Song, by Toad

Toadcast #76 – The Presscast

I recently did an interview with Billy from The Scotsman’s Under the Radar blog (amongst other venerable organs) which took the form of an interesting chat about the current tension between  bloggers and professional journalists.  He has played off my opinions against those of his friend Mike Diver, who is currently the online editor for (the excellent) Clash magazine.  The whole thing can be found here, along with plenty of comments from Ally and Milo, professional writers from around these parts, and myself and Tart, on the side of the bloggers.  The comments on that thread make for some rather interesting reading in themselves, I have to say.

It’s an interesting debate, frankly, and one which, as a blogger with aspirations, as opposed to someone who is happy to simply chat for the sake of it, I have applied a fair deal of thought to.  Ultimately, though, I think it is something of a false dichotomy: some of the best reporters keep blogs as ways of expressing themselves outwith the constraints of the editorial policy of whatever rag pays their wages and a lot of the best bloggers end up parlaying their writing skills into professional careers in journalism.  And of either side there is a vast amount of detritus, professional and amateur.

So, yes, the Toad once again holds forth passionately on subjects he knows far too little about and may in general be making a fool of himself once more.  The, erm, songs are good though.

Toadcast #76 – The Presscast

01. Billy Bragg – Which Side Are You On? (03.17)
02. The Decemberists – Cautionary Song (Live) (11.03)
03. Jens Lekman – No Time For Breaking Up (14.09)
04. The Meteors – Out of Time (22.21)
05. Franz Ferdinand – Darts of Pleasure (32.47)
06. The Dead 60s – Horizontal (35.17)
07. Sleepy Horses – Lubbock Love Song (42.27)
08. Eels – I Write the B-sides (52.05)
09. The Replacements – Unsatisfied (62.30)
10. David Cross – My Kids are Amish (68.09)

Five Fine Funks on Friday

Coming back from holidays is traditonally a bit more rough than I had realised.  Apparently post-holiday blues is a common phenomenon, but this is the first time I’ve really experienced it before.  I’ve been really fucking down this week for some reason – probably the hot weather outside and the realisation that I can only take another day and a half of holiday for the rest of the year.  That’s fucking annoying, that is.  I have no damn idea where it’s all gone, honestly.  I’ve taken stray days here and there to go to London to speak to Sony, to interview Jason Lytle and a week or so for Toad Session recording and Homegame. Add that to our two weeks in Italy and that’s pretty much my lot for the year.  That means the entire last half of the year without a single long weekend, a day off or anything at all.  How fucking depressing.  Jesus.

In, um, other news… er, I am preparing the release PR for another half dozen or so Toad Records releases at the moment, and then Mrs. Toad is away for two weeks, during which I intend to finish up and post the Found Toad Session.  So much to do, as usual, and I think two weeks is going to be the longest we’ve been apart since I moved up here four years ago.  I’m not sure I even remember how to properly indulge in coke and whores any more, and the idea of going out and picking up flaky young hussies while I have the chance… well, it doesn’t sound terribly appealing I have to confess.  So it’s gin and tonics with a jar of pickles and tin of anchovies whilst sitting at the computer in my underpants as usual, I suppose.  Maybe I’ll go wild this time, and indulge in some pickled onions.

So, in a dismal funk this Friday, please to stop in and try and cheer me up by saying something fun or entertaining or bizarre or something like that.  Don’t sit out there and lurk like the sulky bastard I have turned into this week, consider it your public service duty to come out of hiding and chip in this week.  You know you’ve got it in you.  You can start with Nigaz.

1. Where was your last holiday?
2. What is your next one?
3. Name something which really cheered you up recently.
4. Favourite accidentally naughty name.  You know, like therapistfinder.com
5. Your worst ever excuse for feeling a bit sulky.

Gummi Bako – I’m Depressed

Tom Waits – Town With No Cheer

Oh, alright, I’ll pack it in.
Eels – Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues

MJ Hibbett & the Validators – Being Happy Doesn’t Make You Stupid

The Divine Comedy – The Happy Goth

Meursault – Nothing Broke

It’s weird for me to be reviewing a record which is released on my own label, but inasmuch as it feels a little strange, it would in many ways be even stranger for me not to be reviewing Nothing Broke just because it’s on Song, by Toad Records.  So, erm, somewhat vested interests noted, let’s proceed.

For a lot of Meursault fans I think this EP will be most notable for the appearance of live favourite William Henry Miller Pt.1 – on an official release at long last.  For me, this is less the case for this song than it is for the title track itself.  The first four songs I ever heard by Meursault were demo versions of The Furnace, Lament for a Teenage Millionaire, Salt Pt.2 and Nothing Broke on their MySpace page just less than two years ago, roughly.  I specifically requested it when they performed their Toad Session almost a year ago – a sparse, lovely version itself – and I am thrilled to see it finally released into the wild, where it belongs.

Initially, this was supposed to be a mini-album including a lot of acoustic versions of songs from their album, but as it was recorded that concept receded somewhat.  According to the band it just seemed right to keep it all new material, although this does mean that there is a stunning version of Salt Pt.1 out there still waiting to be mixed.

Consequently, Nothing Broke ended up being far shorter than it was strictly intended to be, but this makes it lean as fuck: there is no flab on this whatsoever – not a whiff of filler anywhere.  In fact, although it might lack some of the thunderous noise which is apparently coming our way on the second album, it is an amazingly coherent, whole piece of work.  It works perfectly as a group of songs, some of which are the best I’ve heard in fucking years.

Red Candle Bulb is something of a Bear Scotland effort in that, for all it was largely written by Dan from Withered Hand, Neil from Meursault and Cammy from Enfant Bastard made their own contributions to the tune.  I’ve known of this recording of it – in my eyes the definitive one, although that opinion may be a little controversial – for some time and it’s another one I am glad to finally have see the light of day.  In fact, given how well-known W.H.M. Pt1 is as well, the only really new songs to me on hearing this were Love or Limb and the splendidly morose finale, William Henry Miller Pt.2.

How well these integrate into the better known stuff is impressive.  The emotional trajectory of the EP as a whole seems perfectly judged.  Love or Limb is the centre of the work, and the third in a surprisingly varied opening trio of rather dismal laments.  Nothing Broke, for all the band may insist it is a funny song, is nevertheless musically rather splendidly downbeat.  This mood shifts into the wryly humorous self-deprecation of Red Candle Bulb, and then the flirtation with country which flavours Love or Limb, before the dark cloud is brilliantly exploded by the jaunty clap-along of William Henry Miller Pt.1.  It’s perfectly judged – any more and it could all become a little depressing, but this song brings something of a release, allowing us to really wallow in the most miserable tune of the lot last of all.

Albums are by their nature often more sprawling, and now that there is expectation I would imagine the second record might be difficult to pull off with such ease, so to my mind I doubt there will be a more perfect, self-contained release for some time.  I really do think that this is an astoundingly good piece of work, dubious as that may sound coming from someone with a vested interest in its success.  That’s genuinely what I think, though.

Meursault – Nothing Broke

Meursault – Nothing Broke (Demo)

Meursault – Nothing Broke (Toad Session)

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Song, by Toad Records

Navigator – Bad Children

When I first started playing this album around the house Mrs. Toad’s series of reactions were instructive.  ‘What the fuck is this discordant shite?’ was the first.  By the third time around she was asking ‘Who are these guys?’  Then where they were from.  Then she was looking them up on the internet.  The Mrs. Toad Seal of Approval is a rare and elusive thing but Braden J. McKenna, from Bone Valley, Utah, has it.

To be fair to her initial, somewhat horrified reaction, the production values on this record are, deliberately or otherwise, as rough as a bear’s arse.  There are even times when all the crackling of amps and peaking of microphone channels threaten to overwhelm even my own somewhat obsessive taste for this kind of low-fi style.  It was, as a matter of fact, all recorded in bedrooms and living rooms, so the phrase ‘bedroom production’ is quite literal in this case.  Ten songs, half an hour, a simple but excellent album.  McKenna has recorded pretty much all of it himself, bar a very little cello and trumpet, occasional guitar help, and a couple of different drummers helping out.

Good tunes are good tunes, however, and as low-fi indie rock goes, this is really good.  What leads the album, for the most part, is the following: firstly, a fairly constant rhythm, which comes from the guitar playing as well as how the songs themselves are written, not just the drums; secondly, a wailed, emotive vocal rendered somewhat distant and smothered by the production values; and thirdly, a constantly growling electric guitar.

The guitar has just a little country in it at times, especially when picked, but that frequently gives way to impassioned, distorted solos in tandem with crashing drums and mewling keyboards.  The lyrics can be difficult to make out most of the time, but when those crescendos build there is a wounded anger to the noise, albeit muffled and disguised by the recording style.  It gives the strong feeling of an album recorded in the grip of confused, retaliatory hostility born of misunderstandings, miscommunications and relationships that threated click, but never quite did.  That may be nonsense, but that’s the impression I get from the music, and I honestly can’t understand enough of the lyrics to contradict it.

It doesn’t come across entirely as an album of alientation though, despite that impression being very strong in a couple of the tracks.  There are comfortable, happy places to be found, providing a reassuring balance to the less harmonious moments.  As its centrepiece, the truly gorgeous, acoustic Work is Done breaks the wall of fuzz at the perfect time, and with the final two tracks, Jesus Christ and Found a Fox, it winds down with a lovely sigh of acceptance.  A job well done indeed, and an album perfectly executed.

Navigator – Danger Dragon

Navigator – Work is Done

MySpace | More mp3s | Download for free from Magic Goats Music (Click the album cover for a rar file)

My Latest Novel – Deaths & Entrances

I’ve been wrong about My Latest Novel in the past, and consequently I am a little wary of pronouncing any sort of definitive judgment on this album, but there’s only so long you can dodge a review, so I might as well inscribe my line in the sand here as anywhere.  The way it worked for me with Wolves was that for all I found the overall record a little unremarkable at first, there were one or two tracks I fell for immediately.  It took months, but I came to genuinely love the whole album.

In the case of their new effort Deaths and Entrances I have certainly found a good fistful of truly excellent songs; the two I’ve linked to below, I Declare a Ceasefire and A Dear Green Place, are truly gorgeous, and the first half contains some stuff I really do think is fantastic.  I am still no more than half there with the rest of the album though, I must confess.

It sounds, in all honestly, an awful lot like the last one in many respects.  Given I love the last one this is no criticism per se, and there has been incremental evolution.  It is not, however, as musically adventurous from one song to the next as Wolves was, and this is not necessarily a good thing.  The Broken Records album has been crticised – and it’s a criticism I agree with to an extent – for bulding to a grand crescendo in every song on the record, and although this doesn’t quite do so in the same style, exactly, the trajectory of each song is nevertheless very similar.

What this does to an album is rob it slightly of an emotional path of its own.  It somehow seems to have the result, despite it all having a very consistent sound, of making this sound more like an accumulation of songs than a single, coherent album, which works well as a collection.  It’s like an anthill – there may be lots of different ants within, all amazing little creatures in their own right, but the anthill itself can be something orders of magnitude more impressive in its own way, which each doing its own job within.  Unfortunately, because these ants all have the same basic design, the album ends up coming across as simply a bunch of ants rather than as an interdependent, unified colony.

I’ll wait though, and give this a few more listens, because as I said right at the beginning, I’ve been wrong about these guys in the past.

My Latest Novel – I Declare a Ceasefire

My Latest Novel – A Dear Green Place

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Resonance Music

Lord Cut Glass – Lord Cut Glass

It’s funny, you really can hear so much of the Delgados in this.  Given that, after Emma Pollock’s solo album last year, this is the product of the other half of that split, that’s no surprise of course, but as a fan of the Delgados it is quite strange to hear so much of their sound in something that is in many ways rather different.

Looking at the respective solo work and then back at the Delgados themselves it seems mean to say, but the removal of Pollock’s earnest piano balladry has done this music no harm at all.  I quite like her solo stuff, but the playfulness spilling out of this record is an absolute fucking joy.  It’s pop, for sure, for those of you who consider that label a slight insult (I can be the same myself, not that I’m all that proud of it), it has some jaunty circus licks, a touch of broadway in a sense, it sprawls about all over the shop, and is generally really rather splendid.

Lyrically it actually reminds me somewhat of Aidan Moffat’s recent album How to Get to Heaven From Scotland.  It’s not quite so up front about its verbal virtuosity, but the combination of dish towel navel-gazing and sly humour is definitely quite similar.  I can’t imagine Moffatt referencing Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree though, although in all honesty it’s far from impossible.

The rhythm drifts from the borderline military thrum, as illustrated on the cover, to the more orchestral pace we know from the Delgados, in particular from their later material.  That’s a broad generalisation though, because in general the overall variety of this album is one of its great strengths.  Orchestral waves do wash across it from time to time, but it’s not unusual for the accordion to be left to get on with things alone.  I like albums which can do this, particularly, as this one does so well, when the lyrical material is able to confidently make you laugh without detracting from the sincerity of the next song.  Songs like Picasso, for example, are musically quite basic despite the swelling arrangements towards the end, whereas other songs have absolutely everything thrown at them, including the kitchen sink.

It doesn’t do me much credit to admit that I had no idea this was coming, honestly, despite its appearing on a label only based about an hour away.  I actually had to be introduced to an album made in Glasgow by a publicity company based in the States, of all things, in the form of Team Clermont.  Still, no matter how I finally got here I’m glad I did, because Lord Cut Glass is an inventive joy of an album.  One of the surprise hits of the year so far, as far as I’m concerned.

Lord Cut Glass – Look After Your Wife

Lord Cut Glass – You Know

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Chemikal Underground

Thanks Guys

As pretty much all of you know, Mrs. Toad and I have been away on holiday in Italy for the last couple of weeks.  In our absence Euan (from The Steinberg Principle, Trampoline and The Kays Lavelle) very kindly agreed to write Song, by Toad for me (and for you) to make sure things kept ticking over in our absence.  In this he was ably assisted by Bart (from, erm, eagleowl* and pretty much every other band in Scotland), assisted by Dylan (from Blueback Hotrod) and rescued by Tart (from Love Shack, Baby).

Apart from merely thanking them, which I genuinely do, I wanted to say what a fucking great job they did.  I knew Bart would do a fine job of the Monday listings because, before he packed it in, his Magic Marker listings page was always the first page I checked before writing my own.  Dylan’s general oversight was much appreciated as well, particularly as he wrote Toad himself for two weeks last year, so it was really nice of him to supervise generally, and provide training and the Friday Fives.  And Tart, thanks for stepping in and sorting out the filehosting issue, it really is much appreciated.

Most of all, though, it really has to be said and said again what a fantastic job I think Euan did with the site.  He and I agree on a lot of music, and disagree on a lot as well, and I think he was a little concerned that he might in some way alienate my readers by posting slightly off-message stuff.  Honestly, I think that was actually the strength of his choices.  From my perspective, and hopefully from yours, it felt a little like a fresh breeze in a dusty room – I actually thought it was brilliant that he posted slightly different stuff and gave everyone a change.

I also appreciate how much of a community we seem to have, that people are willing to donate their time for no real benefit to themselves and help out, and that really the whole site didn’t skip a beat in my absence.  I’ve been trying to think of ways to broaden the participation a little on this site, but have always been a little nervous of loosening the reins, and this was a really good sign that this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

So thanks so much guys, Euan in particular, it really was appreciated and I thought you did a superb job.  And for those of you who want to read a little more, please go and check out Euan’s blog, because it really is worth reading.

And while we’re at it, congratulations are in order to Dylan, who has parlayed what began as ‘helping out with some pictures for the Toad Sessions’ into a first paid photography gig.  Go here to have a look.  They aren’t all his, just “most of the good ones” to quote the man himself.

Maximilian Hecker – Sunburnt Days

And just to show you that things really are back to normal:

* Bart, you should know that it pains me every single time I have to respectfully decline to capitalise the name of your bloody band.  Every damn time.

Auld Lang Syne – Midnight Folly

I’ve been humming and hawing about actually penning this review for some time and the reason is basically this: I thought the single Where My Fortune Lies was a stunning piece of work – beautiful artwork and, most importantly of course, a truly great song.  Midnight Folly, on the other hand, I am finding a less than arresting album, and I thought it would be a bit mean to laud the band in one post, and then insult them in the next.  Still, that’s the nature of reviews I guess, and as a certain Mr. Brown has recently discovered, you can never entirely escape your honest personal opinions of a record, no matter how much you might have wanted to like it to begin with.

Actually, despite my whingeing, Midnight Folly starts very well, with the thumping Long Ago a stirring addition to the very noble tradition of Western-tinged murder ballad with its narrative roots in uncompromisingly merciless storylines of frontier legend, which are themselves coloured by murderous tales common in old folk music.  It’s the kind of song which would sit very well in the generally territory mapped out loosely by the likes of Smog, Calexico,  the Willard Grant Conspiracy and Richmond Fontaine.

This is also pretty much the territory inhabited by the rest of the album in terms of musical style.  Slide guitar, baritone delivery, harmonica, and a little bit of brass backing make this album pretty firmly ‘of a type’ with a great deal of other music released in the last five to ten years.  For the most part this is hardly a problem of course, because it’s a style I absolutely love, so provided the songwriting delivers it with some elan then this isn’t an issue.  What I struggle with, unfortunately, is that for the most part the melodies of the album don’t grab my attention, no matter how many dozens of times I have now listened to this record.

Bob Dylan often doesn’t really deal in ‘choruses’, so to speak, but he has a rolling musical signature in his delivery most of the time, even when singing long, verbose, narrative songs.  Long Ago barely has a chorus, but it too is punctuated by a repeated musical signature.  When Smog were at their most hushed and plain, say in the likes of A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, there may not have been much obvious structure to the songs but there was a always a rolling, repeated refrain, even when its cycle was unusually long for a pop song.

What there seems to be lacking in these songs, for all their excellent style and lyrical strength, is something as seemingly superficial as a hook.  So far, and this is of course an entirely subjective thing, I have failed to find anything in most of these tracks to stick in my head; the music often seems to lack a distinctively individual personality from one track to the next.  I often find myself wondering if I was listening to the crescendo of the previous song, or if this was a new one with a bit more guitar.  Consequently, even after dozens of listens, large parts of the middle of this album simply failed to separate themselves out to me, and I still couldn’t identify the specific song I was listening to a lot of the time.

The genius of things like Where My Fortune Lies is that as well as everything else, it works as a joyous pop song, pure and simple.  For me, a lot of this album does not actually achieve that, rendering all the other good things about it somewhat redundant.  I find myself loving songs like Long Ago, My First Soul, Where My Fortune… and to an extent Four Rivers and that is just about it, sadly, because I really wanted to love this album.

Auld Lang Syne – Where My Fortune Lies

Auld Lang Syne – My First Soul

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy the album from Viper Bite Records

Gobble Gobble – Neon Graveyard

Gobble Gobble come out of Edmonton in Canada, part of a small but apparently quite determined experimental music community down there under the Hydeaway umbrealla who seem to be doing some very good things.  I was sent a CD sampler by this group a while ago, and it was interesting – it certainly showed that there seems to be a good bit of collective energy forming in that part of the world.

Cecil Frena, who sent me this, has assembled an eclectic and fascinating album of scratchy electronica which casts its blanket of crackling subversion over a few different genres.  This makes Neon Graveyard, for me, rather more than just another collection of indie pop songs smothered in electronic clicks and whizzes and a constant hiss of artificially created background noise.  Yes, admittedly, there is a lot of that particular technique to be found on this album, but it is never treated as the raison d’etre of the whole piece, as can happen in this particular part of the musical landscape.

What defines Neon Graveyard in my eyes is actually more the undercurrents than the surface eddies.  Songs like O Sacred Dandruff and Piles of Salt seem to actually take a lot of cues from contemporary R’n'B, particularly in the style of the vocal delivery.  They sound almost like R’n'B songs which have been put through a rather severe cycle in your dishwasher and this, you will probably not be surprised to hear, I like.  At other times a form of Gameboy pop swirls into focus, then this same approach fixes itself to an interlude of piano (Ash Fountain, for example) which sounds superfically far more like classical than anything you’d happen across in an indie pop landscape.

This flitting from one underpinning genre to another, all held together by a more uniform style at the surface, gives the album both a really solid coherence and a happy variety. The style, in fact, fits the title very well indeed. I like.

Gobble Gobble – Meteor Eschat

Gobble Gobble – Eggs in Carrion

MySpace | More mp3s |I have no idea where you can buy this, incidentally, but try getting in touch via MySpace

Toadcast #75 – The Bone Idlecast

Well, we are nearing the end of our time in Puglia.  We’re spending a couple of days in or near Napoli before we fly back on Sunday, presumably troughing like total pigs, rather than paying all that much attention to culture and all that bobbins.

Mrs. Toad is doing Sudoku and complaining about the ‘wrong sort of paper’.  I kid you not, it’s just like British fucking Rail and their ‘wrong type of snow’, but she insists it’s just for that reason that she can’t solve them, not because they’re too hard.  Personally I find myself wondering if ‘evil’ is used to describe the comments one’s spouse will inevitably make when you fail to complete it, rather than the actual difficulty of the Sudoku puzzle itself.

So yes, we have done the lazing about and there are now a few days of actually doing shit in between us and a return to the damp splendour of the British Isles.  I suppose this is what you’re supposed to do on holiday – pay attention to the country you’re in and return, eventually – but honestly, another week of doing bollocks-all wouldn’t hurt anyone would it?

Toadcast #75 – The Bone Idlecast

01. Snow Patrol – An Olive Grove Facing the Sea (04.14)
02. Beck – The Golden Age (12.33)
03. Belle & Sebastian – Simple Things (19.32)
04. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Tom Justice, the Choirboy Robber (21.00)
05. Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues (29.10)
06. Navigator – Work is Done (NOT Change, as we announced, sorry!) (34.44)
07. Lord Cut Glass – Holy Fuck! (40.19)
08. Son Volt – Sultana (46.46)
09. Smog – Drinking at the Dam (56.30)
10. Alela Diane – Age Old Blue (60.17)