just being deliberately obtuse for no obviously good reason.

Where usually I think people who disagree with me are just plain wrong, in this case I could always understand it.  I tried to persuade them of course, but ultimately I could always understand someone not liking David Thomas Broughton’s stuff, even if I happened to disagree with them.

Here, on the other hand, for all that a lot of the composition of sounds is familiar, the structure and balance of the songs tips decisively in favour of structured pop tunes. There is bass, there are drums, and for the most part a strummed acoustic guitar, and these effectively define the framework for everything else.

The ‘everything else’ does tend to include an awful lot of the looped, experimental field recordings for which Broughton is known, so for those who worry about him becoming too glossy, there are more than enough familiar textures here – the lovely, protracted end to Potential of Our Progeny, for example.

For the most part, however, this album has a rare purpose about it – a focus which I found enormously surprising on first listen.  But it works.  Partly, this is because his vocal is a little more to the fore than usual, and some may not like it, but I think the man has a gorgeous singing voice. And actually, you know, he always could write pop songs – a good few of these have been around for a while after all – he just generally chose not to make it that obvious until now.

This is out on Monday on Brainlove Records, and I promise you it is absolutely great.

David Thomas Broughton – River Lay

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David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got No Sole

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the artist

On their recent tour with Sparrow and the Workshop Meursault made time to record a few sessions, one of which was for Jon from Songs From the Shed.

I’ve been aware of the Songs From the Shed project from the very start, primarily because Jon got in touch when he started up, to ask about advice on cameras and recording and stuff like that.  The results made me laugh actually, because it was absolutely classic music industry stuff: I patiently wrote down a big old list of all the equipment we used, and tried to point out some alternatives and stuff like that, and in the end he basically ignored the lot and went with a different setup entirely.

The reason I mention this is that this is probably something I will be saying a lot at GoNorth this week: listen to as much advice as you possibly can… and then ignore most of it.  I’ve absorbed all sorts of advice from people over the years, and put almost none of it into direct action.  That’s not to say it wasn’t extremely useful of course, more that you really have to find something which works for you, not necessarily just mimic what worked for someone else.

In doing just that, Jon has had amazing success with the Shed Sessions.  They’ve been featured on the BBC TV, he’s had the likes of Micah P. Hinson and Steve Harley round, and now has an archive of over a hundred sessions.

The video above is of Flittin’ from the Meursault session, the rest of which can be viewed here.  Congratulations to Jon on many years of hard work, and thanks for inviting the lads round.

It’s kind of funny that Song, by Toad Records is known, if it is know at all, by our strong association with Edinburgh and the Edinburgh music scene. And yet, when you think about it, almost none of the best Edinburgh bands release with us; from Broken Records on 4AD, FOUND on Chemikal, eagleowl on Kilter, Withered Hand on Absolutely Kosher (for the States anyway), The Leg on SL… and now The Douglas Firs on Armellodie.

As with FOUND and David Thomas Broughton already this year, Happy as a Windless Flag is a surprisingly conventional album.  For some (probably silly) reason I expected it to be much more confrontationally experimental, perhaps because of the battering main man Neil Insh used to give his drums when he played in Jesus H. Foxx.

In the end, for all the layering of sounds, the structure of the songs and the sounds themselves are quite abstract at times, there is such an overwhelming atmosphere of comfort about the album that it never feels at all harsh. In fact, there’s a lush, enveloping feel to this record which feels somewhat at odds with the contemplations of mortality and despair described on the band’s website. A Balance of Halves perhaps best embodies the creeping unease in a musical sense, with just a slight discord in the harmonies creating a feeling of foreboding more in keeping with the album’s central themes.

For the most part the rest of Happy as a Windless Flag, even at its most meanderingly abstract, still feels less like the contemplation of life’s darker side, and more like the hug your mum might give you to make such bleak thoughts go away.

In terms of arrangements, this is a record which sounds very much at home amongst Scottish contemporaries, at times sounding like a close relation of the Pictish Trail or King Creosote, and at others more like the precise collages of Conquering Animal Sound.  There is even a moment, in the chiming piano, brass and harmonies of Grow Old and Go Home where you can hear shades of Neil’s previous band, Jesus H. Foxx, although the moment is fleeting.

I’ve been wrong-footed quite consistently by The Douglas Firs actually, which is one of the reasons I like them.  Initially I heard a band who seemed to be most at home creating ambient, experimental soundscapes, punctured occasionally with floods of harmony.  Then the first time I saw them live I was surprised by how much of a conventional acoustic pop band they were – albeit this was either their first or second ever gig.

And now this album, again nothing like what I expected, but gorgeous.  Rich, comforting and lush.  It embraces abstraction and experimentalism enough to make it sonically fascinating, but the real core of this record for me is the shimmering warmth which washes over almost all of it, extinguishing all feelings of anxiety or unease.  It is, in short, really really good.

The Douglas Firs – A Military Farewell

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The Douglas Firs – Grow Old and Go Home

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from the band’s Bandcamp page

For those of you who missed it, here is a clip from Alex Cornish’s performance at our house gig this weekend just gone.  He’s on tour with his band very soon – details on his website here.

Also, Pete and Kate (who were in Alex’s string section) are plotting to bring the Rose Street Quartet to the house as well.  I think that might be a little sophisticated to call a ‘house gig’, but the general premise will be the same: come round our place, get pished, listen to tunes.  It’s just they’ll be grown-up tunes.  Possibly.

If you’re reading this for tips, I’m afraid you’ve already missed the best gig in Edinburgh this week: Yo La Tengo at the Queen’s Hall, tonight.  Sorry about that.

There’s not much else, unfortunately, although Sneaky’s have Talons, Lady North and Jackie Treehorn on Wednesday, followed by Thomas Tantrum, New Fiction and Acrylic iQon the following day. Both of those look pretty interesting, but I can’t honestly claim to know much about any of the bands.

We also have a couple of Ides of Toad gigs next week, starting with Fatcat’s new signings Milk Maid on Monday 13th June at Henry’s Cellar Bar, supported by the awesome PAWS and new Edinburgh band Plastic Animals.  Then on Friday 17th June we have Meursault and Inspector Tapehead at The Caves.  Tickets for both of these can be found here, or at Avalanche down on the Grassmarket.

As for myself, this week I will be heading to GoNorth in Inverness. I’ll be participating in a couple of seminars, in case the shit I talk on Song, by Toad isn’t enough for you, so it would be nice if you fancied swinging by to say hello.

On Wednesday we have the Fringe events, where I’ll be on a panel on starting your own record label, alongside Jen from Euphonios and Lloyd from Olive Grove Records.  So if you want the kind of runaway global success we’ve achieved then I can tell you how to get it.

On Wednesday I am also involved in some one-to-one mentoring sessions, so if you want to sit down and go through the stages of my Guide to Self-Releasing an Album, or indeed talk about anything else, then send an email to jennifer@hailmusic.com.

On Thursday 9th there is the Scottish Music Bloggers Showcase night at a place called Flames. Jason, Lloyd and I looked through the successful applicants (I wasn’t part of that process, just picking the showcase once the shortlist had been made, so if you aren’t on there and I like your music I am denying all responsibility) and chose Indian Red Lopez, LightGuides, PAWS and Kid Canaveral.

And finally I’m also on the Music Blog panel on Friday at 2pm, talking to Lloyd again, who’ll be wearing his Peenko hat this time, Jason from The Pop Cop and John Robb about the effect of music blogging on the industry, and how best to get through to them if you are trying to promote your music.

So there you go – a busy fucking week.  If the posting schedule gets a little erratic you’ll know why, but I’ll try and keep things ticking over properly while I’m up North.