This, honestly, is a tricky review to write.  Mostly by coincidence, I’ve actually met Josh T. Pearson something like four times this year.  I wouldn’t for a second claim that means I know him all that well, as his demeanour is pretty impenetrable, but I do know that he wasn’t in the most amazing frame of mind before this performance.

It’s odd, but that knowledge makes it difficult to actually absorb a performance objectively. When we recorded our Toad Session with him earlier in the day he was as charming and accommodating as he has always been when I’ve dealt with him, but he was feeling ill, and after travelling up from Manchester had already recorded a BBC Radio Scotland session before our own, so he was pretty bloody tired as well.

Had I been entirely without this knowledge I would probably have just sat back and enjoyed the performance – a fantastic one, albeit perhaps a little less electrifying than his mesmerising turn at Homegame this year.

But with this knowledge it was strange to watch him play the intensely personal songs we all know from the awesome Last of the Country Gentlemen, all the while wondering if his mind was really on the material, or if he was just feeling absolutely fucked after a punishing year of touring, in which he has played hundreds of gigs, dozens of festivals and any number of internet sessions for even the most no-mark of bloggers (such as, for example, myself). His between-song chat, despite being as entertaining as ever, only reinforced this because he was clearly not all that happy with his own performance because of his illness.

I did ask him this at the Toad Session itself, and he did suggest that he feels it is time to move on and perhaps leave this material alone for a little.  Because it is beautiful, but it is dark and intense as well, and as such I suppose it must have a natural shelf life, if just for the performer himself, and his ability to engage with the songs in a spirit which will allow him to sing them with the depth, meaning and commitment they require.

Mind you, the other impression gleaned from one successful and one aborted attempt to interview the man is that the emotions confessed in these songs are never really that far from the surface, so no matter how shite he feels, it doesn’t seem that hard for him to drag it all back to the foreground and then out to the audience.

Certainly despite his protestations, this was another great show.  His command of silence exceeds almost anyone else I have ever seen, and the barest brush of the guitar strings is allowed to dissipate out into the air, making it almost impossible to not pay full attention.

Consequently as Woman When I’ve Raised Hell and Sweetheart, I Ain’t Your Christ fill the venue it is a rapt and silent Oran Mor which stares back up at him in silent awe.  Even with the flu his sheer personality fills the place, along with the silences he plays so well, and I suppose that’s how he can switch so swiftly from laughing and joking between songs, to suddenly dipping once more into the heartbreakingly serious music he makes, with the audience and the man himself seemingly oblivious of the tremendous emotional gear-change we’ve all just made.

He’s a curious fellow, that’s for sure.  And possibly Man of the Year for 2o11, in a musical sense.

Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb

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.

 First things first, I must inevitably apologise for the horrendous lateness of this podcast.  Between my mum visiting, the gig on Sunday and the Samantha Crain Toad Session we recorded on Monday there just hasn’t been enough time to catch up.

It’s that end of year time, too, when lists are being made, accounts submitted, the last releases of the year tended to and plans for next year being finalised, so just when I thought that I could coast into Christmas, it turns out I actually have just as much work now as at any other time of the year.  Ah well, whinge whinge, etc.

This podcast is called the Saxcast because I happened to be listening to Timber Timbre the other night, and one of their songs features the saxophone quite heavily.  It occurred to me at the time that not only does almost no-one use that instrument at the moment, but despite the eighties ending over twenty years ago, it still seems almost completely taboo, within the kind of musical circles I move in anyway.  Needless to say, this was all it took for me to devote an entire podcast to the instrument.

Direct download: Toadcast #202 – The Saxcast

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on Mixcloud

01. Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band – It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City (Live) (00.27)
02. Timber Timbre – Do I Have Power (09.02)
03. Quiet Americans – Summer House (16.54)
04. Samantha Crain – Two Sidedness (20.02)
05. Hazel O’Connor – Will You (25.09)
06. Woodenbox – Twisted Mile (33.42)
07. Monster Rally & RumTum – Raindrops (39.53)
08. My Tiny Robots – Guild of Defiants (42.37)
09. David Tattersall – The Typewriter Ribbon (47.51)
10. Mark Knopfler – Going Home (Theme From Local Hero) (58.30)

 Firstly, a big, big thank you to everyone who came out to see Withered Hand, Samantha Crain and Mike MacFarlane (who now goes by the name of Flash Jr.) last night.  It was bloody amazing.  I want to start a campaign to get more big bands to Henry’s to play a wee sweatbox gig with the crowd standing mere inches away from them.

Anyway, due to Thanksgiving dinner and parental visitation reasons, I didn’t get the chance to record the podcast this weekend, so I shall do it this afternoon, once I have posted this.

And God help our livers, there is a fuck of a lot going on this week in Edinburgh.  Mind you, it’s the same next week too, so I guess we’re going to have to just batten down the hatches and wait for January!  And I haven’t even done my end of year lists yet either.

Monday 28th November: Dems & Luxury Car at Sneaky Pete’s.

A Fresh Air-hosted return to Edinburgh for a Fresh Air alumnus, in the form of Dems’ Dan Moss.

Tuesday 29th November: Blank Canvas, the Dill Dolls, Kith & Kin and Anthony Stickings at Sneaky Pete’s.

I have to confess to knowing nothing about any of the bands on this bill bar Blank Canvas, who finished on the shortlist for this year’s Radar Prize. They play a very promising interpretation of the eighties indie sound, more as channeled via Bloc Party, and are well worth checking out.
By the Fire by Blank Canvas

Thursday 1st December: Loch Awe, Adam Stafford & Reverieme at Sneaky Pete’s.

You should all know how impressed I am with Adam Stafford’s solo stuff by now, but Loch Awe are sounding very promising at the moment too.  A new song of theirs sort of mooched its way onto the internet recently, and it’s absolutely fucking lovely.  And done with the kind of restraint and subtlety I tend (perhaps a little unfairly) not to associate with relatively young bands.

Loch Awe – I Will Drift into 10,000 Streams

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.

Thursday 1st December: Born to Be Wide Recording Studio Seminar at the Electric Circus.

After another excellent series of seminars, this is I believe the last one of the year for the Born to Be Wide team.  This time around they’ll be concentrating on making the best use of studio time, from preparation before you go in there, to how to best make use of your time once you’re up and running.

Friday 2nd December: Gerry Loves Records Christmas Party at the Banshee Labyrinth.

As far as I am aware, tickets for this are verrrrry nearly sold out, so go here now if you still haven’t got one.  The lineup is a great big multi-headed fun beast, with Lady North, Paws, Trapped in Kansas, Field Mouse, The Japanese War Effort & that old stand-by ‘special guests’ on the bill.  The gig also serves as a launch night for a Japanese War Effort/Field Mouse split tape, which I can tell you has me all sorts of excited.  The Japanese War Effort actually forced me to buy my first tape player in years by putting Snowbird on cassette.  I had a whole stereo system, and then this one big shiny silver machine just to play that one album.  And it was worth it!

The Japanese War Effort – Sophie Says

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 2nd December: Meursault, Sparrow & the Workshop & Collar Up at Cabaret Voltaire.

This will be a fine, loud end of year blowout, as well as the chance to see new band Collar Up play, which will be rather intriguing.  Meursault are, I believe, going into hibernation in the new year, as we get ready for the release of their third album which will be out in (roughly) May 2012.

Sparrow & the Workshop – Snakes in the Grass

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.

Saturday 3rd December: Beard of Truth Christmas Party with The Spook School & Calypso Brown at the Wee Red Bar.

Pop fun to end the week, with excellent Edinburgh newcomers The Spook School joined on the bill by Calypso Brown, who is another artist I saw for the first time at this year’s Antihoot.  Pet have had to pull out, so the Beardmeister will be working frantically this week to find someone to step in and fill their shoes.

The Spook School – Hallam

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.

 Yep, it’s time to lie back on the shrink’s couch and ‘tell me about your childhood’.  Well.  Sort of.  Actually, my mum just happens to be in town, so I reckon that on Fresh Air Radio this week I might just play all sorts of mum songs, just for shits and giggles.

This came about because of the following comment by my brother on the thread about music formats this week:

“I need to at some point clarify Mum’s music taste for your readers because the poor woman just constantly gets dismissed as a ‘pop fan’.  

The poor woman has a massive collection of jazz, blues; a truly encyclopaedic Opera and symphonic collection and yet, one Lighthouse Family album and the poor woman’s whole musical taste just goes whooosh out the window while Dad is sanctified while you merrily ignore his David Grey albums.  Albums with an emphasis on the plural!”

Now, as you might well know by now, I am a philistine, so mum’s classical music and whatnot means absolutely bollocks-all to me.  However, I think it needs to be pointed out that I most certainly do not ‘dismiss’ my mum as a pop fan.  I fucking love the pop stuff she used to play around the house when we were growing up, and if anything it was my mum’s stuff which first properly got me into music in the first place.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here.

So for all I do indeed call her a pop fan, which she most certainly is, I do not at all mean that to be a dismissal.  As you will find out on Fresh Air today, when I will be playing all sorts of shite from my mum’s record collection.  And of course, seeing as I left home in 1993, it will be enormously 80s-tastic!

And now, while we’re at it, for the Friday Fives. Honestly, I doubt I can do much better with these questions than I’ll do with the music I’m going to play this afternoon, but Mrs. Toad and I were talking about doing a Saxcast this weekend, so I thought I might ask for some help.

1. Which instrument would you like to see get the saxophone Total Taboo treatment?
2. Best super cheesy 80s sax tune.
3. Acceptable use of sax.
4. Awesome Great Big Eighties Pop Song!
5. Most eighties of all eighties movies.

Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives radio tracklisting for today:
1. David Bowie – China Girl
2. Meat Loaf – Dead Ringer for Love
3. Bow Wow Wow – Aphrodisiac
4. Sparrow & the Workshop – Devil Song (Live)
5. Erasure – Sometimes
6. Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark
7. Withered Hand – Cornflake (Fresh Air Session)
8. Mike MacFarlane – Waltz (Fresh Air Session)
9. Simple Minds – Don’t You Forget About Me
10. Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
11. The Magnets – Ever Fallen in Love (Buzzcocks cover)
12. ABC – Poison Arrow
13. Meursault – Lament for a Teenage Millionaire (Fresh Air Session)

 Man, last night was nice. Really, really nice.  Even though we had to do a big shop at the supermarket so we can feed my bloody mother when she visits this weekend, and even though we spent ages emptying our overflowing recycling bins.  Even though Mrs. Toad spent a long time on the phone counselling one of her best friends.

It was nice, because after all this, we opened a bottle of wine and sat in the living room, played records and just chattered about fuck all for about three hours.

Mrs. Toad is away a lot with work, and I am out a lot of evenings, either at gigs, meeting people about music stuff, or sometimes just on the lash so we actually don’t get as much time together as we should, especially considering we have no kids.  We don’t really watch the telly but we do have a bad habit of lying in bed, both wasting time on our respective laptops, which is a bit stupid really, but so easy to lapse into.

As a consequence, it is such a treat to just put a record on and sit on the couch together and talk.  Even if it’s basically about fuck all, which in all honesty it generally is.  We actually became friends by doing stuff like this, you know.  Back when we were fifteen years old and she was way too wild for me and I too square for her, we still managed to become good friends, and whenever one of us was having a personal drama we’d lie on the couch and listen to Bob Dylan records and talk shite for hours.

Even when we first got together as a couple we’d do the same.  I’d take the train up from London to come and visit her here in Edinburgh, I’d bring a couple of new mix CDs because her previous fella kept all the music in the breakup, and we’d get slowly pickled, sitting on the couch and listening to music.

And funnily enough, you know, the records we listened to last night sort of fit nicely into this ramble, because one of them happened to be Micah P. Hinson & the Gospel of Progress which I just so happened to play all the time when we first got together and Mrs. Toad would come down to London to visit me, when I was living on a boat down there – in fact, if I recall, at the time she said ‘Jesus, you don’t half listen to some depressing shite.’  I don’t know if she made the connection last night, but I did.

We also played some Kurt Vile: God Is Saying This to You, which I bought in End of an Ear Records in Austin, when we were at SXSW this year. That was the shopping trip where we both went wandering around the shop separately, and both came back to the counter with a Pavement record.

I don’t know if vinyl is better than CDs for this sort of thing, but it feels like it to me.  It certainly feels better than a playlist on iTunes.  There’s something about the ritual of vinyl, a bit like the ritual of a bottle of wine, which is much less of a guzzling drink than, say, beer.  It seems to fit with the deliberate, unhurried nature of spending an evening together doing nothing.  It’s sort of like the slow food movement I suppose, purposely slowing down and taking the time to enjoy something.  Playing records, drinking wine, talking pish.

I like Mrs. Toad, you know.  I really do.

Micah P. Hinson & the Gospel of Progress – Stand in My 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.

Kurt Vile – Red Apples

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.

 Awesome: fun, pacy, hummable and with a good fucking sense of crash and rattle to it. Yes, more lo-fi garage rock, but you know what, as much of a cliche as it has become on these pages I still fucking love this stuff.

The Quiet Americans are not overly rough or too distorted though and, despite the fuzz, there is a real lightness to this music which just made it instantly accessible for me.  I remember my last real fad, similar to my current one for lo-fi stuff, and it was probably that sort of mental gypsy/carnival folk that was quite big a few years ago.

I think what I liked about it was that there was just a sense of exuberance about the music – a real sense of fun. I listen to depressing music most of the time.  In fact, I love wallowing in rich, deep, sad stuff, playing the slow songs nice and loud and really letting it wash over me.  As such, I suppose I need a counterpoint, and for me at the moment, it is lo-fi garage rock.

The songs on this are pretty simple.  There is a riff, a couple of choruses, a really clear, simple, energetic rhythm and the whole lot is played with an infectiously joyful energy. That’s it.  The riffs and choruses are catchy as hell, the fuzzy guitar and tape wobble give it a really carefree, ramshackle feel, and the occasional use of wailing organ gives it a nice dreamy atmosphere here and there too.

Falling is the only song I thing doesn’t quite fit, with the chorus feeling just a little too close to cliche for me, and never quite igniting that singalong instinct, but the rest of this is just plain brilliant fun. You can buy it on tape or download here, and I strongly recommend it.

The Quiet Americans – Summer House

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.

 Morning. A couple of slightly self-aggrandising bits and pieces this morning, if you can bear it. Sorry.  I’ll be as brief as I can.

Firstly, The Recommender’s annual Bloggers’ Blog of the Year vote is going on, so if you write a music blog of any description you have until the end of the month to cast your vote.  Preferably for me of course, but I will probably be able to forgive you if you like other blogs better.  Maybe not though.

Secondly, there is an hour-and-a-half desert island discs interview with me on Blastocyst, here. I picked eight songs and discussed… well, pretty much all sorts with Jonny Brick, who I know from my early days at Fresh Air.  The rest of his podcasts can be found here.

Thirdly, Glasgow Podcart just published an interview with me which focusses mainly on the record label.  It was written by Steve McGillivray who has already written some great reviews of our releases and to whom I am suitably grateful.

And umm… fourthly?  I think that might be it actually.  I forgot to ask you to vote for me in the Record of the Day Awards where I was nominated for best blog, but I had absolutely hee-haw chance of winning that anyway, so fuck it, who cares.  You are all coming to see Withered Hand, Samantha Crain and Mike MacFarlane on Sunday aren’t you?

 I’ve been to some very, very good gigs recently, but this was fucking incredible. Drew (Wounded Knee) put together an evening of bands to celebrate the release, on Gerry Loves Records, of his album House Music.

He was preceded on stage by The Wee Rogue, whose hunched playing style and gentle vocals we rather lovely.  Kittens, I wasn’t so sure about, I must be honest.  They were nice to listen to, particularly in the intimate environment of this particular gig, but I am not all that sure I would feel compelled to explore further.

The intimate environment was no accident.  The Iso Lounge is a small place, upstairs from the Isobar in Leith, with plenty of sofas and a nice, relaxed feel to it.  It was formerly the home of the much missed Leith Tape Club, and on Friday it was absolutely packed, taking the term ‘intimate’ to a subtly different level to that which was perhaps intended.

To reinforce the atmosphere he wanted to create, Drew also decided to play the entire gig without any sort of electrical assistance.  No amps, no mics, no new fangled-instruments.  In fact his own set, bar a couple of songs where he used an Indian instrument called a Shruti Box (which seemed like a wee harmonium in a handbag, pretty much), was entirely unaccompanied.  There wasn’t even any sign of the signature loop pedal he generally uses to layer vocals and build what most would recognise as the Wounded Knee ‘sound’.

I know a lot of people might find that kind of thing a little over-bearing and intense – just a little too in your face for those who want to come to a gig to relax, have a pint and enjoy themselves.  In fact, even if you’d told me in advance what the gig was going to be like, I think I might have been a little sceptical too. Tell you what though, it was bloody amazing.

Picking songs at random by inviting guests to ‘have a rummage in his bawbag’ for a numbered ping-pong ball, Drew perhaps got a little lucky with the fates, because the set was the perfect combination of folky and contemporary, sentimental and amusing.  Some song were singalongs (an invitation I declined, for the sake of my own dignity and everyone’s enjoyment), some were mesmerising laments.  There was an REM cover in there, versions of The Old Main Drag and A Pair of Brown Eyes, and a good mix of traditional songs and original stuff. I don’t know if the flow of the evening was down to the luck of the balls, or just the nature of the mix of songs he made available, but whatever the reason, it worked fantastically.

It helps that the man himself is a natural compere as well, chatting naturally, amusingly and with a very Scottish sense of self-deprecation between songs.  It was a favourable crowd, of course, and the perfect place to try something like this, but I was enormously impressed at someone able to so brilliantly keep a crowd, including myself, in the palm of his hand for so long and to produce such an absolutely mesmerising performance with nothing more than his own voice with which to do it.

I have still to entirely find a way of enjoying Wounded Knee’s recorded material, I have to confess and, frustratingly, this does kind of include House Music.  Particularly after enjoying this show so much I find that fact to be both annoying and a little bit perplexing.  Nevertheless, you can make up your own minds on that one, because the Bandcamp embed will let you preview the album in its entirety.

In any case, this live show was bloody brilliant – one of the best things I’ve seen this year.

 An interesting topic has been bubbling away for the last couple of years, amongst the DIY music world, and that is one of physical format.

Fence Records talked about going vinyl only last year, and I got stuck into them for willfully alienating too much of their audience.  And then, just to prove that hypocrisy is alive and well in Toad Hall, it looks like we ourselves won’t be far off being a vinyl only label by the middle of next year – not by design either, it just worked out that way.

Then there’s tapes.  I wrote a post recently expressing my excitement about the relatively recent abundance of tape labels in the UK.  There was a little bit of a back and forth on Twitter about tapes recently, between Ian from Song, by Toad, Adam from Wiseblood Industries and Kevin from Avalanche, where the former were defending tapes and the latter was strongly advising bands not to release on them, resulting eventually in this blog post.

Tapes are certainly an obsolete technology, so resurrecting them is a strange thing for us to be doing.  But then again so are books, really, albeit more recently, and if you are talking about high fidelity sound reproduction, vinyl has been obsolete pretty much since the CD. Nevertheless, the vinyl revival has now become sufficiently mainstream that the Telegraph is writing articles about it, and BBC 6Music are (perhaps less surprisingly) dedicating shows to its waxy splendour.

People may disagree with Kevin’s advice to not release on tape, but pretty much everything he says in his blog post is right.  In the UK you should still, if your aim is to reach as wide an audience as possible, release your music on CD.  CD-R if you have to of course, but the CD is still the most broadly accessible format we have (apart from the mp3) of course. CDs are cheaper to make, they sell faster, more people have the means to play them, in almost every commercial sense they are the best way to get your music to your audience.

And yet, people seem to be moving away from them, and towards more willfully obscure formats which fewer people can play, and hence fewer people will buy.  On the face of it it makes no sense at all.  Nevertheless, of the entire previous paragraph, it’s the bit in brackets which might be the most significant part of the current conundrum: ‘apart from the mp3′.

The fact is that in terms of practicality, cost and efficiency digital music has rendered all physical formats obsolete. Disregarding aesthetic preferences and nostalgia and emotional attachments and all that, by far the best way to distribute music is digitally.  It’s cheaper, easier, gives the consumer more choice, permits greater audio fidelity (or at least it can, not that people ever choose that option), it can be played pretty much anywhere, shared, remixed… it is pretty much better at everything, if you’re looking at it in any kind of objective, rational way.

So of course total physical sales are dropping, the mp3 simply does it better for almost all purposes.  But as the vinyl revival, and the even more recent tape revival, show us, objectively better is not the same as subjectively better.  Just as readers still want to surround themselves with books no matter how much they read on their Kindle, just as wine bores prefer foil and corks despite the fact that apparently screw-tops are better for the wine, so music lovers adore surrounding themselves with objects and rituals which tell them and the rest of the world who they are.

So if physical formats are no longer necessary, which they aren’t, the question becomes different: we don’t need any of these things, so which ones do we want?

And the answer to that seems, at the moment to be music on vinyl and tape. For some reason, despite Kevin’s entirely reasonable assertion that you can make absolutely beautiful packages for CD-Rs if you want to, the CD has never really managed to stir the affections of the music-listening public.

So, to go back to Fence’s original plan to go vinyl only, and Kevin’s advice not to release on tape, labels and bands are left with a tricky decision to make.  Do they willfully turn away from large portions of their audience and press on with formats which have only really become fashionable again in the last couple of years? I know an awful lot of young folk who won’t buy CDs – not ‘tend not to’, actively ‘will not’ – and who actually have no way to play them even if they did, but this is still a relatively recent, young, and small portion of the market.

Cassettes are obscure, and vinyl is both costly and bulky to store.  And given how fast the industry seems to be changing at the moment it would be very brave to bank on either format still be the one to release on in five years time.  I don’t mean ‘bank on’ in terms of armchair commentary either, I mean ‘bet your label or your band’s financial future on’, by putting your money into releasing on the damn things.

The other way of looking at it is that quite simply people are not making much money from music retail at the moment.  Actually selling your album makes you pretty much bugger all, even if you sell a few thousand, so if the difference between vinyl or tape and CD is measured in a couple of hundred quid, then fuck it, that’s a couple of week’s wages at the day job you daren’t quit, so why not go for the format you prefer and hope you snag a publishing deal or high profile booker who might actually make you some proper money.

As a label I don’t want to be snobby or exclusive though, and for obvious reasons, the more people who have access to our music the better. [Edit: also, it is worth pointing out that refusing to offer music in the most accessible formats is probably making people far more likely to pirate them, which is something we should all be looking to avoid.]

As a fan and as someone involved in the process of actually making music, however, I will confess to not listening to CDs anymore either – it’s either digital, vinyl or tape. And yet these formats do, as Kevin says, sell slower, and vinyl costs more.  That means it ties up even more of our capital in stock, and fills our house up with records we will probably never sell.

And as for tapes well, I like them, but I would have no idea if they are just a fad based on the slightly misplaced nostalgia of people of a certain age. Would I personally choose to make an actual bet with my own business on their longevity?  No.  Mind you, given the fact that they are produced as a niche item for the most involved fans and that the digital files are there to act as the commodity anyway, does it matter if they stick around?  Perhaps not.

Either way, it’s not an easy decision.  In every practical sense I agree with Kevin on this one, but in every emotional one I am probably on the other side of the fence – vinyl and tapes are AWESOME! But if you’re in a band or you run a label, making these decisions on such a blatantly non-rational basis is probably not all that wise.

Well one thing’s for sure, live in Edinburgh this week will very much not be me.  I have a rather nasty flu/tonsillitis throat infection thingy (I’m not a doctor so I am not sure which, but you know the kind of thing I mean) and it means that swallowing is extraordinarily painful, even if it is gin.

I am not sure that soaking the paracetamol in alcohol particularly aids in its efficacy either, but as I said, I am not a doctor.

We, of course, have our next Ides of Toad gig on Sunday, when the awesome Withered Hand, Samantha Crain and Mike MacFarlane will be at Henry’s.  I should also point out that I am selling tickets to the Song, by Toad Christmas Party for a mere £8 at the moment, but that price will disappear sometime this afternoon, so if you want the cheap tickets better get ‘em now, otherwise it will cost you the (still extremely good value for money) sum of £10. Go here to get yourself sorted out for the finest carnival of Christmas piss-artistry to be had in Edinburgh.

However, until then, here is some stuff to keep you entertained in Edinburgh this week:

[Edit: fuck fuck fuck, I forgot that Alex Cornish has a full band plus strings show at Cabaret Voltaire on Thursday 24th.]

Monday 21st November 2011: Rozi Plain, Jamie Harrison & This is the Kit at the Electric Circus.

I am not sure if I am even going to end up getting this posted in time for you to scoot down to the Electric Circus and catch this, but if a Fence Records/Red Deer Club one-two isn’t enough enticement then umm… well, you deserve the X-Factor or whatever it is you end up doing instead.

Rozi Plain – The Lang Toun (James Yorkston Cover)

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.

Thursday 24th November 2011: Django Django, The Marvels & Snide Rhythms at Sneaky Pete’s.

Django Django were absolutely all over the radio about a year and a half ago, and they’ve been quietly recording their debut album ever since.  Judging from the songs we’ve heard so far, it should be very good indeed.  They are a little like Jonnie Common in the sense that the music they make may be rather experimental in terms of its constituent components, but the end result is pure pop (although I’d be tempted to say that the similarity ends there). This stuff even gets me wanting to dance.  Yes, you read that right, even me.

Django Django – Waveforms

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.

Saturday 26th November 2011: Lach’s Fort comes to Le Monde.

It’s a very, very odd place to do it, but when you’re looking to put on an event which is a little different to what a place is used to, then picking a surprising venue could just end up working in its favour.  Lach is bringing his New York night to Edinburgh, with film, esoteric DJing and live performances from Seafieldroad, Lee Patterson, Emily Scott, head BMX Bandit Duglas T. Stewart, comedian Chloe Phillip and more.

Sunday 27th November 2011: Withered Hand, Samantha Crain & Mike MacFarlane play the Ides of Toad at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I am really looking forward to this.  Apart from the excellence, the humour and the pathos of Withered Hand, I am really looking to Sam Crain’s first Edinburgh gig.  I first me her at Pickathon in Portland in something like 2008, and we’ve pretty much had this gig in mind ever since.  He voice is amazing, and her songs are absolutely gorgeous.  Mike MacFarlane is a relative newcomer, but having seen him for the first time at the Antihoot this Summer I am really interested to see more.

Withered Hand – Providence

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.

Samantha Crain – We Are the Same

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.

Mike MacFarlane – Waltz

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 27th November 2011: Loch Lomond, The Last of Barrett’s Privateers & Pronto Mama at Sneaky Pete’s.

Loch Lomond’s new album is out now on Chemikal Underground, and having played here a couple of times, they are back with something approaching a full band (although like many bands I know and love, establishing what, exactly, their standard, full lineup is isn’t entirely straightforward). They’ll be joined by impressive Edinburgh folkies The Last of Barrett’s Privateers and Pronto Mama, about whom I have to confess to knowing more or less nothing, sorry.

Loch Lomond – Elephants & Little Girls (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.