Well well, if I’ve heard a better carefree Summer single than this, I can’t think of it.  Benny & the Jetts is a breezy, swoonsome song, tinged with a little wistfulness, slow enough to be laid back but upbeat enough to be cheerful and fun.

It rolls with piano in the manner of the man whose song it namechecks, and tells a sad tale of an elusive, unavailable girl.  It’s far too jaunty a tune to be maudlin however, and the combination of the two contrasting emotions is absolutely classic Summer pop stuff.

Looking at TV Girl’s broader output, you can approach it from one side and this is fuzzy lo-fi pop, but approach from another and you get a sort of fuzzy amalgam of Avalanches and early Zero7 (this is not intended as a criticism either, before you say anything).

If you go to their Bandcamp page you’ll see they have a couple of EPs available for free download.  You’ll also see what looks like a transition from the lo-fi pop mentioned earlier to the more sample-based stuff on which makes up most of their more recent Benny & the Jetts EP.

Whatever way they do it, be it with production style or with electronics, these guys are taking sunny pop songs and fucking about with them, and doing a really nice job of it.  Referencing Simon and Garfunkel as well as Elton John gives you some idea of some of the touchstones for the more classic influences in this stuff, but as you can probably tell from my description thus far, a lot of the actual aesthetic is eminently zeitgeist-friendly.

TV Girl – Benny & the Jetts

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TV Girl – I Don’t Care

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 Sometimes the Edinburgh weather frustrates me, but sometimes it genuinely makes me laugh – like today.  It pissed down with rain all the way through the Festival and now, the minute the tourists leave town, blazing sunshine!  Excellent.

Sadly the joke is on me as much as any tourist, because all I’ve really been able to do with the sunshine is sit in my office and stare out the window at it, which is hardly very inspiring, but umm… well, there you go.

Anyhow, I am really not certain there’s all that much on in Edinburgh this week actually.  Which is probably a good thing, because a nice easy week would be very welcome as I have a lot to catch up on after the Festival.

Saturday 10th September 2011:  ‘Rebel Landscapes’ : An evening of film and folklore, Pilrig St Paul’s Church.

This one looks rather interesting.  Screen Banditas have selected some footage from the Scottish Screen Archive, and these films will be shown in the church hall and, to quote their blurb: “Projecting the films from archival 16mm prints, live accompaniment will be provided by Alasdair Roberts, Cath & Phil Tyler, Rob St John and Wounded Knee.”  Count me in.

Saturday 10th September 2011: Roy’s Iron DNA at the Electric Circus.

I know little about Roy’s Iron DNA, but from a quick listen to the Soundcloud samples on their website they sound pretty good to me.  It’s electronic pop music, at times synthy and at times more atmospheric, but in general they have good tunes and if Rebel Landscapes ain’t your thing I reckon this would be well worth a punt.

Roy’s Iron DNA – Silent Majority

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The second album by Trips and Falls has already been described by The Skinny thus: “superb debut He Was Such a Quiet Boy was woefully underappreciated, and People Have to Be Told manages to better it”.

Personally, due to the internal machinations of the record industry *cough cough*, I have been sitting on this album for over a year now, and I would agree with The Skinny; it’s fucking brilliant.  It may not be quite as strange as their debut, but there is something more grounded and complete about it if you ask me.

It’s a little like Jonnie Common in spirit, I think, although the sound is totally different: no matter how odd some of the individual components might be, the music still emerges as pure pop.  Slightly creepy, unsettling pop, in this case, but pop nevertheless.  And to kick off three weeks of fevered anticipation* until the album is actually released we are giving away a taster in the form of a free download of the awesome Marginally More Than Mildly Annoying.  Enjoy, share, pass it round your friends and all the other things the internet is supposed to do to actually help music in the age of social media!

Trips and Falls – Marginally More Than Mildly Annoying by Song, by Toad

Oh, and if you want a direct download link for whatever reason, here it is. As I said, please feel free to share this as far and wide as you want to.

*Yes, yes, I know, but piss off, I am trying to create a sense of occasion here!

 Meursault are heading off on another European Tour this week, and will be joined by Rob St. John from the 12th onwards.  Most of the tour takes place in Germany, but there are also dates in France, Belgium and Switzerland, as well as a stop off in London after the band return to the UK.

Rob has a show here in Edinburgh at Pilrig St. Paul’s in Leith on Saturday, described on his blog thus:

‘Rebel Landscapes’ : An evening of film and folklore.
10th Sept: Edinburgh, Scotland – Pilrig St Paul’s Church
An event weaving together archival film and live music in order to create a place where the boundaries between past, present and future might, for just a moment, evaporate.

I’ll mention this more on Song, by Toad on Monday when I do my weekly listings, so with a brief reminder that you can buy Rob and Ian Humberstone’s new split 7″ here, Meursault’s All Creatures Will Make Merry recent vinyl pressing here, and pre-order Rob’s debut album Weald here, here are the tour dates.  Rob won’t be playing at the dates marked with a star, but he’ll be there for all the others.

*Sept. 07 Oh Galerie, Caen – France.
*Sept. 08 L’International – Paris, France.
*Sept. 11 Cafe Video – Gent, Belgium.
Sept. 12 Theater ‘Die Wohngemeinschaft’ – Köln, Germany.
Sept. 13 Astra Stube – Hamburg, Germany.
*Sept. 14 supporting Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Hamburg, Germany.
Sept. 15 Haldern Pop Bar – Haldern, Germany.
Sept. 16 Kohl Kultur Raum Ev – Karlsruhe, Germany.
Sept. 17 Sparte4 – Saarbrücken, Germany.
Sept. 19 Boschbar (At Provitreff) – Zurich, Switzerland.
Sept. 20 Ponyhof – Frankfurt, Germany.
Sept. 21 Morph Club – Bamberg, Germany.
Sept. 22 Feinkost Lampe – Hannover, Germany.
Sept. 23 Electric Note РG̦ttingen, Germany.
Sept. 24 Live in the Living – Berlin, Germany.
*Oct. 05 Hoxton Bar & Kitchen – London, England.

Snooze!  Yes, a genuine, proper weekend snooze was had this morning and it was fucking amaaaaazing!  I haven’t actually had the chance to lazily sleep in for fucking months and it was an enormous pleasure.  And not even a guilty one, because I genuinely don’t have to rush about being efficient today.  Awesome!

This week’s podcast contains a fair bit of plugging, I have to confess.  Not all for myself though.  I plug the Kurt Vile tour, Jonnie Common’s Deskjob as well as his new album, the new Oates Field album and the new album by The Leg.

Then, just for good measure, I also plug the upcoming Ides of Toad gigs, and two new releases on Song, by Toad Records.  I hope it doesn’t get too much for you, but I don’t think so, because all the songs are very good and hopefully you know me well enough by now to know full well that I don’t plug anything I don’t genuinely like.  So there.  Enjoy.  That’s an order.

Direct download: Toadcast #190 – The Snoozecast

01. Jonnie Common – Infinitea (00.21)
02. The Oates Field – Nae Luck (09.50)
03. Adam Balbo – Just Singing a Song (15.37)
04. The Leg – Twitching Stick (17.22)
05. Kurt Vile – IN/OUT Blues (23.40)
06. Easter – Damp Patch (30.03)
07. Trips and Falls – I Learned Sunday Morning, on a Wednesday (38.41)
08. Rob St. John – Your Phantom Limb (41.39)
09. Sea Pinks – Fountain Tesserae (46.47)
10. Tuesday Glass – Franklin (50.16)
11. John Knox Sex Club – Above Us the Waves (59.23)

 I pulled a time-honoured, if slightly risky skill out of the bag last night in order to get my own way, and it came through in spades.  I was most pleased!  Jonny from the Edinburgh Man podcast happened to have a spare Arcade Fire ticket spare, so I met him in town for a quick pint and we went up to the castle to what was my first properly big gig for years.

Gig cuntery, however, made itself know in the most irritating manner as soon as the band started playing.  First off, a considerable stream of cunts started shoving their way towards the front immediately, and not with any delicacy either, literally shoving.  Cunts.  And second, a pair of prize cunts who, rather deceptively, had the good manners to ask if they could get past us, then proceeded to stand right in the space we had vacated in order to let them get past.  What utter cunts!  We said ‘get past’ you cunts, not ‘here, have our spots’.

Even more annoying than their shitty dancing was the fact that one of these was quite a tall cunt, and he happened to stand right in front of me, and next to another tall cunt.  Seeing around this pair of cunts was a bit of a fucking challenge, seeing as the back of his head was pretty much right in my face, and the stupid cunt wouldn’t stay still, so no matter where I tried to stand, he would find a way of being really fucking irritating within a minute or two.  Because he was a right fucking cunt, see?

Anyhow, after five or six songs of seething homicidal rage I decided it was time to deploy a tactic I haven’t used since I had to combat aggressive armrest territorialism on the London Underground: the cuddle-a-cunt tactic.  Yes, instead of getting shovey or passive-aggressive about it or losing my temper, at the first opportunity I just moved from right behind the cunt to a position which was a little more next to him.  In fact both next to him, and quite uncomfortably close.  Then I let our bare arms rub together every time he jumped up and down, until the silly cunt started to inch slightly to his left to get away from me.

This was exactly the plan of course, and at every opportunity I inched slightly further to my left, all the time grinning and nodding my head along to the music as if we were all just happy happy Arcade Fire fans in this together – except with an unusually high level of just slightly homoerotic skin contact.  Slowly but surely I managed to nudge the cunt far enough away from the other tall cunt that I had a wonderfully interrupted view of the band and, just as I was congratulating myself on a slow and persitent success, the poor silly cunt gave up altogether and fucked off a good two metres away from me.

Come back, you daft cunt, things were just getting fun!

Anyway, this is a slightly risky tactic of course, and I hate to imagine what would happen if I actually pulled – it would be a little awkward to let someone down after making the first move – but it worked a fucking treat last night, and I really enjoyed the gig.  The really thrilling songs, sadly, still seemed to be the ones from Funeral, but so fucking what, it was a great show.

Anyhow, umm… yes, frivolous timewasting on a Friday afternoon, let’s get the fuck on with it, eh?  De-lurking amnesty time everyone, this is the perfect time to come out of the woodwork and say hello, especially if you’ve never done so before.

1. Last really massive gig you went to.
2. Sweatiest you’ve ever been.
3. What percentage of your clothes do you actually wear regularly?
4. What did your parents insist upon, that you hated at the time, but are now kinda grateful for?
5. Does anyone ever actually bother with the songs I put on the Fives?

The Von Bondies – Shallow Grave

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The Detroit Cobras – He Did It

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Liars – We Live N.E. of Compton

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The Small Faces – All or Nothing

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The Fall – Two Librans

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The above video was made by the London Street Photography Festival 2011, about the general harrassment suffered by photographers trying to take pictures in the street.

Increasingly, private security firms are trying to shoo people away from taking pictures they are perfectly entitled to take.  I’ve experienced it myself and it is slightly intimidating and really rather creepy.  As you can see, just to ramp up the bullying, half of the security companies involved actually called the police when the photographers insisted they had every right to do what they were doing.

As you can see from the videos the private security guards are all very reasonable and nice about everything (although they were of course being filmed, which probably tempered their reactions just a little), but they have quite clearly been given obviously illegal instructions from head office, and have no choice but to act on them, assuming they want to keep their jobs.

Apart from the idea of devolving law enforcement to private firms and the implications of training a docile and obedient populace, both of which are hugely worrying in themselves, this is also a direct attack on citizen journalism. It’s also an utterly unjustified fucking nuisance to people simply going about their day and inconveniencing no-one by doing so.

Between the London riots, the police beating up the wheelchair bound lad with cerebral palsy and the killing of Ian Tomlinson at the student protests, we’ve seen recently just how crucial citizen journalism actually is at the moment, as the actual press fall over themselves to self-censor at every turn, so I urge you to support this if you can.

OBEY!

 Well fuck me this is brilliant.  Having been a fan of Down the Tiny Steps – Jonnie’s previous band – as well as Inspector Tapehead (of course!) I was both certain this would be good as well as entirely uncertain as to what it would actually sound like.

He’s a funny fucker, Jonnie Common, equally at home as a producer of glitchy electronica, whimsical pop or gently plucked acoustic music.  He slips so seamlessly between these incarnations that I found myself being confused by something which shouldn’t have been confusing, really.

The multi-faceted nature of his music made it hard to imagine what the record would sound like, but that was over-thinking things, because it sounds exactly like I just described it: a seamless blend of glitchy electronics, whimsical pop and gentle acoustica.

Master of None isn’t just a fucking brilliant album, it is also massively characteristic of the man himself.  Jonnie is a friend of mine* and it’s odd how much this music embodies his actual personality.  I may not be able to explain this to you in a way which will mean much to those who don’t know him, but the laid back charm, warmth, idiosyncrasy and sheer enjoyment of this record seem to spring straight from the heart of Jonnie’s odd wee soul.  He is the kind of guy it is pretty much impossible to dislike, and this album feels sort of like that too.

Even the white boy rapping moment of Bed Bugs, something which always makes me a little twitchy, seems to work well in the context of this album not because it’s a splendid example of rapping (I personally wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway, for reasons of ignorance) but because it is in no way contrived, and fits well within the overall atmosphere of a record which seems at all times entirely comfortable with itself.

The lyrics reinforce this effect, being a disarming combination of the candid and the surreal, including gems like: “I can’t skateboard to save my life, but I like to imagine what kind of bizarre scenario might involve me having to do so”. It seems less like Jonnie has written lyrics, and more like he has simply opened his brain and allowed every digression, distraction and musing to spill into the record. Some of it is touching and some downright peculiar but somehow, instead of seeming either banal or deliberately obscure, it simply reinforces the approachability and delight of the album.

It’s also a record which compels you to move – even me! I don’t mean get up and leap around like a loon, but there is – dare I use the expression – a genuinely infectious groove to the whole thing which just means I can’t sit still whilst listening to it. I may not dance, because I basically can’t, but I have to do something!

This unavoidable incitement to stop everything and respond to the music in whatever clumsily twitching way you have at your disposal is key to the main reason this is a great album.  Balls to the accessibility, the lovely contrast of sounds, the lush, warm production – these things are all true, but at heart this is a great album mostly because it is packed with absolutely immense tunes.  Quirky they may be, but many of these have the heart of massive pop hits.

Infinitea, Hand-Hand, Summer is For Going Places, Photosynth… these songs are absolute fucking gems which blow the tits off the cack which passes for popular music these days, and they should be massive.  Absolutely no disrespect to Red Deer Club, who are a great label and one I do my best to imitate with Song, by Toad Records, but when you release with smaller labels they of course don’t have the financial clout to force things into the public consciousness the way the big ‘uns do.  And with this album I can’t help but wistfully imagine a world where Jonnie Common is a massive, global pop star.  It would be a far better place than the one we currently inhabit.

Jonnie Common – Summer is for Going Places

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Jonnie Common – Photosynth

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Red Deer Club

*Yes, I know, massive subjectivity alert, but show me a music reviewer who thinks they are objective and I will show you a fucking deluded idiot. At least I try my best to flag up my subjectivity so you can take it into account when you’re reading.