As a record label, your relationships with your bands are a near infinite source of puzzlement, frustration, affection, admiration, and exhaustion.

What amazes me as much as anything is that no matter how well you think you know someone, when you offer to release their records you realise very quickly that you really were only just scratching the surface.  Aspects to people’s characters come out so strongly when you effectively take their baby off them, and try your best to pimp it to the indifferent public and the scurrilous press.

Every band seems to secretly suspect that they might be shit at the same time they think they might have possibly made the best album ever.  This polarised we’re awful/we’re awesome self-image is pretty standard for most artists I think, but it can make people somewhat challenging to actually work with efficiently.

One of the first things I try and do as soon as the possibility of working with a new artist arises is go through absolutely everything we do, and show them the entire process for releasing records, so there is as little mystery in it as possible.  Then, to paraphrase Al from (the awesome) Armellodie Records, I tell them that all they can really expect from us in terms of PR results will be “quite a few blogs, probably The List and The Skinny, a few plays on 6Music and a review in Mojo if we’re lucky”.  In my previous life as a design engineer expectation management was absolutely crucial to the client/consultant relationship and it’s something I have tried my best to bring with me into the world of music.

Nevertheless, people continue to make me laugh and cry in equal measure.  Band A might want to approve every last aspect of every last item of their press pack, for example, but because Band B basically had no idea or interest in how that side of things worked I could easily have just gone ahead and done all sorts of things Band A might not want, just because I am used to being left to get on with it.

Band N might be so shy of talking about themselves that all I can get out of them for the press release is an awkward sentence or two about who in the band plays what instruments, whereas Band O might inundate me with reams of prose which I have to somehow hack down into a single page for easy journalistic consumption.

Because Band Y only signed with us in the first place because they liked the full roster of bands we worked with and were really pleased to be part of it, I might end up annoying Band X by talking about all our other projects all the time.

Because Band S didn’t really know anything about the process of releasing a record, I might slip into the habit of simply going away and doing everything by myself as soon as they hand over the finished album, but that might utterly infuriate Band R, who want to learn and make a contribution and feel like they are part of the whole process.

I might horrify Band A by taking liberties with their artwork, but often that’s because Bands B and C didn’t really care about the artwork as long as it looked nice – their job is simply the music, after all, isn’t it?

I have bands who have been quietly unimpressed with the results of their PR campaigns, and bands who have been thrilled with the same results.  Bands who are always looking to achieve more, and bands who are happy enough simply pottering along and making some music as and when they feel like it without me putting them under pressure to be commercially successful.

I have bands who want to make a career out of it, bands who want to just show up every once in a while with some recordings and let me get on with releasing them, bands who would like to make a career out of it but aren’t even slightly willing to make any of the compromises needed in order to do so, bands who want to see the whole project as a work of art in itself and yet still want to sell it for less than a tenner, bands who want to play every gig going, bands who will never play, bands who want to play every festival one year and then realise they hate it and wonder why they’re being asked to play all these festivals, bands who secretly want to make pop music, and bands who delight in absolutely confounding their listeners.

You name it, we have pretty much one of everything here at Song, by Toad Records.  It’s an often hilarious, and often utterly baffling game of cat-herding, and try as I might I can’t really find many unifying qualities between the bands or the people on our label.  I suppose they’re almost all stubborn fuckers who are absolutely determined that they want to quietly and awkwardly go about things in their own way, and fuck everything else, but that might be the only thing that this motley crew of weird characters has in common at all.

So yes, whilst the practical side of being a label is relatively straighforward, and can be done well by more or less anyone who is organised, hard-working and persistent, the human side of it is hilariously chaotic.  See that picture of Arnold in Kindergarten Cop up the top there?  Pretty much like that, except at least there’s some hope the kids in that picture will grow up some day.  As Mrs. Toad says whenever anyone asks us if, being in our mid-thirties and having been married for five years, we’re considering having children:

“Kids?  Why would we need kids; we’ve got bands!”

 I absolutely love demos.  You should know this by now of course, not least because I have spent the last year endlessly rattling on about music, even if it wasn’t a demo in the first place, has been brutally re-engineered to make damn sure it sounds like one.

These demos, on the other hand, are just fucking beautiful and need no polish to improve them. Tell My Sister is actually a three CD box set, containing two re-releases and a collection of demos.  The re-releases are the McGarrigle’s first two albums – lovely in themselves, but not really what I want to talk about here.  Go and find and listen to them for yourselves; they really are worth it.

Given I already own the first two records, albeit on secondhand vinyl which isn’t in particularly good condition, for me this release is all about the third disc: the collection of twenty-one demos, odds and ends.

My relationship with the McGarrigles is a slightly elusive one, actually.  Their music conjures all sorts of powerful nostalgia in me, probably because my parents had both their first albums when I was a kid.  That sounds sensible enough, but I don’t remember them actually playing them that much, despite the fact that they loved both records.

I think it might have something to do with my Dad being Canadian, although I’m not sure.  My Mum listened to a lot of chart pop – Kate Bush, David Bowie, ABC, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and The Pet Shop Boys.  The music my Dad brought into the house, however, was often North American: stuff like Bob Dylan, The Band, Neil Young and Tom Waits.  I say North American because, being raised in Austria and spending much more time with my English family than Canadian, I didn’t distinguish the fact that Neil Young was Canadian and Bob Dylan American, in particular, it was all just from ‘over there’.

For what I guess are probably similar reasons I also always found the fact that I am half-Canadian to be kind of mysterious.  I had a very vague relationship with the country and with my family over there, and even now it seems kind of odd that I carry a Canadian passport, given I’ve never really lived in the country.

I may not have associated Neil Young with Canada in particular, but that was definitely not the case with the McGarrigles.  There are several possible reasons for this.  Partly, my Dad knew them from when he studied at McGill, albeit it only kind of tangentially – I think they were sort of friends with his brother, but I’m not quite sure.  Partly, they sing in French a fair bit.  And partly there’s a lot of geography in their lyrics, even down to simple things like singing about “farmhouses buried under Canada snow” in the utterly beautiful Walking Song.

So maybe the false nostalgia of not hearing it as much as a kid as I find myself imagining I did is compounded by their music and their Canadian identity providing me with one of the only childhood links I have to a part of my history I still have barely any other means of forming a relationship with.

Lyrically this music is evocative for so many reasons.  Partly the simple storytelling, full of tiny details, and partly the emotional impact they seem to be able to conjure almost at will. They can be playful or heartbroken, and always somehow a little wistful, painting almost everything with the grey-blue wash of a rainy day.

There’s also the actual vocal delivery, and the sisters’ lovely voices which manage that juggling act of being at once utterly characteristic and really quite classic – the kind of blend which gives songs broad, casual appeal, and yet makes them utterly unforgettable at the same time.

Given how into rough and nasty music I am at the moment, I am slightly surprised by how much I loved these demos, from the very first moment I heard them. Shorn of the baubles and bunting of full arrangements, the songs themselves are just so simple and so direct I find it almost impossible not to listen intently to each and every one. Just with their voices, these two could make you feel a heart-rending nostalgia, even if you’d never heard their music before in your life.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Heart Like a Wheel

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.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Come a Long Way

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 direct from Nonesuch Records

[Warning: long rant which, if you are just here for the music, you may not want to bother reading.]

It seems an awful lot of music people are suddenly really quite horrified by the rioting in London now that the Sony warehouse has burned to the ground and suddenly most of the best indie labels in the country are facing a serious, and in some cases potentially fatal, financial injury.

Some of the people running the labels affected are my friends, I am really concerned for them, and you know (or you should) by now how highly I value independent music.  A lot of the larger indies will have the buffer, both financial and in terms of having access to spare stock in other places, that this will not be ruinous to them.  Smaller labels, on the other hand may well not be so lucky. Read the rest of this entry »

 So umm… much happening in Edinburgh at the moment?  There seem to be an awful lot of people about, so you’d have to assume something was going on.

It was actually the T on the Fringe (what the Edge Festival used to be called) lineup which gave me a significant nudge into the world of DIY music, when I first moved up here, just before the Festival in 2005.  I really wanted to go and see Yo La Tengo at the Liquid Room, Mrs. Toad wasn’t going to come with me, I didn’t know anyone else who might be interested.

I decided I most certainly wasn’t going to not go and see a band I really wanted to see, just because of not having anyone to go with, and thus was born my habit of solo gig-going.  And when you go to a lot of gigs by yourself, you start to recognise people, and so you slowly get drawn more and more into the ‘underground scene’ or whatever you want to call and Boom – six years later you’ve started a record label, quit your job and made an office in your spare room.

The Edge Festival is supposed to be the music side of the Edinburgh Festival and it’s generally pretty good, but this year is absolutely appalling – almost entirely devoid of interest and with a lineup comprising little more than one or two gigs I want to see over the course of the entire month.  I suppose sometimes things just don’t click for whatever reason, but this year’s Edge Festival has an absolutely awful lineup. Good thing we have Retreat! and my four gigs at the Electric Circus, or things really would be rotten.

Anyhow, if it’s music you want, rather than the Festival, there are two things this week which look interesting:

Friday 12th August 2011: The Occasional Flickers and The Japanese War Effort at the Forest Cafe.

The Occasional Flickers make swoonsome, gentle indie-pop.  The Japanese War Effort, whilst he too makes pop music, tends to bugger about with it a bit more, using loops, effects and electronics to bend his creations into shape.

The Japanese War Effort – Pool Attendant

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.

Sunday 14th August 2011: Admiral Fallow & Kid Canaveral at the Liquid Room.

Pop.  The first with added folk and the second with added indie.  Easy.

Kid Canveral – Smash Hits

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.

And that is about that, although I will remind you (*warning – spam approaching*) that Lach’s one-man show, The Waitress, the Walls and the Weirdos is on every night at 8:45 at Cabaret Voltaire as part of the Free Fringe, and the Antihoot is on every night apart from Tuesday at the Gilded Balloon (The Teviot Underground, for those of you who live here).  To play the Antihoot, and for the chance to be on the Best of the Antihoot album we’ll be releasing after the Festival just get in touch with Lach on info@antifolk.net

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr
Audio: zip dowload (right click, save as)

This session came together in an extremely short space of time, and as such I am extremely pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out – from an audio point of view in particular these are some of my favourite session recordings.

We invited Milk Maid to play an Ides of Toad gig in June, they arrived the night before the gig, and we happened to be having beers and listening to some records when I mentioned that we sometimes record in our living room.  I showed them the Scottish Enlightenment Toad Session, and they suggested recording a session too, the next day, before the gig.

Recording a band with a full drum kit, two guitarists and a bass in one room made me nervous enough, and actually getting anyone to help seemed improbable at such short notice, but thankfully Fee and Rory were able to make it down, so I owe them both a massive debt of gratitude for their help.

As per usual we have a full set of photos, freely downloadable session mp3s, a full interview podcast (immediately below, and with the tracklisting at the bottom of the page) and videos of both the whole day (above) and each individual song (below).  Enjoy!

Direct download: Toadcast #186 – Milk Maid Toad Session

Milk Maid – Can’t You See (Toad Session)

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.

Milk Maid – Girl (Toad Session)

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.

Milk Maid – Stir So Slow (Toad Session)

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.

Milk Maid – Not Me (Toad Session)

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.

01. Milk Maid – Can’t You See (Toad Session) (04.11)
02. Women – Black Rice (12.14)
03. Weird Era – Summer Heights (15:26)
04. Milk Maid – Girl (Toad Session) (20.19)
05. Irk the River – Mind That Child (26.22 )
06. Daily Life – No Eyes (28.43)
07. Milk Maid – Stir So Slow (Toad Session) (36.32)
08. Evan Dando – Hard Drive (45.12)
09. Easter – Holy Island (48.24)
10. Milk Maid – Not Me (Toad Session) (62.50)

Well the first night of the Antihoot was last night and (I apologise in advance for this) was indeed, as it says on the tin, a hoot (see).  I got to be for about 4am, and was fortunately entirely sober, otherwise I think most of today would have been a write-off.  Continuing to function during the day whilst frequently being out until the small hours of the morning is going to be what is technically known as ‘a fuck of a challenge’ over the next few weeks I think.  But looking around Edinburgh, I am clearly not alone.

Nevertheless, I am already looking forward to the Best of the Antihoot CD we’ll be releasing after the Festival.  There were a couple of artists there last night I’d happily have on the album, and this is of course only the beginning.

Also, we’re looking at trying to get some sort of frequent flyer scheme in place, so people who want to come a lot can do so without having to pay full price every time.  Things like the Antihoot thrive when people come back again and again, so whilst we haven’t got anything in place yet, I am hoping we can come up with something whereby people can turn up as often as they like without having to break the bank in order to do so.

So, minor technical navel-gazing aside, what the fuck else is going on with you people, eh?  The sun seems out – sort of – and the Milk Maid Session goes up tomorrow – sneak preview video below:

And finally, here are five dumb questions for you, so it’s time to delurk and say hello, and believe me the answers need be no more sensible or well thought out than the questions.

1. Last book you read.
2. Last film you saw.
3. Last album you bought.
4. Score each out of ten.
5. Next cultural puddle in which you will be dipping your toe.

The five songs are from a Summer Special mixtape put together by the excellent Dusty 7s blog, in something like 2008 I think.

The Shangri-La’s – The Train From Kansas City

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.

Johnny Osbourne & the Sensations – Come Back Darling

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 Seekers – Georgy Girl

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.

Judy Street – What

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.

Phyllis Dillon – Don’t Stay Away

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.

 More boisterous rock ‘n’ roll music on Song, by Toad.  This has slacker overtones, frantic crescendoes of frenzied guitar-playing and clattering drums, and is all available to download for the princely sum of sweet fuck all from Boring Girls’ Bandcamp page.

Now, I’ll be honest, this is quite patchy, and the band have split up since I first heard the album, but there’s nevertheless some cracking stuff on here.  Oh, and a couple of them have gone on to play in a band called Ill Murray, who have a couple of songs on their Bandcamp page to check out.

When it’s not really working for me, I tend to hear just a mess of guitars, standard effects applied to the vocals, and a relatively unvarying pace across large patches of music.  I might have been tempted, in other words, to cut a couple of songs.

Having said that, the cracking pace of the excellent opening track Tin Foliage is just fucking great, as is Bambinos, which follows it. The songs don’t exactly outstay their welcome, either – all twelve clock in at under half an hour in total, and only two creep the merest fraction over three minutes.

These guys are borrowing from thrash, from punk, from indie rock, from garage and lo-fi and almost every other kind of alternative guitar music which has been knocking around for the last twenty or thirty years, and it works really well.  It’s loose and unprecious and when they really cut loose and go for it, on songs like Stefan Wilberforce and Big Society, it’s like a kick in the balls.  In a good way.  Boring Girls may be an inconsistent album, but there’s shitloads of good stuff here, and it’s a real shame they packed it in.

Boring Girls – Tin Foliage

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.

Boring Girls – Bambinos

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.

Download for free from their Bandcamp page.

 I first heard about The Coathangers back when Rich from Cable and Tweed was writing about them, something like four years ago.  For a band who I was introduced to by hearing songs titled Nestle in My Boobies and Leave My Shit Alone, this is a pretty tight rock ‘n’ roll record.  And actually, it’s nothing like the novelty act you might imagine from those two song titles.

The way the vocal duties are passed around reminds me a little of The Sandwitches, with a similar tendency to shift from a coy yelp to a deranged wail at the drop of a hat.  In general the songs are more a mish-mash of garage rock, riot grrrl and the innocence personified of certain C86 female-led bands.

The Coathangers – Nestle in My Boobies

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.

It’s a broad record though, with songs like Go Away drifting close to twee pop, and then on personal highlight Jaybird the use of the organ reminds me more than a little of recent Song, by Toad Records signing Lil Daggers.

Perhaps the least interesting songs on this, from my perspective, are the ones like recent single Chicken: 30, where it simply sounds like they’ve jammed some old girl-group pop music through a garage punk grinder and seen what emerges.  It’s not that this approach is bad, exactly – indeed I like a lot of bands who are a lot more formulaic than that – it’s just that the songs themselves don’t always quite have the sharpness, and that lively mixture of brash confrontation and lively twinkle in the eye which I like so much about the Coathangers at their best.

So they’ve sensibled-up a little, and made a really good record in doing so.  I personally would be tempted to just loosen up a little the next time around though, and get that reckless, playful spirit back in charge.

The Coathangers – Jaybird

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 Coathangers – Well Alright

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 (somewhat out of date) | More mp3s | Buy from Insound

Whilst the rest of the world panics and hastily reshuffles their political alignments to adjust to the increasing dominance of China as an economic force, I’ve been fascinated for a long time by the cultural impact this shift will engender.

Culturally, the American Empire is pretty much just an extension of the British Empire, really.  Or at least, it is an evolution of it, but unless you are a Gawd Bless the Queen Brit then there is little or no real culture shock going from one to the other, and there was little or no culture shock as domination of world politics shifted from one to the other either*.

China, on the other hand, might be a little different.  One thing which stood out for Mrs. Toad and I when we were there last is that, as a developed nation which has never truly been colonised, and with a developed culture of their own, the Chinese exhibit absolutely none of the slightly nauseating deference to Westerners or their whims and foibles which makes visiting other countries in that part of the world slightly uncomfortable at times.

Or, to put it more simply, China just doesn’t give a fuck.

I assume that if Chinese economic dominance comes to pass in the way in which people seem to believe it will, then surely a significant degree of cultural dominance will inevitably follow.  Admittedly, the Chinese seem a little more inward-facing than other economic powers, and seem to have the attitude that as long as they can get on with their shit as conveniently as possible, everyone else is of little interest.

Anyhow, I have read that ‘alternative culture’ in China is apparently a little more backward in coming forward than it is in the West, allegedly due to the government’s traditonally more active role in defining cultural norms.  However, other articles I’ve found seem to suggest that a thriving underground arts scene is something which is encouraged – hell, in Beijing Mrs. Toad and I stayed in a hotel in a massive custom built arts district in Beijing, reclaimed from a huge area of previously derelict (and some active) factories and warehouses.

So if there is going to be a rise in Chinese indie (or DIY, or underground, or whatever, be it guitar-based, electronic or anything else – I am talking about ‘independent’ here, not mainstream guitar pop) music, then will it interact with what we in the West are doing at all?

Will there be collaboration between people doing essentially the same thing in a different country, or will they simply bypass us altogether, leaving British and American music to be of no more interest to Chinese musicians than German disco is to us.  I suppose they could ironically resurrect our folk styles in a few years, much like happened with Eastern European folk in the West a couple of years back.

Anyhow, I happened across this band recently called The Offset: Spectacles.  They have started a label recently, based in Beijing I believe, called Rose Mansion Analog, who release on tape and download (in case you didn’t think China had über-hipsters too). Now, the band are from Hong Kong originally, and I heard an interview with them recently, although I forget where, and they all sounded extremely American, so perhaps it’s less surprising that they might be mixing the two cultures in a more digestible way for myself than most, but whatever the reasons, this is the first music I’ve found from China I have really enjoyed.

It’s heavy, dark and droney, but there’s plenty of garage rock in there too, and a fair bit of prog too, give or take. I’ve just ordered their debut EP, so I’ll be able to tell you a little more when it arrives, but for now it all sounds very promising.

The Offset: Spectacles – Elements

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 Offset: Spectacles – Snags

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.

Poking around the rest of the label, I was rather surprised to see Dirty Beaches on there, but as Alex from Dirty Beaches is part of what I suppose you could call the Chinese diaspora, then maybe it should come as less of a surprise – he wrote about the label on Altered Zones recently too. Another band on the label, Hot & Cold, are actually Canadians I believe, so you could argue about in which direction the ideas are really flowing, but it’s that very ambiguity which I find compelling.

Hot & Cold – Uighur Pop

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.

To be sure, some of the music is a little too droney and abstract for me – I couldn’t really get into what I heard of Lu Xin Pei for example, but if you go an have a listen on the label’s Soundcloud page, I hope you’ll agree there’s a lot of really promising stuff there.

Soviet Pop – To Die in the Country

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.

*Alright, alright, that’s a gross oversimplification of things I know little about, so feel free to let me know if it’s bollocks (accepting the fact that it is supposed to be no more than a sweeping generalisation of course).

There are a couple of cracking singles being released soon on Brighton’s Faux Discx record label, and I reckon those of you who collect such things will be very much interested in snapping up a copy.

This is part of a series of split 7″ releases called the CMYK series (after the way colours are specified for print – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and K, which stands for black for some reason).  The previous one, Cyan, which included Cold Pumas and Male Bonding, has already sold out (the inconsiderate bastard) but the next two – namely Magenta and Yellow – are available to pre-order now.

The four bands on these singles are Friendo, Lab Coast (Y), and Ale Mania and Sauna Youth (M).

Yellow has actually ended up as a bit of a Canadian takeover, with both bands hailing, I believe, from Calgary.  They also both purvey a rather fuzzy, dreamy take on guitar pop, and of the two singles I suppose you’d say this one holds together with the most consistency, although that’s hardly the role of a split 7″ of course.

LAB COAST – Astronaut Like Me by Faux Discx

Magenta, on the other hand, is a little less consistent of character, with Ale Mania’s contribution sounding like an odd take on eighties synth-pop, mixed with a bit fey indie guitar stuff.

Sauna Youth just make fine, fuzzy, garagey guitar music, complete with a yobbish vocal inflection which seems to dip its toes equally in the waters of punk’s ‘yeah, fuck off’ attitude and indie’s ‘yeah, so what’ sulk.

Of the four songs I’ve downloaded so far (there are actually four songs per release, but you only get to download two when you pre-order the vinyl) I reckon Astronaut Like Me by Lab Coast might be my personal pick of the four, closely followed by the part raucous, part utterly indifferent Backgrounds by Sauna Youth.

SAUNA YOUTH – Backgrounds by Faux Discx

I am always impressed with these kinds of projects.  With a bit more confidence and a bit more money it’s something I’d love to do more of at Song, by Toad Records actually, but as a collector of vinyl, these little series and oddities really are like crack to me. It’s the kind of stuff which is pretty much guaranteed to hook a passionate fan (if they happen to have a turntable), and which frequently feels just a little bit wrong when the big labels try and do it – although that could just be my inverse-snobbery kicking in.