Welcome to The Schoolcast wherein I acknowledge a few of the people who have educated my music taste more than most.  Without a Musical Big Brother figure in my life I have relied on a motley crew of people from all over to get me into music to which I might otherwise never have been exposed, and the process continues today of course.
For someone who is an accidentally self-appointed arbiter of taste* I actually know relatively little about music, and particularly the history of pop music. I don’t know much Neil Young, for example, I don’t know much Pink Floyd, I don’t know much Dinosaur Jr. or Guided By Voices, or even Can – and those are just the ones for which I have been directly chided.
Anyhow, I am making inroads into some of this ignorance, and it’s actually a shitload of fun, as you can imagine. As with last week’s Neil Young write-up, I think I’ll start covering some of these records on the blog a bit more often, as I think the blend of brand new stuff and older music will work really nicely. Enjoy!
01. Pink Floyd – Astronomy Domine (00.22)
02. Lee Noble – December (08.46)
03. Jake McKelvie & the Countertops – Oh the Ghost (13.57)
04. Neil Young – Southern Man (20.29)
05. Thirty Pounds of Bone – The Maritime Line (29.04)
06. Pearl Jam – Dissident (35.29)
07. The Raincoats – Don’t Be Mean (43.09)
08. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (47.09)
09. Cherokee Red – Mythomania (55.50)
10. Columboid – Juicy Mode (1.00.57)
*When I started a blog, I just wanted to write down some stuff about music. I never really imagined people would take that to mean I thought of myself as a ‘tastemaker’**, which I most definitely do not.
**What a fucking horrible term that is, eh. Let us never speak of it again.
As those of you who are unfortunate enough to follow my incessant, vacuous rambling on social media will probably know by now, we have released the first single from the new Adam Stafford album, and it is called Please.
We struggled a bit with the singles for this record actually, because for all there are a couple of tunes which are obviously more easily digestible and immediate than the rest of the album and which I suppose most people would call the ‘obvious singles’, they aren’t actually all that representative of the kind of record you would be buying. For all Please sits nicely on the album itself, the overall record is odder than this one song might lead you to imagine, so what do you do?
Well, we could always have made the awesome title track or something like Invisible Migration the tunes we used, but then we’d be sending a seven and a half minute long, densely layered and distinctly weird tune out to radio and expecting them to play it. And that, with the exception of one or two shows, quite simply isn’t going to happen. So do we hobble our chances with radio and trust to our mailing list and social media contacts to make sure that is a worthwhile pay-off? Or do we just send out the most hummable tunes and hope no-one gets too much of a shock when they buy the album? I don’t know, and perhaps that’s a conversation for a different time.
In any case, this is a splendid, splendid tune, gently soulful, with a hard-panned mix which reflects Adam’s fascination with old Motown records. I think I mentioned before that we’ll be co-releasing this with our pals at Kingfisher Bluez in Vancouver, giving Adam every chance of achieving what we at Song, by Toad like to modestly refer to as Total World Domination. I am really looking forward to getting my hands on this album, just for my own sake, and I think that’s how record labels should be run – so there!
 Man, this album has… charm. Charm and pathos. And it has those things in that ‘first listen, immediately grabbed’ way which so few bands really manage. There are elements of Toad favourites Dolfish and Adam Balbo in here – and if you don’t know who those two are you really, really should – but it has its own personality, which I suppose is pretty crucial, given how much this kind of music relies on the awkward likability of the central character.
The extent to which that character – our narrator, essentially – is a persona or a direct translation of the main singer and songwriter I don’t know, but these things should always come across as being largely unguarded, and this is exactly what Jake McKelvie does. The music is perhaps less halting and tentative than the two bands I name-checked before, but the lyrics seem to have a rather similar stream-of-socially-awkward-consciousness flavour to them. They are
Tunes like Getting Work and Oh the Ghost remind me of that cynical friend we all have, who comes across as a right miserable bastard, but whose cynicism is more indulgent humour than genuine joylessness. At least, you suspect it is. There are elements of the excellent Charles Latham here as well, although perhaps not quite as country, but the same self-deprecating self-analysis and exasperation are definitely present.
It’s hard to analyse music like this, actually. It’s really like being introduced to a friend of a friend, and you just get on, and that’s pretty much it. The music is simple, the songs hummable, the delivery a little nasal, the lyrics excellent and basically you’ll either just like it or you won’t. There’s no pretence, no layers of coy artfulness, nothing much at all really beyond straightforward, to-the-point songwriting, and bare bones production. Easy. It’s pay-what-you-want and it’s excellent.
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. Â 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.
Today is dreich – one of those great Scottish words I will never truly be able to use properly because of my accent. I can write it down though, and you can all imagine I said it right, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s really hard not to pick up the slang when you’ve lived somewhere as long as I have, even if you know you’ll never really be able to pronounce it correctly.
Anyhow, it’s the usual Friday drill: I link to five weird or interesting things I found on the internet this week, and you either contribute your own, or just take the piss out of my choices. It’s up to you. But no drinking before 3:30pm please, that would be decadent. Â Actually, I have some Blackwoods in the fridge, now that I come to think of it… and some Caorunn. Actually, fuck this, fuck you all, I’ll see you on Monday with a rotten, rotten headache.
I don’t really need to add anything to this, do I? You can subscribe to this fine fellow’s YouTube channel here. This one is particularly worth it – awful, excruciating brilliance!
Cloud Sounds wasn’t ‘THE’ inspiration behind Song, by Toad. I started years before I first discovered Ted’s sarcastic, curmudgeonly podcast, but when you do something like Song, by Toad for as long as I have one initial spark of inspiration isn’t really enough. You may not need it all the time, but every once in a while, when the ‘what the fuck is the point’ blues are starting to set in you need to be inspired afresh, and that is what Cloud Sounds did for me a few years ago when I first started listening. The music was great, and despite the cynicism it was somehow a hugely enjoyable podcast and it will be sorely, sorely missed in these parts anyway. Â We will hopefully be giving it a vinyl-based swan-song however, so watch this space…
Like a lot of people, Pearl Jam sort of drifted off my radar after their early-nineties highs of Ten and Vs. It was Ten, more than Nevermind, taught me to love loud guitar music and Vs. was played amongst my immediate peer group more than almost any other album during my first year of university. Vitalogy, which followed these two commercial behemoths, didn’t quite catch with me however. The band were struggling hugely with the fame their previous success had brought them, and the recording process was a bit fractious, by all accounts. Anyhow, the album itself may not have been my favourite, but there are some brilliant tunes on it, and this is one of them.
This is just weird. That skeleton above is apparently, despite its rather exaggeratedly alien appearance, entirely human. It is the remains of a person who was six inches tall, and who lived to the age of about eight years old. There are more images to be found on LiveScience here, but let’s go back to that last point again: eight years fucking old! I find it barely conceivable that a six-inch tall human being could possibly have lived that long. There is really is no shit we can possibly make up which nature can’t do bigger, bolder or weirder, is there.
5. Eyewitness Testimony About Drone Strikes
This is pretty grim listening, I have to confess, but it is important. Having a faceless, non-human controlled device flying about the place which might just fucking annihilate you if its operator so decides must be one of the most terrifying and enraging things which could happen to a community. I can see the attraction of drones, but they are evil, inhuman things – killing another human being is a serious business, and if we decide we have to do it then I still think we need the natural brake on the process of doing it face to face. Yes, it will traumatise the person given the task, but killing people shouldn’t be easy. Make it as remote as drones make it, and it becomes far, far too easy, and I don’t think it should be allowed. In all-out war, maybe, but not in something as delicate as the War on Terror.
 Salford is to Manchester pretty much what Leith is to Edinburgh – the scummy port town which is close enough to be pretty much part of the city, but still maintains a separate identity. And indeed Salford may be a good way behind Leith in this aspect, but it too seems to be slowly becoming nicer and nicer, and shrugging off some of its rough image. Salford has a very long way to go I suppose, but there does seem to be a fair bit of decent arty stuff happening down there at the moment, which tends to be how these things start.
Anyhow, on Sunday I am going to down to Salford for the Sounds From the Other City festival. Â There will be stages booked by all sorts of excellent Manchester promoters, like Comfortable on a Tightrope, Underachievers, Now Wave and Manchester Scenewipe, and plenty of people knocking around who I haven’t seen for a while, so I am rather looking forward to it.
I also get the chance to see my Granddad and have a wee whisky together on Saturday night, which will be excellent. My Granddad and I get on really well these days, but when I first moved to England and spent some of my first year at university living at his house it wasn’t always the case for various reasons. Consequently, the fact that we get on so well is something we both take great pleasure from and make sure we don’t take for granted, which is a nice thing. Â Whisky: bringing people together since the 1400s.
01. Black Market Karma – Sole Abuser (00.21)
02. Rob St. John – Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey (09.14)
03. Virgin of the Birds – Christiane (16.15)
04. Powerdove – Love Walked In (22.21)
05. Still Caves – Dutch (26.17)
06. Laura Viers – Shadow Blues (35.27)
07. Suuns – Powers of Ten (42.02)
08. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Swimming Song (47.21)
09. Weavers – Kisses Sweeter Than Wine (49.47)
10. Adam Stafford – Please (57.35)
 I know I write about a lot of undiscovered bands on this site, but honestly, how this lot have five albums out and yet are giving them all away for free when they are this good, and this accessible is beyond me. I mean, this is spiky psych-rock, but it’s not exactly terrifyingly rough, and the hooks are absolutely clear as day, right in front of your nose, and hummable as fuck.
The nature of their website and their label, Flower Power Records, which the band themselves seem to have set up so they could self-release in a slightly more formal manner, suggest to me that one of the reasons these guys are still basically unsigned and giving their music away for free is that instead of worrying about career path stuff, they just decided to make their music and get the fuck on with releasing it. Their statement that they started the label “to enable Black Market Karma to record and release their music as they want it to sound” certainly implies that they didn’t like the look of their options beforehand, anyway.
In any case, five records in, and after a lot of free giveaways, they are now on the verge of their first vinyl release. Annoyingly for the band, it’s not the record I am writing about here, but their latest: Semper Fi.  However Cocoon is the but this is the album I have been listening to so for now this is the one being reviewed, but you can download Semper Fi for free from here if you’d rather check that one out, with a view to purchasing the vinyl.
There is a Strokes-inflected psychedelic rock feel to most of Cocoon, although Hold Me Down has a definite flavour of Just Like Honey by The Jesus and Mary Chain.  Citing The Strokes in a review is always a tricky one, I have to confess. I think a lot of their work is monumentally boring, but First Impressions of Earth is a great album, and one with the bite and aggression that much of their other stuff sorely lacks, and that is the comparison I would make here. Admittedly a tune like Neutral lives up to its name a little too much, and there are one or two others which don’t quite catch fire as they might, but for the most part this is gleefully infectious, scuzzy guitar pop, played with a loose abandon and plenty of snap in the more raucous numbers.
Ultimately, though, this is just cracking pop music. Tunes like Sole Abuser and title track Cocoon can be hummed pretty much from the first listen, and I shall now be off for that free download of Semper Fi, very much hoping that it is as good as this album so I can get my hands on some vinyl!
 One of my favourite albums of the year, one of my favourite new discoveries of the year band-wise and probably my favourite band I saw play at this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, and yet they released Images du Futur in the first week of March and it has taken me this bloody long to write about Suuns. Don’t ask why, maybe there’s been too much local stuff to concentrate on, or maybe this is just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes, but don’t let my tardiness fool you – I think this lot are bloody awesome.
I suppose you could sum this album up as a sort of dark, trancey electronica mixed with hypnotic, shoegazey guitar rock. It’s not rough or lo-fi at all, but it definitely plays on thrum and repetitive textures to induce a sort of sway in the listener where the eyes roll back and the head tilts and you feel the euphoria you get when music just washes over you in waves.
The outstanding Edie’s Dream (embedded below) was the first tune I heard and it has a definite wafty dream-pop feel to it, which didn’t necessarily prepare me for the darker aspects of this album. Opener Powers of Ten is much more aggressive and driven, and perhaps it took me a while to adjust to the more guitary songs, when what I had been expecting might have been more of a blissed-out sound.
If I were to call anything to mind when listening to this it might, surprisingly, be some of the early nineties stuff where guitar bands started to be pulled more towards dance music. Bands like James and (whisper it) U2 have produced some fine moments in this kind of territory, and perhaps after British bands have spent so much time brilliantly ripping off American indie-rock from the early nineties, there are bands here and there in North America who are returning the favour.
It’s not all successful, I have to confess. With anything like this there is always the tricky subject of melody in an album heavily based on texture and rhythm, but there are times – such as Bambi for example – where the hypnotic hummability doesn’t quite kick in, and the tune feels a bit like a mid-tempo plodder, to be brutal. But in general these moments are few and far between, and Suuns have produced an album of properly gripping stuff. You can buy it here on Secretly Canadian, and I highly recommend that you do.
On Mayday (yes, tomorrow) we shall be celebrating the release of the new Rob St. John double A-side single Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey/Shallow Brown which you can buy from Song, by Toad Records here.
Both of these tunes have been staples of Rob’s live set for quite a while now, and last year he assembled a Coven Choir of his regular associates and we recorded versions of these songs live in the main studio* here at Toad Hall. It was all pretty live and creaky, with the cracks and groans of our decrepit old floorboards and wooden furniture rather prominent in the recordings. The percussion on Charcoal Black was even played on an old vaulting horse which we use as a bench in the living room, but overall I think the effect works really well. After two rather guitary Split 12″s I think this is the first acoustic recording I have made to which we’ve given a formal release.
The songs themselves are rather interesting too, and follow recent work on Lancastrian history, myth and folklore with the Folklore Tapes label in Manchester, curating the successful Pendle, 1612 project (in collaboration with Dylan Carlson, Dean McPhee, David A Jaycock and others). Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey is a Lancastrian song originally sung to Cecil Sharp by J Collinson of Casterton, Lancashire in 1905. A song of the Industrial Revolution: crumbling mill towns butting up against moorland and trees growing out of chimneys.
Shallow Brown is a West Indian sea shanty collected by H.E. Piggott and Percy Grainger from the singing of John Perring in Dartmouth, Devon in 1908. The spirit of this version traces an imaginary line to Sunderland Point on the tip of the Lune estuary in Lancashire, a thriving port for slave ships and press gangs until siltation forced a steady decline in the late 1700s.
The artwork is really nice as well, and was done by David Barker who runs Folklore Tapes. And look how pretty the vinyl is…!
 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.
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 Welcome to The Schoolcast wherein I acknowledge a few of the people who have educated my music taste more than most.  Without a Musical Big Brother figure in my life I have relied on a motley crew of people from all over to get me into music to which I might otherwise never have been exposed, and the process continues today of course.
