It might be a little bit of a stretch to refer to these guys as a Scottish band, but given they tend to be described as being from Glasgow/London I think I’ll just emphasise the former and quietly forget the latter.  Dammit, they’re Scottish.  Kinda.  Enough, anyway.

Anyhow, most music discovery works through recommendation really, and people whose judgment I trust from both Manchester and Glasgow have been talking about Sacred Paws a fair bit so, well, I was always going to give them a go, really, wasn’t I.

And once again it turns out my friends were right.  All the things on their Bandcamp page are labelled as demos, so I don’t really know how close they sound to the sound in the band’s head, but it’s pretty bloody good as it is.

Tracks like Ride, above, have a nice touch of old-fashioned, disinterested indie about them, but the rest of the stuff veers vaguely in the direction of deranged afrobeat, before just heading off into some sort of frenetic wigout.  Vince, below, probably embodies this more than most, descending into a buzzy mess before its eventual demise.  Whatever it is, though, I really want to hear more.

 Regular podcast listeners (which is everyone, right?) will have heard of Magic Eye before. I’ve played them on a couple of podcasts I believe, and written about them on the blog before.

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

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Record Store Day is a very, very good thing. Getting folk down to their local record shop in the hope they will support it all year round. This year marks the first ever RSD for Song, by Toad neighbours Vox Box Music. The shop is a real labour of love for Darren and George who run it, and they have always been more than happy to stock anything from the label. They are good people and their shop consistently has an amazing and eclectic selection.

To celebrate their first ever RSD our pals at Gerry Loves Records and I have organised a wee event for the day.

The shop is going to open as usual at 10.30am and will have a very small selection of exclusives for you to get your hands on, so you may as well try your luck. Then at 3.00pm we are going to have our very own Neil Pennycook from Meursault singing some songs from his forthcoming Melanie tribute album. After that we are going to head across the street to a secret location on the same street to see Gerry Loves band and new FatCat signing PAWS play a full blown set at 4.00pm

It’s going to be a great day. Booze, food, records and music. It’s a no brainer so do pop along.

If you don’t know where Vox Box or St. Stephen Street are, here ye go;

On the 30th April we will be releasing our first album of 2012: the rather fantastic An Eagle to Saturn by The Leg. I’ve wanted to release this album ever since I first heard Twitching Stick at the beginning of last year, and now we have it, on both fine heavyweight vinyl and CD.

As well as Twitching Stick, which was on the 2012 Song, by Toad Records Free Sampler, we are now offering Bake Yourself Silly as a free download to help you decide whether or not to buy the album (hint: the answer is Yes), which you can do here

Also, on Saturday 28th April we will be holding a very special party to celebrate the launch at a secret venue in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Due to the slightly dubious nature of the space itself we’ll be meeting upstairs at The Wash bar, which is the closest by – between 7 and 8pm, and will then all walk up to the place together.

The Leg will be supplying a little wine and maybe a beer or two – no need to bring your own.

As it’s a private party, you’ll need to be invited. This can happen by putting down a non-refundable deposit on a CD or LP – then if you want to, you can pay the balance on the night and I’ll give you your record. If you don’t, you don’t have to. Either way, if you put down a deposit, I’ll almost certainly be grateful enough to give you an invite. Simple. You can do this here:

Sorry, ticket link down now. A few should be available on the door though, so meet us in The Wash between about 7 and 8pm.

Seeing as that evening also happens to feature the excellent Papi Falso at Henry’s Cellar Bar, we can also inform you that if you wish to attend both you will receive a pound off both tickets, so we can all go and get fannied later on the cheap.

And, as promised, here is the new single which you can download from the Soundcloud player below – enjoy!

Bake Yourself Silly by Song, by Toad

Sometimes you get things immediately, and sometimes you don’t.  Usually the reasons are frame of mind or something like that, and what brings you round is listening to something with fresh ears a while later when you’re paying more attention or feeling differently, or sometimes once familiarity has allowed you to understand the music a little differently.

In this case the band will probably be pulling their hair out reading this review, because they emailed me ages ago about their stuff, and it ended up getting a bit lost in my inbox, and I can’t remember if I eventually just gave up on it or if I just emailed them apologising and saying I wasn’t into, but whatever it was it wasn’t my finest moment.

So far so mundane, but what’s slightly odd about this is that I was recently emailed by a producer of music videos wanting to advertise his services and what did he choose to showcase his work but a recent video he had made for Hiva Oa – the one at the top of the page in fact.  And for some reason, and believe me I have absolutely no idea what was different this time around – I thought ‘gosh, that’s quite good’.

This is the Edinburgh band’s first EP, and apparently precedes debut album to The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss, which is pencilled in for release in May 2012 on local label Mini50.  Like much of Mini50′s output, the music is slow as hell and based far more around atmosphere than melody, so it does take a bit of listening to, but I do think it’s worth the time.

Much of the atmosphere here is dominated by the whispered singing, minimal acoustic guitar and relatively underemployed cello.  Badger, the first song on the EP and the one from the video which drew me in, has a denser, more layered and rumbling sound, with really nice skittery cymbals.  Thereafter the EP sticks to a more familiar, acoustic guitar-based format, sparingly embellished with strings and the barest of vocal harmonies – at least until the wonderfully sinister second half of 9 minute closing track Morning, that is.

It’s not insistent music, but it’s quite demanding in the sense that inattentive listens really are pointless.  But if you give it your full attention then it really is lovely, and I feel a little bemused that I somehow failed to notice this the first time the band got in touch with me.

 Edinburgh’s not really renowned for it’s synth-pop bands. In fact, Matthew will probably have a heart attack at the very thought of such a genre being discussed on the hallowed ground that is his blog. There are certain connotations with this sort of sound, and ever since The Killers appeared it’s kind of been untouched by any self-respecting musician, kind of like what Mumford and Sons have done to folk music.  However, to simply call The Machine Room a synth-pop band would be an injustice as there is far more to them than Micro-Korgs and haircuts.

‘Love From a Distance’ is a four song E.P and it has two songs I love (‘Your Head on the Floor Next Door’ and ‘Picking Holes’) and two songs I don’t really like at all (‘Camino de Soda’ and ‘Cost of Progress’).

Ever the optimist,  I’ll start off with the positives. ‘Your Head on the Floor Next Door’ is a song totally up my street; reverb-laden with patient build-up and just the right amount of clever hooks to keep me interested without it being too busy. It’s kind of like a synth version of shoegaze, which I think is a very good thing. ‘Picking Holes’ is the closing track and is on the more traditional guitar based side of shoegaze. It works well, and the vocals suit the sound as shoegaze meets garage rock somewhere in the middle.

‘Cost of Progress’ is the opener and it seems like a song which really doesn’t know what it wants to be. The singer sounds like that lad from Glasvegas in this one (eek!) and it is just so very ordinary. From it’s beat, to it’s riffs, to it’s vocals. The only thing I could liken it to would be a rejected Radio 4 song from 5 years ago. ‘Camino de Soda’ is much better but it still lacks the dreamy sheen that made me fall in love with the other tracks, coming across as predictable and boring. It just doesn’t surprise me and, to be honest, I think they band sound like they have a lot more imagination and talent than this song suggests.

What we have here is a very promising, if a little uneven, first effort. The Machine Room are doing things a lot of other Edinburgh bands aren’t, and this should be commended. I just think they are a band in their infancy who are still trying to figure out their sound and ‘Love From A Distance’ verifies this. That said, if they can write more songs like ‘Your Head On The Floor Next Door’ then we could have a seriously good band on our hands.

Buy ‘Love From A Distance’ from their Bandcamp.

 I’ve been meaning to write about this for quite a long time, but I’ve been sort of unsure as to what exactly to write. In all honesty, I am not sure that the album itself really knows what it wants to be either, which doesn’t really help matters.

Released on PAWS’ Cath Records, this is a sprawling, messy collection of twenty-three songs, few of which are more than a minute or two long.  It feels less like it was an album released with a particular goal or concept in mind, and more like a bunch of songs which were recorded and made available in the hope that the very act of doing so might tell the writer what they are. Maybe even in the hope that if he was able to listen to what it was that he did, he might be able to figure out why he was doing it.

Even the first couple of tracks go from lo-fi indie, to bare-bones synth pop, to a frantic instrumental which borders on computer game music without being bleepy enough to be chiptunes, and then a dreamy acoustic number.  By the end of these songs barely six minutes have elapsed, and you’re still no closer to really understanding quite what it is that you’re listening to.

So it’s a mess, in many ways, and sort of an aimless mess at that, but I still find this album – if that’s what we should be calling it – a really compelling listen.

In some ways the uncertain meandering – Dying in the Garden could almost be a lost demo for Across the Universe, just as another example – makes this a lively, rather baffling listen which constantly has you looking up at the stereo thinking ‘what now?’

And in other ways, I actually quite like the uncertainty of identity.  It’s like Armstrong has been as generous as he can with his inner thought process, accepted that he isn’t sure where he’s going and very kindly invited us to come along on the journey to see if he can figure it out.

And there are enough ideas here that for all it sounds a bit unsure of its own identity, it’s not a record which seems like it has simply been lazily slapped out onto the internet for shits and giggles.  Twenty-three two-minute songs may give the impression of a lot of unfinished ideas, which I suppose you could take for laziness, but that’s not really how it feels to me.

Despite the fact that the songs could be described as sounding unfinished, depending on what you were expecting in the first place, each ninety second package seems to have integrity.  It contains its idea, expresses it in a way that gives it space, but no over-indulgence and then simply moves on.

So you can see how this review was a challenge to write, and why I shied away from it for a while.  I am still not entirely sure what it is I am listening to here, but the songs are varied, generally excellent, and that sense of trying to grasp the ever-elusive essence of the album just seems to make it all the more fascinating.  Odd.  But good. And available for free download over at Cath Records.

Sean Armstrong – Acid Bath

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Sean Armstrong – Dying in the Garden

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 I don’t tend to write reviews of EPs all that much, but this post doubles as an introduction to a really good new Scottish band, so I figured why the fuck not.

I think I’ve heard the name mentioned before, but apart from that I knew not a thing about the New Fabian Society until they got in touch asking if I would like to hear their new EP.  They’ve made it available to listen to on Bandcamp, but I have to confess I am not entirely sure how to buy it just yet.  Which is a shame, because it is very much worth it.

The music is chimey, echoey and dark – so epic in fact that the band kindly included two rather shorter radio edits of a couple of songs on the Bandcamp page, in the probably sensible assumption that for all six and seven minute songs might be great to listen to, they aren’t likely to find themselves being spun on drivetime by DJs accustomed to straightforward three minute pop songs.

These tracks, if they remind of a recent band, probably call to mind Leeds’ brilliant Hookworms, if I was to pull any name out of the hat in particular, although the fantastic opening song Lost in Berlin has more than a little of Interpol to it as well. You get the message though: slow but forceful guitar songs, full of foreboding, which build and build to a grand crescendo and leave the listener somewhat exhausted, but satisfied nevertheless. The surprisingly brief and far more frenetic closer Devious Minds is an exception though, its extra pace seemingly causing it to blow itself out a little sooner, but a sort of aggressive, barely suppressed grandiosity is still one of the defining characteristics of this music.

It’s the kind of stuff which I secretly suspect might be absolutely blinding live, although I’ve never seen them perform, so that’s no more than speculation.  But if they can pull off that kind of thunderous, ear-crushing euphoria this kind of music can create when played live then it really should be something to behold.

There’s not much you can tell, generally, about a band with only three songs to their name, beyond the tantalising sense of promise, but these don’t sound like rookie recordings, they sound like a band who are pretty well-formed considering this is their first release.

Although really, I know those three minute radio edits are really sensible, but if people like this music they should like it for all of its epic, self-indulgent seven minutes.  Balls to radio edits!

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr
Audio: zip download – right click, save as

I am rather embarrassed to confess that we recorded this session absolutely bloody ages ago.  First the Festival, then the mixes, then intervening sessions, and finally just the sheer amount of time these take to edit managed to delay things.  But now, finally, at long, long last here it is: the Kid Canaveral Toad Session.

This was another relatively messy, drunken one I’m afraid.  We were nice though – we made them dinner and supplied them with a beverage or several, and it happened to be a nice day too, so we were even able to sit out in the garden for a bit.

The team this time around consisted of Neil from Meursault, who recorded the session (and I hope I’ve not offended him with my mixes!), Fiona and Dylan who took the photos, and Dylan also did a lot of the video work as well.  And cooked. Whereas I just sat around, drank beer and swore at people mostly.

Direct download: Toadcast #214 – Kid Canaveral Toad Session

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Kid Canaveral – And Another Thing! (Toad Session)

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Kid Canaveral – Homerun and a Vow (Toad Session)

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Kid Canaveral – You Only Went Out to Get Drunk Last Night (Toad Session)

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Kid Canaveral – Her Hair Hangs Down (Toad Session)

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01. Kid Canaveral – And Another Thing! (Toad Session) (06.44)
02. The Shivers – Irrational Love (14.45)
03. Sleeper – What Do I Do Now? (18.33)
04. Kid Canaveral – Homerun and a Vow (Toad Session) (31.46)
05. Washington Irving – SiSi (38.47)
06. Popup – A Year in a Comprehensive (43.16)
07. Kid Canaveral – You Only Went Out to Get Drunk Last Night (Toad Session) (52.57)
08. Built to Spill – Carry the Zero (59.42)
09. Hall & Oates – Maneater (65.13)
10. Kid Canaveral – Her Hair Hangs Down (Toad Session) (78.02)

 Well blimey Charlie, for something that sounds like it was recorded on an old tape deck, under the bed in the dead of night, so the parents weren’t alerted, this really is very, very good.

It really wrong-footed me as well, in terms of the expectations I didn’t realise I had for the band and their next release.  The last time I saw these guys play was actually at an Ides of Toad gig at the Electric Circus last August, and they had a couple of strings players, a three-piece brass section and a big, rounded glossy pop sound.

I was also kind of surprised to see this release on Peenko Records, given that Mr. Peenko already has another independent label to be getting on with, namely Olive Grove.  And I was incredibly surprised to hear such a lo-fi, informal-sounding album.

Apparently this is more of a home-recording project by Adam, the band’s frontman, with relatively infrequent appearances by the rest of the band.  A couple of the songs are even the barest of bare-bones session recordings made for our local university radio station Fresh Air.

There are bigger, glossier releases on the way, but having heard this I don’t know if this style doesn’t suit their music better. It’s entirely possible I’ll change my mind when I hear the full band stuff, but for now I find this kind of unpolished approach, although it’ll presumably never make them famous, feels entirely consonant with the peculiar charm of the songs.

Adam Ross may be just about my favourite lyricist in Scotland in the moment, with a knack for staying exactly the right side of the line which divides witty from novelty.  He also has a habit of slipping suddenly from the cheekily amusing (going as far as to occasionally prompt the ‘he didn’t just sing that did he?’ reaction) to the touchingly poignant.  It doesn’t happen all that often, but the change of gear is such that the impact of those moments of pathos is greatly enhanced.

All in all, though, the impression left is of a person, not a band.  I have no idea how much Ross sings in persona but the picture painted is of someone with a sharp, mischievous sense of humour and yet also prone to moments of vulnerability.  The album feels, as such, unguarded and honest, but instead of taking that as an excuse to wallow, as most do in such situations, this is playful and amusing without ever feeling frivolous or silly.  I don’t know what their more polished releases are going to be like, but they’ll struggle to match this for emotional accessibility, for hummability rising above its lo-fi aesthetic, and just for sheer likability.

Randolph’s Leap – I Can’t Dance to This Music Anymore

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Randolph’s Leap – Bile

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