Song, by Toad

Sparrow & The Workshop Tour Diary

Local legends, Toadworld faves and all-round good eggs Sparrow And The Workshop have, of late, been pounding the highways – and the byways – of our sceptered isle on their first proper UK tour. The band have taken the opportunity to become part-time documentary film-makers and produced this video diary of their adventures.

They’ve visited many of the UK’s major towns and cities, and Bristol, on their expedition, which was largely in support of that other bunch of stalwart Toad-buddies; Broken Records, who even make a brief cameo appearance in part three – keep an eye out for that!

The guys also visit England’s most revered site of ancient spiritual significance at Glastonbury Tor, and a place of equal religious significance to Wales: Neath.

The video itself breaks new ground in the surreallist docu-comedy genre, and has been described as “Luis Buñuel meets Benny Hill”. Well, I don’t know about that myself, but the monkey-skeleton scene in the museum (4:26 in part three) is nothing short of genius.

So to round-up, this whole thing is mad as badgers. As, clearly, are the band themselves.

Enjoy…

Support the Lifeboats This Saturday

This Saturday Mrs. Toad is in charge of collecting for the lifeboats in Stockbridge, and any help we can get with the collection would be hugely appreciated.  We will repay you all with beer and food throughout the afternoon, so it should be sociable and plenty of fun, but an hour or so of your time would be much appreciated.

The RNLI is a charitable body and hence rely entirely on public donations.  This is a fucking scandalous tax dodge by the government, if you ask me, but that doesn’t change the fact that the support of the public is absolutely crucial to what they do.  A lot of the readers of this site were up in Anstruther recently, which has a lifeboat station of its own, and was once home to a considerable fishing fleet.  Pittenweem appears to be more of a working harbour than Anstruther these days, but in general those communities who hosted us have given their fair share and it might be nice if we respected their commitment by showing a little willing of our own, as a way of repaying their hospitality.

The first collections will go out at about ten in the morning, no-one need do more than an hour, and whilst we are starting with tea and cakes we will finish up with scran and bevvies in the evening, and quite possibly some antisocially loud music at night time.  So if you can possibly help and fancy coming round, please get in touch.  Giving a few quid would also be a big help, but actually participating and helping out is much harder to do where charity is concerned, so we’d really appreciate it if you could come round and lend a hand.

The Divine Comedy – A Seafood Song

And, erm, I hope it’s not too tasteless, but this is the obvious song to choose:
British Sea Power – Fear of Drowning

Gaza Fundraiser at Mono, Glasgow on Thursday 19th March 2009

I haven’t really mentioned the crisis in Gaza on this site which is, I suppose, somewhat unusual, when you consider my general lack of inhibition when it comes to wading into massive arguments.  It’s a difficult one, I suppose, in part because it’s just so fucking obvious.

Israel, by its alliances and by its supporters, seems to have been adopted as a de facto Western nation.  Imagine if, erm, say the Republic of Ireland adopted the Israel approach to dealing with Northern Ireland.  Maybe that’s the wrong analogy, because Palestine is of course an independent country – albeit one with apparently no right not to have the living shit bombed out of its civillian population on the slightest pretext every six months or so.  Maybe it would be closer to Germany razing Copenhagen to the ground every year.  But then, Denmark is our friend too.  How about if, say, Serbia decided to annihilate a small neighbouring country like, erm, Bosnia for example, and to declare an all-out war on the civillian population of that country.  What would we do if Serbia did that, I wonder?

And don’t get me started on the attack on Lebanon.  Breathtakingly barbaric, and the act of a rogue nation which knows that having its crazy friend leering over its shoulder makes it absolutely immune to any kind of accountability for its actions.

The other really frustrating part of the argument is the ‘in favour of terrorism response’ anyone who disagrees tends to come up with when you express this opinion.  It’s like the Iraq war, when you voiced a dissenting opinion, being asked why you were on the terrorists’ side – a complete non-sequitur, albeit one which tended to arise in the States far more than the rest of the world.  Here the equivalent seems to be that in criticising Israel you are somehow condoning the Palestinian acts of terrorism, as if they didn’t also have to be stopped.  No, of course not, but if attacking the civillian population is bad, then it’s bad for everyone.  It’s not okay for you because you are adamant that they started it.

Anyhow, to help alleviate the suffering caused by recent acts of Israeli terrorism in Gaza, Tom Snowball from Rags & Feathers is organising a fundraiser at Mono in Glasgow tomorrow night.  The lineup is superb: Sparrow & the Workshop, Punch & the Apostles, The John Langan Band, Mike & Solveig and Tom himself will be playing, and I urge you to go along and support the cause.  Who knows, you might just have an enjoyable evening at the same time.

Punch & the Apostles – The Engineers of Salammbo

Tom Snowball – Isabella

Sparrow & the Workshop – Devil Song

And yes, that’s a picture of a man carrying a dead child.  It’s actually quite serious.  Cough up.

A Spot of Jeffrey Lewis Fun

I hate to be the sort of blogger who vacantly recycles people’s press releases, but once in a blue moon (which means twice in a week, this week, unusually) press releases arrive which are pretty simply a piece of information in which I am very interested and therefore assume you will be as well.

A site opened recently called $99 Music Videos, and if you can’t figure out what the central concept behind it is then shame on you.  It’s a nice idea though because I am, as you’re already well aware, becoming increasingly tired of the false assumption that art needs to be expensive.  Certainly, entertainment frequently does not need to be expensive.  This is not to deny that certain things cannot be done properly on a budget, more that I think you can achieve an awful lot with an awful lot less if you are really determined to do so.

It helps, of course, to have Jeffrey Lewis as your illustrator.  But then, I suppose that’s sort of the point – that if you have talent – genuine talent – then this should come across whatever your budget.  Anyway, this song is called To Be Objectified and will be on his forthcoming album Em Are I, due out, erm, soonish on Rough Trade.

A Classic Education – News

It’s always nice when I band who you’ve watched make their own luck actually manage to start achieving the breaks you think they deserve.

I’ve written about A Classic Education a couple of times now, and they’ve just emailed me through with a little bit of news, so I thought it would be nice to pass it on.  Firstly, they have a new single approaching on Bailiwick Recordings – the label which released the excellent Gossamer Albatross (who apparently need a drummer – any takers?) single earlier this year.  It is called Best Regards and, although there’s no set release date just yet, the song can be previewed on both the band’s and label’s MySpaces.

Funnily enough, there seems to be a lot of very good, slightly dark, slightly Smithsy indie coming out of Italy at the moment.  I haven’t featured it here as much as I would have liked to because most of the stuff I’ve been sent has been perilously close to, but just short of, having quite cracked it yet.  There’s no more than a hair’s breadth in it though, and it certainly seems like there is a really healthy scene bubbling under in Italy at the moment.  Fascinating how these things start to build and snowball, isn’t it.

Anyway, the other little bit of a treat in that email from A Classic Education was an English version of Toi, a Gilbert Bécaud song, which the band picked up on from the soundtrack to 1965 Italian movie called “Io la Conoscevo Bene” by Antonio Pietrangeli.  My ignorance of this is absolutely at one hundred percent, so I am doing little more than passing on the press release at this stage, I’m afraid, but I like this kind of little project.  It’s easy to end up with cultural tunnel vision when writing a blog like this and to forget that pop music is just a tiny part of a broader spectrum of arts (okay okay, I know, most of which I really can’t be arsed with) and it’s really nice to see people mixing the context of their music around like this.

Anyway, here’s the song:
A Classic Education – Toi (Gilbert Bécaud Cover)

The original scene with the original Italian version of the song:

And the same footage with their version:

New Young Republic Stuff

The Young Republic have been pretty quiet since the release of their debut album a couple of years ago.  That record was less of a coherent whole and more of a greatest hits collated from several years of self-recording, so it’s actually a miracle it hung together as well as it did, frankly.

In the intervening period the band have lost three members, released an EP and fairly comprehensively changed their sound.  It’s not been a smooth process, honestly.  They had already begun to drift away from the whimsical indie-pop which dominated their early sound before the departure, for a variety of reasons, of their flautist, drummer and pianist.  Since then they have continued to move further towards more of a classic rock sound, a sound dominated, for ease of explanation, by Bob Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder Revue.

The disruption in the band itself caused a fair bit of turmoil, because it wasn’t entirely amicable, and come the release of last year’s Idiot Grin, there was a definite sense of uncertainty about the band.  The new lineup seemed to have slightly unsettled them and the EP itself, despite containing some really good bits, was a little bit hit and miss – basically they were a band in flux and it came across very clearly in their work.

This is a year on, and that all seems to have changed.  I’ve been listening to the new album and although I can’t review it yet (not until it’s released is the guideline I generally follow) I can confirm that after casting around just a little, they seem to have found where they were going.  I’m not, as I said, going to get into a review of the whole thing, but there’s a real coherence about it as a piece of work which I really welcome.

So, in short, it looks like this could be a really good year for the band which, given I like them all a lot as people as well as musicians, is something I think is really good news.

The Young Republic – Black Duck Blues

The Young Republic – The Wolf

Video: Ten Tracks at the Bowery

Ten Tracks is a new download service which has been launched recently, by a friend of mine Ed Stack, in collaboration with local arts paper The Skinny.  Bascially, they release specially curated bundles of ten songs once a month, which you can subscribe to for a tenner for the whole year, or simply buy as a one-off for a quid.

Ed does a really good job of finding local bands and getting local musically involved people to participate, and on Valentine’s Day they hosted their first official gig night at the Bowery.  Regular readers will already be familiar with the Rob St. John and eagleowl videos from this splendid evening but, if not, here’s a summary of the night as a whole in video form.

And for those of you who like the look of this, swing by the Bowery again on Saturday, where Found, the Joe Acheson Quartet and Emily Scott will be playing another Ten Tracks gig.

Magic Arm News

I’ve mentioned Magic Arm before, and I hope you were paying attention because he is very, very good.  I saw him for the first time at the first Fence Club I ever attended, and then again at Homegame a couple of years later and was really impressed both times. So needless to say the news of a new EP and imminent album release is greeted with much anticipation and joyfulness here at Toad Hall.

Magic Arm is the stage name of Mancunian Marc Rigelsford, and he is another loop pedal master, along with the likes of Toad favourite David Thomas Broughton.   The tendencies of Magic Arm, however, seem to have a little more of a pop-wards leaning than his Leeds contemporary.  Bootsy Bootsy is a little less introspective and meandering that his wonderful debut Outdoor Games, from what I’ve been able to make out so far, but whatever the hell it sounds like I am really looking forward to it – just waiting until pay day on Friday!

In amongst his loops, he uses acoustic guitar, electronica, children’s instruments and god knows what else, and this gives his music the kind of improvisational, stumbling narrative which regular readers of this blog will know is like a gentle and loving caress to my oh-so-predictable eardrums.  As well as Bootsy Bootsy, there is an album pencilled in for release later in the Spring, I believe, and I cannot wait to hear it.

Magic Arm – Move Out

Magic Arm – Daft Punk is Playing at My House

Go On DC, Piss Off

Well, well, well, here’s a bit of news for you all.  My – well, really, our – good friend DC will shortly be leaving us for some very swanky new shores indeed.  The Waiting Room has been commissioned by WOXY, one of the few remaining really top quality independent* radio stations.

For those of you who don’t know the details, DC had an almighty falling out with his old host, Error FM, back towards the tail end of last year and quit the station in the mother of all snits.  He started looking around for a new station, and I told him that he was welcome to put his show out on Toad until he found something a little more suitable, which is why he has been gracing our Wednesdays (usually) with his blethering for the last couple of months.  The WOXY deal has been a long time in the pipeline, and there have been a lot of sealed lips for the last little while, but it has now been formally announced at last.

It can’t be overstated how impressive a result this is.  WOXY really is a very cool station indeed.  And it also can’t be forgotted how important people like DC have been to this site over the last couple of years.  I love having readers and so on, but the people who make such active and (largely) intelligent contributions in the comments mean that Song, by Toad is able to be way better than I alone could ever make it.  So go to that WOXY thread and leave gushing comments to make him look good.  They’ll be as sick of him as we are before too long, no doubt, so it might as well at least start out as positively as possible.

Well done, mate.  You and the Lady of the House really deserve this, and I am bloody chuffed for both of you.  Best of luck to you two and to the show itself.

Twentymen – The Waiting Room

The Magnetic Fields – Famous

*Although they’ve just ‘joined Future Sounds‘, about whom I know absolutely nothing.  Is this a good thing?  Enlighten me, please.

Hello, Broken Arrow

I was contacted a couple of days ago by a group called Hello, Broken Arrow.  I almost titled this post Hello, Hello, Broken Arrow, but the explanation would have stripped away whatever thin humour was there to begi… never mind.

The songs are lovely, but their MySpace page is so sparse that I could have done little more than re-post the music here and say ‘here ya go’, which somewhat defeats the purpose of mp3 blogging if you ask me.

So, a little more detail: they are a group of Seattle musicians who started getting together once a week to try writing songs with different people.  Initially, the idea was simply to generate a kind of creative freshness which would improve their own individual projects, but it turned into something with a life in and of itself.  The participants come from bands like Huma and Shenandoah Davis (who introduced herself to me only recently), and they haven’t quite got as far as finding labels to release anything yet, but they’re thinking about it.  They’re also applying to play Pickathon this year, which would be brilliant, but it’s still clearly very early days indeed.

I love the sound of this.  It’s West Coast alt-folk, in the broadest sense, and does sound to have obvious kinship with so many other bands from the Pacific Northwest: sparse, and slightly otherworldly, but with a good rhythm to keep things moving along.  You can’t be too definite about anything with only two demos around, but I’d say this sounds really promising.  More please!

Hello, Broken Arrow – Mine is a Light (Demo)

Hello, Broken Arrow – Golden Fools (Demo)