The Clamcast is so-called not because of seafood, but because it all of a sudden became rather clammy here this week.  An unseasonable warm spell descended and I didn’t personally adjust my clothing habits fast enough, meaning absolutely everywhere I went I ended up being uncomfortably warm.

So there you go, the Clamcast.

Anyhow, I am off to Glasgow to set up the Independent Record Fair, before scooting back through to Edinburgh to get the John Knox Sex Club, Easter and Fuzzystar Ides of Toad night sorted out at Henry’s.  Actually, I say sorted out, but it’s not me who sorts things out at this stage, it’s really just down to the bands and the venue.  Still, I have to be there and look willing, just in case!

Direct download: Toadcast #194 – The Clamcast

01. Thee Ludds – Parabolic Reflector (00.16)
02. Pregnant- I Wasn’t Getting Paid (05.49)
03. Death Songs – Let This Body Go (10.58)
04. Fat History Month – Gorilla (15.00)
05. Aidan John Moffat – I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher Cover) (21.57)
06. King’s Daughters & Sons – Volunteer (25.42)
07. Sons of Joy – It Was a Dirty Lie (34.32)
08. Ba Babes – Avon (Extended) (44.04)
09. Yalls – Our Place 1 (50.52)
10. Sic Alps – Cambridge Vagina (52.27)
11. Easter – Somethin’ American (57.16)

Well here we go.  The new year is yet to quite take hold or take off, but I promise you that things will kick back into gear this weekend.  There are some fine love shows appearing on the calendar, slowly but surely, and eventually 2009 will get going.  No rush though.

This Toadcast is a bit of a mix.  I’ve got some of this year’s favourites, I look back at some of last year’s favourites, and I also poke away at a couple of the bands I hope will make their mark in 2009.

In that sense, examining last year’s favourites makes a lot of sense.  I’m always curious about how well our fads and fancies bear up to the passage of time.  I’ve not been too fickle in recent years, which is sort of nice, so I don’t mind looking back like this.  There aren’t too many embarrassments to be had, so it’s kind of nice to take the chance to look backwards, look forwards a little and generally just take the opportunity to pause for breath and enjoy the new year.  As should you, toadlings, as should you.  Happy new year, folks.

Toadcast #52 – Let’s Go

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01. Bombadil – Cavaliers’ Har Hum (02.24)
02. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Ragged Garden of Your Eye (08.57)
03. Aidan John Moffat – The Boy That You Love (12.19)
04. Mitchell Museum – Extra Lives (18.11)
05. The Savings & Loan – The Virgin’s Lullaby (24.36)
06. The Builders & the Butchers – When it Rains (28.06)
07. Elvis Perkins – It’s Only Me (34.30)
08. Mother & the Addicts – Are Others (38.21)
09. The Pictish Trail – Winter Home Disco (46.27)
10. The Low Lows – Dear Flys, Love Spider (54.49)

11. The Cave Singers – Invitation Songs

Screeched vocals, and stomping, percussive guitar playing give this a kind of noirish, raucously foreboding atmosphere.  It’s simultaneously raging and simmering, with an old-fashioned murder balled style, and absolutely brilliant.
The Cave Singers – New Monuments

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12. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Ragged Garden

Sounding a lot like the Dirty Three, Little Sparta give a tortured backdrop to the spoken word ramblings of Gerry Mitchell.  It’s part poetry, part interior monologue, dark and obsessively introspective, almost exactly what you might expect at 5am from a drunken Glaswegian who was most of the way through a bottle of whisky and somewhat given to self-pity.  It is a spectacularly good album, but not for those prone to complaining about music that is slightly morose.
Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – Widow Dressing

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13. Micah P. Hinson – Micah P. Hinson & the Red Empire Orchestra

It doesn’t have the same feral howl of rage that much of Hinson’s earlier work has spilling from it, but the beauty and intimacy are still there.  If he keeps this up, Micah Paul Hinson will become one of the greats.
Micah P. Hinson – Tell Me it Ain’t So

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14. The Dodos – Visiter

Having talked about the percussive guitar on The Cave Singers’ album, I find myself scrabbling around for something else to describe this record.  It’s not Gothic folky Americana, but the guitar is used like a drum kit, and the constant use of the drumsticks on one another gives this record an irresistible pace.
The Dodos – Ashley

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15. Aidan John Moffat – I Can Hear Your Heart

I’ve swung back and forth on this one a little.  After my initial review Beth pointed out in the comments that it is actually an extremely self-indulgent record.  She’s right, but the emotional impact of half of the songs on this record is so far ahead of pretty much anything else you’ll hear that you just can’t tear yourself away from it.
Aidan John Moffat – Good Morning

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Hello You.

This Wednesday 24th December (Christmas Eve, naturellement), at or around abouts 10pm GMT (USA: 2pm PST + 3pm MST + 4pm CST + 5pm EST; Europe: 11pm CET), splashed all over the interwaves via the usual birdshit splatter pattern, for your listening consideration, will be The Waiting Room Christmas Eve 3hr Best Of 2008 Round-Up Show.

On this very (quite, in this case, literally) Eve we, one half of Drunk Country & The Woman of The House, will be dishing out thoughtfully considered Gold Guitar Pick of Excellence ‘Awards’* to the lucky Nominee(s) what is found to be the Best Of in their particular category.

It’s almost like a real end of year music award’s show but with less drinking & no Gallagher brothers.

Below, then, is the list of Categories & Nominees, 34 Artistes + 34 Songs. We have rather cruelly (although this is clearly a cynical attempt at injecting some tension into the proceedings) refrained from listing the Nominees in the last 2 Categories. Those will be revealed on the night. Mwah, I believe, Ha Ha, indeed, Ha.

So, there you go.  This took us AGES to compile from thousands of songs listened to & playlisted over the whole of this past year. *PHEW* just does not cut it. 2008 was simply awash with brilliance, surprises, genius & plain old breathtaking musicalisation. Oh, & singing.

The list, then:

Best “What The Fuck Was That?!”

1) Celebrity Chimp – Celebrity Chimp

2) The Just Joans – Hey Boy… You’re Oh So Sensitive

3) Aidan John Moffat – Cunts

4) Eagleowl – Motherfucker

5) The Theatre Fire – Coyote

6) Joe Rodger & The Velcro Quartet – Suddenly They Realised…

Best Cover Versions

1) Robin Grey – There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis (Kirsty MacColl cover)

2) Erlend Ropstad – 7 (Prince cover)

3) The Miserable Rich – Over & Over (Hot Chip cover)

4) Taken By Trees – Sweet Child O’ Mine (Guns ‘n’ Roses cover)

Best Contenders for a Bond Theme

1) Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Come On Over (Turn Me On)

2) The Last Shadow Puppets – In My Room

3) Get Well Soon – You/Aurora/You/Seaside

4) Hour Of The Shipwreck – Unclouded Eyes

Best Emotional Blackmail

1) Porlolo – Turning On Heels

2) Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers – Beloved, We Have Expired

3) The Dø – Stay (Just A Little Bit More)

4) Meaghan Smith – 5 More Minutes

5) Ane Brun – Don’t Leave

6) Plants & Animals – Bye Bye Bye

Best Pound Down The Back of The Sofa

Nominees 1-8 = a big fat question mark

Best Song of 2008

Nominees 1-6 = a bigger, fatter question mark

The podcast will be available, as we say, sometime tomorrow around 10pm (we have very limited access where we are headed for the holidays, so bear with us).

It remains only for us to wish every one of you all the very best this Christmas holiday & to remind you that our 3hr New Year’s Eve 2008 Jukebox show will be on (just like the title reads) Wednesday 31st December, from 10pm-1am GMT. See the New Year in with us, why don’t you?  (Yah, fucking right…).

Thanks for tuning in & listening. It’s been a heck of a year.

MC & a HNY,

½DC + TWoTH

*when we say ‘Awards’, what we really mean is  we will email a picture of a solid Gold Guitar Pick of Excellence – we’re not that unhinged that we’d actually fork out for 6 solid gold plectrums. Jesus, no.

In preparation for applying for a slot on Edinburgh’s student radio station Fresh Air, I thought I would challenge myself to get through an entire podcast without actually swearing because, on public access radio, you can’t use naughty words. A Toad without swearing, you say, what the fuck has the world come to?

Well to make sure I don’t disappoint you in your noble quest for dissolute anti-culture I thought I’d compensate by playing a collection of the filthiest and most sweary songs I could lay my hands on. Thinking about it, I’ve managed to forget Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot’s truly foul ‘Je T’aime, Moi Non Plus’, but there you go. I could have improved just about every playlist I’ve ever done in retrospect, I think, so at some point I have to draw the line.

So, I use bad words when I quote other people and when I give you the names of the songs but I don’t think I let a single naughty word slip during my own chat on this one, but let me know if you catch me out.

Toadcast #23 – The Filthcast

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01. Aidan John Moffat – Cunt (01.09)
02. The Pogues – Boys From the County Hell (05.24)
03. Adam Balbo -Let’s Make a Porno (10.03)
04. Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar (13.06)
05. The Tacticians – Hardcore Porn (15.37)
06. Billy Bragg – St. Swithin’s Day (21.05)
07. Grinderman – No Pussy Blues (26.05)
08. The Libertines – I Get Along (33.10)
09. Carbon/Silicon – What the Fuck (35.47)
10. Frank Turner – Heartless Bastard Motherfucker (42.03)
11. Les Enfant Bastard – U R My Fucking Sunshine U Cunt (44.52)
12. Plans & Apologies – Tony Blair Fucknut (49.50)
13. The Libertines – What a Waster (57.00)
14. Lambchop – Your Fucking Sunny Day (60.49)
15. The Ex-Men – Suck Her (67.35)
16. Micah P. Hinson – Patience (73.04)
17. Eels – It’s a Motherfucker (76.59)
18. Doug Anthony Allstars – I Fuck Dogs (80.07)

Umm, wow. Hah, erm….

Well it’s…

Er, well, it’s kind of like… erm, well it’s fucking impossible to describe this, really.

No, right then. Well this album won’t ever be on sale in Walmart, that’s for sure. It’s one of the most depressing indicators of twenty-first century censorship, the way commercial interest can fuck with people’s artistic output without any of this pesky need for open debate. So artists tend to record a Walmart version to avoid their draconian ‘family policies’, that pander to the hypocritical shrieking of bovine rednecks for no other reason than to give them some outward scapegoat for their repressed self-loathing. Anyway, no such fucking around for Mr. Moffat. I actually don’t think this album would be recognisable if it were censored to an acceptable level. Walmart is, I believe, the biggest retailer of music in the States. How depressing.

Anyway, I Can Hear Your Heart. It’s a terrifying album, in many ways. Moffat is the ‘other one’, after Malcolm Middleton, from Arab Strap, who already had a penchant for brutally honest and jarringly direct tales of personal betrayal, and here that is taken to shocking extremes. I don’t think I shock easily, the cover to The Indelicates’ We Hate the Kids did it, but this album has managed it too. Honestly, I had to go back again and listen to it immediately, just to be sure that I’d really heard what I thought I had.

To say that this album tells tales of everyday betrayal, heartbreak, loneliness and inner turmoil would be not only a massive understatement, but it would also seem vaguely insulting. Yes it does those things, but it does them with such force that it’s fucking stunning. Literally, actually, stunning. There’s no way I can really explain it, I don’t think. He melds snippets of music, from the discordant to the traditional to the atmospheric, in and out of the poems and stories that make up the album. And it’s funny a lot of the time too.

These snippets of spoken word are all sorts, from surreal twists on Grease (“How did it work out for Sandy & Danny?/ Did she turn into a cow, did he turn into a fanny?”) to tales of infidelity from minor to major, to tales of sexual, erm politics I guess you’d call it, so explicit you draw breath. Surely no more explicit than your average rap record or porn flick, you ask, and you’d be right. No, no more explicit in terms of the things they describe, but this is all delivered in such a disquietingly casual, conversational way that all that contrived pantomime is stripped away, and you are left not with the adolescent fantasy of these sorts of situations, but the MFI-bedroom reality of imperfect human beings actually experiencing them.

The slight surreality of the music only makes the whole thing more discomfiting, more naked somehow. It may be a difficult album in many ways, and there is just no point putting it on unless you really are going to sit down and really listen to it all. But really, I’ve not heard anything much like this ever before. Of all the albums I will remember from this year there is no doubt this will be the one. It’s like a fucking sledgehammer of bare, twisted documentary. Explicit both in the naughty sense, and in the focus of its absolutely unflinching stare, all served with grey instant coffee in an IKEA mug under a neon strip-light. A startling, startling record.

Aidan John Moffat – Good Morning
Aidan John Moffat – The Boy That You Love
Aidan John Moffat – Album Excerpt This is a couple of songs thrown together to give you an idea how the album flows. This clip contains Nothing in Common, Hopelessly Devoted and Super Sexxy Real Live! in one file.

Back at long last, would you believe. After the abortive attempt at a Christmas podcast and then the IT disaster in Toad Hall – when my retarded computer ground to a halt and had to have its entire operating system reinstalled – I have finally managed to record the 19th Toadcast. Sorting out the IT department was not at all as easy as it should have been, so it’s taken ages to get to the point where I could record one again.

So, excuses over and done with, what am I going to inflict on you this time? The bloody Scots, that’s who. The Scottish music scene is an amazingly fertile one, so I thought I’d review 2007 and have a bit of a look forward to 2008. So I’ve pulled together some of the big guys like Malcolm Middleton, Emma Pollock and King Creosote and interspersed a few of the lesser known acts from around here to give you a nicely rounded look at what’s going on musically in the land of Buckfast and deep-fried Mars bars.

Toadcast #19 – The Scotchcast[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo19.mp3]

01. Sons & Daughters – Gilt Complex (1.01)
02. Glasvegas – Daddy’s Gone (5.55)
03. The Low Miffs – Also Sprach Shareholder (13.58)
04. Malcolm Middleton – We’re All Going to Die (17.24)
05. Aidan John Moffat – The Boy That You Love (23.37)
06. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Empress (28.00)
07. The Pendulums – Greenhat (34.38)
08. Broken Records – Kathy (40.49)
09. Rob St. John – Wooden Rose (45.44)
10. Found – Some Fracas of a Sissy (53.28)
11. Kid Canaveral – Smash Hits (58.49)
12. Popup – Lucy, What are You Trying to Say? (61.38)
13. Emma Pollock – A Temporary Fix (68.28)
14. King Creosote – Church as Witness (76.04)
15. Mother & the Addicts – Roll Me on Over (79.37)
16. Frightened Rabbit – Be Less Rude (88.09)
17. The Twilight Sad – Walking For Two Hours (94.37)

Well you know how I said I wasn’t so convinced by Toadcast #17?  Well it proved somewhat prophetic, although that prophesy may have been somewhat self-fulfilling of course.  It’s one of my least downloaded podcasts for ages, but this one should sort that out.  There’s some genuinely excellent music on here, although most of it is pretty obscure.  There’s no Arcade Fire or anything to pull in the punters, bar a bit of The Magnetic Fields, but a really good selection of new and emerging music nevertheless.

And why the Homecast?  Well that’s obvious of course: we’re back in our house at long last and I recorded this from my massive old lab bench that doubles as a desk and music centre all at once.  It’s fucking brilliant – I really should take a picture and post it for you so you can see.  The bench is 2.75m long, so I have computer and stuff at one end, stereo equipment at the other and a couple of good sized speakers either side. A music anorak’s paradise!

Toadcast #18 – The Homecast

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01. Aidan John Moffat – Eureka Springs (Edit) (00.00)
02. 4 or 5 Magicians – Forever on the Edge (02.30)
03. Flashguns – St. George (07.53)
04. George Pringle – Carte Postale (13.52)
05. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (16.59)
06. Destroyer – Foam Hands (21.55)
07. Howlies – Aluminum Baseball Bat (28.44)
08. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Aspidestra (38.36)
09. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Leftovers (40.48)
10. Ruth Theodore – Overexpanding (49.22)
11. Akron/Family – Ed is a Portal (55.28)
12. Victor Borge – Phonetic Puncutation (63.22)
13. Josiah Wordsworth – Drive-by Media (70.23)
14. King of Prussia – Spain in the Summertime (74.44)
15. The Magnetic Fields – Threeway (83.07)
16. The Forms – Knowledge in Hand (87.44)
17. Howlies – Smoke (90.14)
18. The Beat – Mirror in the Bathroom (95.38)
19. Found – When You Fall (102.09)