Hello there folks, and welcome back to the internet. I apologise for the lack of a Friday Fives post this week, but after the Sparrow and the Workshop album launch at the Caves on Thursday night I was pretty bloody hungover on Friday and never quite managed to look the internet in the eye all day. It was all shit TV and worse food before wandering into town to do it all again with eagleowl.

This week is relatively quiet on the gig front, but there are one or two interesting things happening of which you may wish to take notice.

Firstly, there is only your second ever chance to catch Numbers Are Futile. They only have a three-song EP up on their Bandcamp page, and that’s not much to go on, but they are three excellent songs and I will be very interested indeed to see what else these guys have in their locker – they’re at Henry’s on Thursday with Kicker in Tow, Opul and a secret other band about whom I can tell you precisely bollocks-all.

The Electric Circus have a couple of good gigs this week too, with eccentric guitar pop band The Birthday Suit on Friday and the stomping Americana of Woodenbox on Saturday.

Saturday is a busy one, actually, with mental beat-poet John Cooper Clarke at the Picturehouse and this one at the Wee Red Bar on Saturday with indiepoppers The Spook School, gentle guitar pop from the Occasional Flickers, and a new band I don’t know called Colin’s Godson.

Edit: and of course there is the Book Group EP launch at Pilrig St. Paul’s on Saturday as well. They make indie rock, I suppose you’d have to call it, and a couple of tunes are embedded below for your delectation.

Well the Sounds From the Other City headache has just about worn off, and I am back in my chair at Toad Hall staring at the internet and wondering what pearls of wisdom I can possibly add to its infinite pages of bounteous goodness this fine morning. Let’s face it, if the internet doesn’t already contain all the writing in the world, then it can’t be bloody far off, can it. But hooray, here’s more.

For obvious reasons my focus will be on the two Sparrow and the Workshop album launches this week – on Wednesday at Mono in Glasgow with Strike the Colours, and on Thursday at The Caves in Edinburgh with the brilliant Magic Arm. The tickets will be available for £6 from Brown Paper Tickets up until about twelve hours in advance of the event itself, and if you miss that then they’ll be £8 on the door. Not a massive difference, I grant you, but I thought we should at least try. Anyhow, Sparrow are pretty fearsome live these days, and if you doubt me this is what Clash Magazine had to say about their London show recently.

So, self-serving headline-hogging aside, what else is going on this week? Well it turns out there’s plenty, actually. The other Very Exciting One from my perspective is the eagleowl album launch on Friday, at the Pleasance Theatre. After two Sparrow and the Workshop gigs I think I will be entirely ready to kick back and relax and watch a show which it is entirely someone else’s job to be stressed about.  Eagleowl’s slowcore has developed a distinctly epic krautyness recently, and I would imagine there will be a bit of a whirlwind finale to this gig. Also, about fucking time too, guys, but congratulations. It’s a fine record.

The Electric Circus have a couple of good gigs this week as well, with Treetop Flyers‘ choral Americana on Wednesday, and Adrian Crowley’s hushed minimalism on Friday. Personally, for obvious reasons, I can attend neither of these gigs, but they both look good to me, and I would recommend them.

[Edit: I am a fucking idiot, I forgot that Hookers For Jesus and Edinburgh School For the Deaf are at Sneaky Pete's on Saturday as well!]

And that, my fine pixelly friends, would appear to be about it for this week.  Tune in next week when you’ll hear Nurse Piggy say…

 Well, I don’t know how many of you were there, but didn’t the Meursault Liquid Room show go well on Friday! The place was rammed, gin was consumed in some quantities and even the hangover the next day wasn’t all that bad. The sun was out, and it’s that glorious time in Edinburgh when the weather is starting to improve, the sun is out and the tourists haven’t really turned up yet in any great numbers.  Nothing against tourists, of course, just their absence does make the place rather pleasingly peaceful.

There are some interesting things happening in town this week, too, which is good. Nothing marquee, you understand, just a handful of nice wee gigs which hopefully will pique your interest and keep you away from The Great British Bake-off or whatever shite is wasting people’s time on telly at the moment.

First up, Malcolm Middleton will be at the Electric Circus tonight, alongside Seamus Fogarty. Malcolm was one of my highlights of the recent Gnomegame festival up in Anstruther, actually. I can’t think of many other people who could hold a packed, drunken hall to such rapt attention with little more than downbeat acoustic songs and a hang-dog sense of humour, but that’s exactly what he did.

The big one for me this week, however, has to be the Love Music Hate Racism show at the Voodoo Rooms on Thursday. The excellent Spook School will be playing, along with Young Fathers and a special baldy guest, but for me the big attraction will be the first chance to see Law Holt play live and see if she’s as good as her only publicly available song so far (embedded below) would imply. I hope so, because it’s pretty awesome finding new and excellent people to rave about!

There’s another biggie this week as well, in terms of sheer organisational scale, with the Electric Circus’ Big Day In on Sunday 5th May.  On the bill will be (I am not linking them all, sorry, far too fucking lazy): Dutch Uncles, Discopolis, The Machine Room, Jonnie Common, Dems, Made of Glass, Machines In Heaven, River of Slime & Lomond Campbell (FOUND), as well as This Is Music, Errors, Vic Galloway and Ally McCrae DJ sets.

And finally (and just a little elusively) if the Love Music Hate Racism gig on Thursday isn’t your cup of tea you might want to try this instead. I know nothing about the band really, apart from the fact that they are called Mayonnaise, and when I last put on a gig at Henry’s the sound engineer was playing stuff from their debut album (he is in the band) and it sounded really good – mostly krauty, epic instrumental post-rock. As I said, I don’t know much about it, but from what I did hear it sounded pretty promising.

 So, Record Store Day is over, the subsequent hangover dispatched, a tedious day of sitting around waiting to find out about jury service has been put to bed. I’ve been out to Bathgate in order to be fucking terrible at football, returned to Edinburgh to watch United claim their 20th title, and now here I sit at my computer wondering what the rest of the week holds for me. Boundless excitement, I am pretty sure.  Actually, after last week’s Beer vs. Records (bored of that yet?) and the forthcoming Sparrow and the Workshop album launch shows, there is still a very heavy Song, by Toad Records flavour to this week’s best gigs.

On Thursday Rob St. John and various collaborators will be at the Scottish Storytelling Center with his Folklore Tapes collaborators. As well as live performances by himself, Ian Humberstone and Malcolm Benzie and David Chatton Barker – the man behind Folklore Tapes, as I understand it – there will be visuals by Barker himself, and a talk on the traditions and practice of folk song by Tom Western, another member of Rob’s band.

The following night Meursault play a more straightforward bill at the Liquid Rooms on Victoria Street, alongside pals Withered Hand and the new look FOUND. As ever, Meursault are already evolving away from the sound of their last album, but that’s pretty much par for the course with these guys, which is a large part of what makes them such an interesting band to work with. FOUND too will be evolving since the departure of bass player Tommy Perman, but apparently their last few shows have been, and I use this word under advisement. ‘bangin’. Honestly, that’s what people said.

There are a also a couple of really interesting-looking gigs which might pass you by, but which I think are very much worth attending, should you be at a loose end. One might be a challenge, as King Charles at The Electric Circus, but hey, if you reckon you can swing a guestie you might as well give it a go. Other than that, however, we have the potentially awesome Temples at Sneaky Pete’s on Thursday, co-headlining with Drenge. Honestly, I can take or leave the latter, and the former have only one single song knocking around the internet at the moment, so it’s hard to say anything with any real confidence about them just yet. Apart from this: that one song is an absolute fucking belter. It is classic late 60s psychedelia, but when you can pen tunes this catchy it really doesn’t matter if you’re all that original in your sound or not. I really am curious to see what else these guys have in their locker however, and it’s nice to see Sneaky’s back on the live music calendar, after they’ve had to gamely battle through yet more sound-proofing hassle.

Et Tu Brute??? may be a little oddly named, but their pedigree is nevertheless just fine. The are Grant from Edinburgh School For the Deaf and Dan Mutch from The Leg, and their new stuff sound, umm, a tad challenging but nevertheless pretty bloody good. The band are playing at Henry’s Cellar Bar on Saturday, just before the welcome return of Papi Falso later that same night. And that’s after you’ve presumably come round to our house to help collect for the RNLI earlier in the day, which of course you’re all doing, aren’t you. Aren’t you?

And finally, also on Saturday 27th Pendulum Man Concerts present their last show in a while, with Fieldhead (Gizeh Records), A-Sun Amissa (Gizeh Records) and Now Wakes The Sea (Wiseblood Industries) at the Banshee Labyrinth at 8pm.  Advance tickets are a fiver with an exclusive 3-track download EP at http://www.pendulummanconcerts.com

Click to englarge

Ah, Record Store Day 2013, finally upon us.  Amongst the many things you could be doing, we here at Song, by Toad will be releasing Beer vs. Records in association with Barney’s Beer. For those of you who don’t know about it, the whole concept is explained in more depth here, or in the following sentence: people will happily spend twelve quid on a single round of beer, but it seems they’re reluctant to spend twelve pounds on a record – why?

Well the 4-packs of Barney’s with the download code and the new Song, by Toad Split 12″ will be available as of tomorrow, in the following places:
Edinburgh: The beers are in Vino in Stockbridge, Morningside, Broughton and that one just off the Meadows, and also The Last Word cocktail bar in Stockbridge. The records are in VoxBox in Stockbridge, Underground Solu’shn on Cockburn Street, Coda on The Mound and Unknown Pleasures on the Canongate.
Glasgow: The beers are available in The Good Spirit Co. on Bath St. just round the corner from LoveMusic who are stocking the record. Those two are going head to head on sales, so choose very carefully as lives may be at stake*. Monorail are also stocking both.
London: Rough Trade East have both the vinyl and the beer, so please go down and buy them so I don’t look like a dick for being the only person in history unable to sell alcohol to the British.

We have made to propaganda videos, representing the sides of GOOD and EVIL, depending on your predilections. Thanks to Gavin White and Ian Greenhill, these look awesome.

Record Store Day 2013 Daytime Funtimes

At Voxbox tomorrow ourselves and the ever-brilliant Gerry Loves Records have partnered with the shop to run a series of brilliant live shows in The Last Word cocktail bar across the road from the shop. Well, I say partnered; they did all the work, I just suggested some bands and provided the PA, but I am keen to take as much credit as possible nevertheless. The running order is below:

12.00-12.30 Wounded Knee
13.00-13.30 Magic Eye
14.00-14.30 eagleowl vs Kid Canaveral
15.00-15.50 Mike Heron Band
16.00-16.30 Rob St. John
16.50-17.20 Honeyblood
17.30-18.00 Adam Stafford

And finally, in the evening we will be hosting the official Beer vs. Records launch night at Summerhall. The price is £8 on the door, £6 if you’ve spent money on anything at all at a Scottish independent record shop during the day, and £4 if you bought our new Split 12″ from a Scottish shop during the day, so spend your money in record shops as you are being encouraged to and we will try to justly reward you.  All four bands on the split are playing, and doors are at 8pm. See you there!

*Then again, they may not.

This week is, of course, the week of Record Store Day where we hopefully remember that record shops are nice places to  spend time and money and resolve to go there more often, rather than just fight for the exclusive scraps scattered like breadcrumbs for pigeons. Understandably, most of the gig action this week is focussed on that very event, and naturally I am going to tell you that *cough cough* our stuff is by far the most awesome.

It is though.

We have the Beer vs. Records launch at Summerhall on Saturday evening, where all four bands on the Split 12″ will be playing. Full door price is £8, but if you spend money in a Scottish independent record shop on Record Store Day you can come in for £6. That goes down to £4 if you buy our new Split 12″ (this record, here) from a Scottish independent record shop.

During the day on the 20th there will be plenty of events as well. Over the road from VoxBox Music on St. Stephen’s Street there will be a whole day of live music in The Last Word cocktail bar. Playing will be all of the following: Mike Heron Band (feat members of The Incredible String Band and Trembling Bells), Adam Stafford, Wounded Knee, Rob St. John, eagleowl, Kid Canaveral (ish), Honeyblood and Magic Eye. I think it’s going to be brilliant. Meanwhile down at Elvis Shakespeare on Leith Walk Saint Max and the Fanatics will be playing, and after seeing them live at Wide Days last week I highly recommend them.

Finally, in non-Record Store Day news, we have two other excellent gigs taking place this weekend. Firstly, on Saturday (again – I know!) Brinksfest will be taking place down in Leith, with craft merchants, zine makers and all sorts, as well as the excellent lineup of Stanley Brinks, The Wave Pictures, Freschard, The Occasional Flickers and Saint Max and the Fanatics. This will all be taking place at Henderson Halls, which is a new one for me, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a gig being put on there before.

And finally, on Sunday we have the eccentric and awesome Thomas Truax coming to Henry’s Cellar Bar, with his homemade instruments which look a bit like something out of Batteries Not Included. It will also be your first chance to catch excellent Edinburgh newcomers Numbers are Futile live too, so I’d go, if I were you.

Yep, the post-Gnomegame hangover has just about subsided, I have caught up with most of the screamingly urgent emails in my inbox, and I am now sitting here wondering when Mrs. Toad will return so I can accept the glorious privilege of making her her dinner. Super.

Anyhow, my slow recovery means that unless you’re very, very quick on your feet you are likely to miss Beth Orton and Dan Michaelson playing at the Liquid Rooms tonight, but playing they are and I am a fan of the new Dan Michaelson stuff, so it’s worth going if you’re kicking your heels.

We also have another BAD FUN gig this week, with North American War, Furrow and Deathcats at Henry’s Cellar Bar on Sunday. This will be a pretty guitary one, with Deathcats being more garagey, Furrow more shoegazey and North American War more choppy and punchy. There’s a descriptive wee sentence for you, how can you not want to come along after that little gem.

Apart from these two, the one event looming largest over the Edinburgh gig calendar this week would be Wide Days – the two-day industry conference thingy with seminars and keynote speeches and so on, culminating in a special presentation by the Spotify founders, which could be, erm, interesting.  There are also showcase gigs in the evenings – full lineups here – and of everyone playing the two lineups I would most recommend would be the pretty much diametrically opposed Siobhan Wilson and Garden of Elks.

If I had bothered to write this before noon I suppose I could have announced some sort of secret gig by The National at Henry’s Cellar Bar or something like that, but apparently three in the afternoon is a bit late for April Fools, even half-hearted ones.

Aside from The National not playing, and indeed pretty much everyone not playing ever since every significant promoter in Scotland gave up on Edinburgh three years ago, there are, as always, a few lower key things going on this week which should be of interest to any right-thinking music lover.

Of course, we have the return of BAD FUN on Saturday at Henry’s Cellar Bar, where the shimmery dream pop of Magic Eye and eccentric guitar pop of Fur Hood will be complemented by what I think is the first Edinburgh appearance of Glasgow electronic pop newcomers Peter. All Toad tickets, including cheaper advance tickets to the Sparrow and the Workshop launch nights can found here.

In terms of non-Toad gigs there are a few more things going on this week as well.  On Thursday we have guitar pop, with the Machine Room, Blank Canvas and Fridgemaster at the Wee Red Bar, and on Friday a slightly more acoustic singer-songwritery vibe when Panda Su plays at the Electric Circus.

Oh, and while we’re at it we have another BAD FUN coming up the following week as well.

 Yes that –> is a picture of Edinburgh in the warm sunshine. Yes, I am doing this just to irritate you.

I didn’t write this post last week, due to travelling back from Austin and so on, and unfortunately there happened to be loads on. This week, unfortunately, I am here and eager and ready… and there ain’t all that much happening in Edinburgh that I can spot. Or that I personally happen to like the look of anyway.  Unless of course I’ve missed something, which usually happens at least once per week – corrections and frustrations in the comments section please!

For those of you quick off the mark we have Eric Pulido at the Electric Circus tonight, otherwise known as yon chappie from Midlake. This will be a duo show, show some of the harmonies which make Midlake’s lush Americana so compelling could well still be present. Even if not, the fella can still bloody sing, that’s for sure.

Then on Friday at the Wee Red Bar we have a bit of a noise-fest, with Die! Die! Die!, United Fruit and Black International.

But my pick of the week might actually be this rather obscure lineup at Henry’s: La Fin Absolute du Monde, with Hotstuff and the Eyecandy, Comptroller and Arcadecoma. There’s a lot of chip tunes on there, which I like on occasion but am not hugely smitten by much of the time. La Fin Absolute du Monde, on the other hand, make more epic, atmospheric electronic stuff and from the sound of the album they have posted on their Soundcloud page it could be pretty interesting.

Well well, we had an awesome time at the Jonnie Common gig last night, and I am now on my way to SXSW for tequila and fun, and our bloody house is doubtless being turned into an apocalyptic mess of a recording studio by half the bloody bands on the label in our absence. Fuckers.

Anyhow, I’ve been unusually organised with booking Toad gigs this year, and we already have a full schedule of awesome stuff between now and the Festival, at which point I will go into hiding until September.  For now, however, we have a solid four months of excellent gigs ahead of us, including a couple of rather interesting album launches – for Sparrow and the Workshop at the Caves and Mono in May, as well as a launch night for the Split 12″ and Beer vs. Records on Record Store Day in April.

Advance tickets for everything can be purchased from here, and for the Sparrow ones in particular it would make sense, because they are £6 in advance and £8 on the door.

Saturday 6th April
Magic Eye, Fur Hood & Peter
Edinburgh’s finest dreamy pop band are on a joint tour with Fur Hood, one of Glasgow’s more eccentric and elusive guitar groups, and the Edinburgh leg will take place at BAD FUN in April.
https://soundcloud.com/magic-eye-1
https://soundcloud.com/peterbandglasgow

Sunday 14th April
North American War, Furrow & Deathcats
Toad favourites North American War will be on tour with their pals, the slightly more shoegazey Shropshire band Furrow.  They are joined on the bill by Deathcats, a raucous Glasgow guitar pop band rather bravely making their first appearance in Edinburgh the day before their dissertations are due to be handed in.
https://soundcloud.com/northamericanwar
https://soundcloud.com/furrowband
http://deathcats.bandcamp.com/

Saturday 20th April – at Summerhall
Beer vs. Records Launch, with Magic Eye, Le Thug, Plastic Animals and Zed Penguin
This sees the launch of our slightly tongue-in-cheek project Beer vs. Records. Eight songs by the bands performing will be released on a gorgeous 12” vinyl, and eight more as a download on a 4-pack of Barney’s Beer. Both will be limited runs of 250, with a contest to see who sells out first. What do people really want, beer or records?

As the 20th is Record Store Day 2013, we will be letting people in for £2 cheaper if they have a receipt from a Scottish record shop for that day, and for half price if they have purchased our split 12” while they were there!
https://soundcloud.com/magic-eye-1
https://soundcloud.com/lethug
https://soundcloud.com/plastic_animals
http://zedpenguin.bandcamp.com/

Wednesday 8th May – at Mono, Glasgow
Sparrow and the Workshop album launch, with Strike the Colours
Glasgow launch for Murderopolis.

Thursday 9th May – at The Caves
Sparrow and the Workshop album launch, with Magic Arm
Sparrow and the Workshop prepare to release their third album Muderopolis on Edinburgh’s Song, by Toad Records with a gig at The Caves, supported by electronic pop wizard Magic Eye, who are up from Manchester and just so happen to be launching their own album as well.  After the gig there will be drinking until late, with DJs drawn from amongst the bands on Song, by Toad Records.
https://soundcloud.com/songbytoad/sparrow-and-the-workshop
https://soundcloud.com/magicarm

Saturday 8th June
The Leg & Monoganon
This will be an eccentric evening, with Glasgow/Swedish newcomers Flo & Spicey joining the excellent Monoganon in Edinburgh, at a gig headlined by Song, by Toad Records’ The Leg, whose second album for the Edinburgh label, Oozing a Crepuscular Light, is due out this Autumn.
https://soundcloud.com/songbytoad/bake-yourself-silly
https://soundcloud.com/monoganon