This strikes me as something of a stop-gap release, and that’s normally not something I cover on Song, by Toad, but because Pillars and Tongues are fucking brilliant, I thought I might make an exception.

The video above is of a remix of a song which appears on their absolutely gorgeous album The Pass and Crossings (hint, buy it – not later, right now, I promise you’ll thank me).  There is a slight tish-tish of drums, and some subtle layers of dreamy sound in the background of this version, which makes it fit a little more with the other songs on this EP, which have a more otherworldly quality to them than the more guts and bones laments of the album.  Having said that, the remix of The Making Graceful, the third song here, is perhaps the biggest departure for the group, with full on beats and clacks and all that sort of stuff.

This perhaps takes it a little way away from the grippingly lovely emphasis on vocals and bowed strings of the album, but it’s still really interesting stuff.  And it gives me another opportunity to remind you about Thank You Oaky, below, one of my favourite songs of the year last year.

Some of it was new, like the new Lower Dens album, and some of it was old, such as Ivor Cutler.  One thing I picked up out of the blue in Resident, however, was this double vinyl release by Bruce Springsteen.  I didn’t even know it existed, or anything about it, but fuck me it’s brilliant.

Now, I am a big fan of really early Bruce Springsteen.  I know it’s an unbearably hipster thing to say, and I don’t at all intend to downplay the quality of his later stuff, but Greetings From Asbury Park, New Jersey and The Wild, the Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle are phenomenal records.

Maybe it’s because his influences are still so close to the surface, and there’s so much funk in there (not something you’ll hear me say every day), but there’s something about the exuberance of those albums which I have always loved, and these radio sessions sound a little like being there when they first started to take shape.

The music is tentative and a little ramshackle, and a lot less full and forceful than you’re used to hearing from the band.  For me, particularly with a band as polished and tight as the E-Street Band, there’s something a ‘glimpse behind the curtain’ about even hearing these songs in such a sketched-out manner.

Almost as captivating as the songs, however, is the chat.  I didn’t see Springsteen’s keynote address at SXSW this year, but I listened to it later, and it is a confident articulate speech.  The chat on these recordings is just that of a nervous kid though, with a really dorky laugh.  It’s incredible. For some reason it’s a bit of a shock to realise that even someone as accomplished and successful as Bruce Springsteen started out like one of us: always a little bit amazed when someone takes notice.

If you’re not a Springsteen fan then fair enough, but if you are, particularly of the early records, which are the songs mostly played here, then I would get this as soon as I could possibly get my hands on it if I were you.

The Radio Versions:

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Circus Song (Live On WBCN 9th Jan 1973).mp3

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street (Live On WBCN 9th Jan 1973)

The Album Versions:

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Wild Billy’s Circus Story

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?

Buy from Amazon

In this case I had a friend round for a gin and tonic, and I was actually cooking at the time, so I just thought I’d throw on pretty much any old thing from my inbox, asking my friend not to blame me if it was shit, because it was straight out of my inbox and I didn’t really have any idea if it was going to be any good or not.

Not the most auspicious of circumstances in which to take your first listen of an album, you might think.   But unlike those records which get cruelly underestimated because people weren’t listening properly, this did the reverse: it managed to stand out as being good, despite the fact that we very clearly weren’t listening properly and pretty much only put in on as background music.  Despite that, after a couple of songs, I found myself thinking ‘hang on, this is really good’, and turning it up.

It’s not the sort of music to stand out, either, in the sense that it’s kind of slowish, the arrangements are fairly modest, and it doesn’t really resort to clever tricks to grab your attention.  There are a couple of mental moments, where the music seems to have a brief meltdown, and songs like the excellent Shining are just a bit odd in general, but those are pretty few and far between; for the most part this is middle of the road, nice sensible music.  And it’s really, really good.

Generally the music is simply enough assembled, unhurried acoustic pop songs backed with a little drums, bass and the occasional, usually quite basic keyboard parts. This simplicity and the generally casual atmosphere does lull you into a slightly false sense of security, and it takes ‘hang on, wait a minute, what did he say?’ realisations, such as that song titles like D.S.O.T.B. actually stand for ‘dog shit on the breeze’, to prod you into listening a little more closely.

The songs are brief, too, and the album moves along at a fair lick.  It’s one of those that despite its undemanding attitude rewards closer listens, as there are some really nicely turned lyrics.  And for some reason, despite the setup being pretty standard and the music seemingly content to abstain from anything too contentious, this album has real character.  While it can deliver relatively smooth acoustic pop numbers, it can also slow into more idiosyncratic, stumbling stuff which reminds me of some of the better loved and more awkward acoustic weirdos around at the moment.

It’s disarming, and may not grab you immediately, but I think this is a really good album, and one which I fear will end up being criminally underrated by the world at large.  Listen.  Listen closely.  And enjoy.

Niilo Smeds – Animal

Niilo Smeds – I Don’t Need You

Buy direct from Bandcamp

In between the louche pop songs are snippets of faux-vintage radio transmissions and when you look at the front cover image of a beautiful young man applying lipstick whilst looking in the mirror, it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that this is stylised to the point of pretty considerable pretension.  But it’s still really good.

When something embraces artifice to this extent, then it can go one of two ways: it can seem awkward, contrived and a little bit pathetic (Lana Del Rey), or it can just seem right.  In this case it is the latter.  It just seems like the image being embraced comes quite naturally from within rather than as if something is being sought from without. Or, to put it another way, the image seems like a fundamental part of the picture being painted by the music, and the whole world has internal consistency, which makes it feel just plain right.

And for all there is gloss to the image, and an archness to the caricature of this record, the music itself has an odd idiosyncracy. I come back to that word louche again, but that applied mostly to the songwriting and the vocal delivery, whereas the instrumentation, for all it is basically laid-back guitar pop, has a sort of malfunctioning analogue warp to it.  It’s as if the style of the singing years for the dissolution of the jazz era, where the music is oddly trapped in the back rooms of old discotheques, listening to the thump of dance tunes vibrating trough the walls.

All this is assembled into ten consistently strong songs (plus a couple of odd little interludes) with the end result being an album which, for all the archness perhaps prevents it being entirely emotionally engaging all the time, is nevertheless a really enjoyable listen.

Mac DeMarco – Rock and Roll Night Club

Mac DeMarco – She’s Really All I Need

Bandcamp | More mp3s | Buy from Captured Tracks

So for some reason, for all I was aware of the band and liked them, they never seemed to make the transition to the point where I actively sought them out and eagerly anticipated their releases – hence, to a degree, the lateness of this review.

Illuminated People might just be the album to change that, with a bit of luck, because this is really, really good. The band have tempered their previously somewhat harsh sound, to end up with something that ends up being downright jaunty by the last couple of songs.

Those two are probably my least favourite on the album though, because in all honesty I rather like Islet when they’re being abrasive.  You can tell a band has decided to pay scant attention to commercial concerns when they open their album with nine-minutes of weirdness, like Islet do here with Libra Man. It’s a belter of a song though, so nine minutes or not, I think it was a splendid decision.  Balls to people who decide to judge something after thirty seconds, it’s about time people stopped pandering to them.

This song in particular, as well as a couple of the ones after it, remind somewhat of the early nineties, although I am finding it really difficult to pin down why.  Maybe the keyboards remind me a little of the post-Inspiral Carpets offshoots of indie music – routes people explored if they chose not to embrace the new direction of Britpop – merging slightly industrial sounds and elements of dance with what was still essentially music based on guitars, vocals and a drum kit.

In the time since, and far more recently, we have seen the emergence of math(s)rock, a genre Islet seemed to flirt with, and still do to an extent, but with which they only have limited overlap.  The elements they do take from this genre give their music a fantastic sense of purpose, but on this album they have added moments of gorgeously wistful vocals on songs like Entwined Pines.  There’s low-key rumble and lovely female vocals on A Warrior Who Longs to Grow Herbs, which evokes both the Cocteau Twins and Portishead before they slow to a lovely rolling guitar pluck on We Bow.

It’s an album of impressive variation and an impressive range of ideas, and it’s kind of a shame I’m not too keen on the last couple of tracks, because pretty much everything up until that point is absolutely bang on the money.

Islet – This Fortune

Islet – A Warrior Who Longs to Grow Herbs

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Bandcamp

This stuff’s easy enough to explain, I suppose – psychedelic rock with touches of prog and garage in places.  Nevertheless, unlike a lot of the determinedly lo-fi stuff knocking around these days which takes old fashioned music and regurgitates it in a determinedly arch way by running it through the lo-fi ringer, this feels a little different.

It’s more revivalist than stylishly retro, I suppose, and comes across more as being the work of a band who just happen to be in love with a particular era of music, rather than one particularly trying to be cool.  It seems odd to draw a distinction between a band who seem engrossed by something and one who are trying to imitate something, but that’s sort of how I feel listening to this, in comparison to a lot of the lo-fi retro-fetishists out there.

This is a strong album from start to finish actually.  For some reason it’s not one which I have become besotted with, but it is nevertheless a record I consistently really enjoy all the way through.  That lack of giddiness in my relationship with the music perhaps leads me to be surprised that, half an hour after putting it on, I am still really enjoying the album, despite never once feeling in danger of being blown away.  I’m not sure how that works, but it’s sort of how things have developed, listening to this.

The slightly slow pace to The Spyrals perhaps contributes to this.  Their guitars jangle beautifully, and never seem like they are bouncing around craving attention – Save Yourself is amongst the album’s most fierce, raucous songs, and it doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way through.  For the most part it’s a laid back, confident sound, although one which eschews the cocky swagger of the likes of our own Lil Daggers.

It’s a really solid, enjoyable debut, this one.  Not, perhaps a stunning one, but one which consistently delivers the goods and, despite sounding an awful lot like an awful lot of other things these days, still manages to maintain its own character.  Nice work.

The Spyrals – Disguise

The Spyrals – Long Road Out

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Bandcamp

Well this is their first formal release, a tape called Shreddin’ on Heaven’s Floor which you can buy here, and I reckon it’s really rather promising.

My frame of reference for this kind of music is really rather limited, I have to confess. The only bands I’ve really listened to much in this kind of territory would be the like of Dubstar (who are more poppy), Stereloab (more weird and guitary) and perhaps the likes of the Cocteau Twins and certain aspects of Saint Etienne.

I’m going to be quite harsh on this EP, I think, but rest assured this is only because I think Magic Eye are a really good band who already have some cracking stuff, and who I think have the potential to do even better in the future.  Put bluntly, though, I would chop this EP precisely in half.

When it’s good, this is really good – ethereal, dreamy pop songs with a beautifully jangly guitar shimmering alongside the gorgeous vocals.  If that description sounds a little clichéd, then I suppose that’s probably fair enough, as for all words like those are overused when describing certain types of music in particular, in this case they are entirely appropriate.

So for all these songs, like a lot of things I am enjoying at the moment, are cut from a pretty familiar cloth, strong pop songs are strong pop songs and the first half of this EP glistens with promise.  It is really quite slow, but that works well with this kind of minimal music, allowing every guitar chime and every elusive utterance to flutter to the ground, one at a time, like a scatter of descending feathers.

The side ends (unless I have my track listing wrong, which I may well because the mp3s weren’t very well tagged) with a cover of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game.  This is a risky strategy for a new band, as covering an established classic can easily overshadow your own songwriting, and make it pale somewhat by comparison, and whilst in this case it doesn’t really darken what went before, it does represent a height nothing subsequent manages to scale.

The second half contains a lot of the same aesthetic elements, but to my ears not quite the same quality of songwriting.  The songs sound nice, but they don’t really grab me all that much, and I find my attention drifting.  At eleven songs long, this could easily be an album though, and personally I think the band might have been better off editing it a little more brutally and just releasing four to six of their very strongest tunes, and leaving the rest for later.

Partly that would have made for a leaner, more concise release, partly they could have tested the waters with their audience without throwing absolutely everything out there, and partly there is never any harm in having extra songs up your sleeve.

Having said that, the first half of this (or the half a dozen or so tracks I might have randomly mistaken as the first half) is really good, and if they can build on that and progress then these guys have the potential to be very interesting indeed.

Magic Eye – Flamin’ Teenage

Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

Tye Die Tapes are a Sheffield-based tape label, and they’ve worked with a remarkable number of good bands for what I assume is a relatively new venture – Thee Ludds and Sealings, for example, never mind the ones I am about to mention here.

Their newest release is Rich American White Kidz by a band called Sun Sister, and is a fine piece of Summery guitar pop. I mention this because it’s their latest, but it’s not necessarily my favourite of theirs.  That (dubious) honour goes to the fantastic Slowcoaches, who played an Ides of Toad gig up here in Edinburgh a month or so ago.

 Their We’re So Heavy tape is already sold out, but Tye Die are making more soon, apparently, and I highly recommend it.  It’s boisterous, ballsy and lo-fi with more than a hint of old-school punk and really early indie about it, and the tunes are cracking.

The first two tracks in particular, We’re So Heavy and 54, are genius.  We had this tape on in the van for the drive up to St. Andrews for the Fence Collective’s Eye of the Dug festival last week, and I just let it go round and round and round.  I’m not sure Mrs. Toad was impressed, but um… well, sod it.

Side B, I’ll confess, doesn’t quite hit the heights of Side A, for my money, but this band have a terrific knack of, just as you think think a song might be starting to plod a little, pulling something out of the hat.  The last song Drag is a case in point: it starts out relatively formulaic, but ends with a cracking descending guitar riff and another splendid, Pixies-esque shout-along chorus.

  Gravelines, by York band Fawn Spots is another recent release, and another good ‘un. It’s perhaps a little less hook and melody-heavy than Slowcoaches, but still driving, persistent and forceful.

At times, particularly on highlight Broken, they can sound like a more frazzled garage Interpol, but it’s not a comparison which bears all that much scrutiny.  The band themselves mention No Age, Husker Du and Xiu Xiu, and apart from not hearing much Xiu Xiu in there, I don’t really know enough about the other two bands to really comment*.

As with a lot of these tapes, I think this is the band’s debut release, so much of Tye Die Tapes’ stuff is pretty unpolished, but I honestly don’t think that matters.  They have a remarkable collection of releases, and pretty much all of these bands sound really promising.

Monster Rally build songs out of sampled bits of old records, and they do it very, very well.  Pretty much the limit of my experience with this kind of music is the barmy and brilliant Frontier Psychiatrist by Avalanches from back in about 200o or something like that, so I am hardly an expert, but I think this is judged perfectly.

Their previous album Crystal Ball was fantastic, a beautiful object as well, which I would enjoy playing just for the cover artwork and the crystal clear vinyl, even if I didn’t like the music at all.

I do though.  Like the music, that is.  It’s a tricky field to work in though, because you have to tread a fine line between excessively arch pastiche and pleasant but lifeless chillout.  There are times when Monster Rally flirt with both, I suppose, but I think they manage to avoid both pitfalls quite easily.

The PR blurb described their new album Beyond the Sea as “a 42-minute song cycle”, and I think that’s instructive, because listening to the single they’ve released, or watching the video for it at the top of the page, doesn’t really give you much of an idea of how their albums feel to listen to.  I haven’t heard the new one yet, but I loved Crystal Ball and when I played some of their stuff on the podcast I ended up three songs in a row, in order to help put the music across a little better.

Listening to the albums, there is rarely a clear break between the songs, and within the songs themselves there are often sharper changes than between individual tracks, so the whole album kind of blends into one in that respect.  Not to imply that it’s a homogenous sludge of course, because that is a long way from being the case.

In fact, Monster Rally make music with all sorts of weird, impish changes in direction, creating an idiosyncratic sound which goes from lush nostalgia to darting, elusive cuts in and out of strange and wonderful musical worlds – manipulating their samples gently or mischievously to keep the listener engaged.

And engaged you do remain.  Rather than listening to the single, if you want to get a real feel for how this band sound, I suggest you pop over to their Bandcamp page and listen to Crystal Ball in its entirety.  You can buy the vinyl there as well.

Free single from Beyond the Sea:

From Crystal Ball:

Monster Rally – Creeping Ghost

Monster Rally – Sahara

Bandcamp | More mp3s | Buy from Gold Robot Records

Woodsman are apparently more of an improvisational band than the sort of deliberate, meticulous craftsmen you sometimes find in this field.  That’s not to imply that their work is in any way shoddy, more that by their own words (about the Indoor Days EP): “Those tunes just fell out of us, without any pre-concieved ideas the sound flowed from our instruments and what we needed to feel at that exact moment went to tape.”

What went to tape was a collection of sprawling instrumental epics, whose form comes more from a sort of modular, repetitive structure, around which the band appear to improvise as they go and, one idea at a time steadily move the song along.

Stuff like this is not my forte, I have to confess, and I am not really the best person to critically evaluating it, so I will simply tell you what I like and don’t like and you’ll have to make do with that.  Treading the line between hypnotic and engaging and just plain dull is a bit of a tricky one in this sort of musical area though, particularly when the listener in question is more used to a diet of pop songs, albeit somewhat rough and ready ones.

Assuming the EPs are in the same order on the tracklisting as they are in the title, then it is the first half of this, which I am guessing to be Humdrum, which caught and held my attention the most immediately, whereas Indoor Days (or the second half of the playlist) has taken me an inordinate amount of time to get into properly.

It would seem a little counter-intuitive that the part of the album containing one song over ten and another almost twenty minutes long would be the most immediate, but there’s something about the breezy strum of the guitar and the odd comfort of the soft, almost bird- or cricket-like clicking in the background which makes for a truly compelling listen, even if the track in question EMMFRE is almost nineteen minutes long.

They combine the organic – a sort of homely feel generated by guitars, vocals, percussion, stuff like that – with more hard-edged experimental techniques – what sounds like loops and a few samples here and there – and the interplay is handled really nicely.  After almost half an hour of music brings us a mere two tracks, the hypnotic EMMFRE and I Understand Philip K. Dick, both of which are quite approachable, warm songs, the band switch gears to the slightly more muddled, uncomfortable artificial noises of Wind Vein and Russia.

This highlights what keeps this music interesting for me, I think, although I will confess that I don’t think it is executed as well on the second half of this – the part I assume to be the Indoor Days EP. Nevertheless these are old recordings, and have only been released to a wider audience as the band are currently working on their next record, and felt the time was right to “let these songs go”. And for all I may have quibbles with some of this, there are certainly plenty of signs which suggest the next album really could be a good ‘un.

Woodsman – Supernal Radionics

Woodsman – Russia

Website | Listen on Soundcloud | Buy on iTunes