Song, by Toad

When do the clocks go forward again? It feels like it should be soon, because the bite’s gone out of the cold, and you can see green shoots here and there on some of the plants, but I guess it’ll be a while yet, unfortunately.  Still, it’s actually light out when I leave work these days, which is a positive sign.

The post-Christmas gig lull seems to be slowly coming to an end as well, which is good news.  It’s actually a rather busy week this week, with the funs spread pretty evenly, instead of all clumping together on a single evening, as they have been wont to do of late.  How considerate of them.

Firstly, Frabbit are playing Cabaret Voltaire on Wednesday with Ross Clark and Dupec, but there’s little point making a fuss about that one seeing as it’s already sold out. I thought I’d mention it though, in case you’re the sort who can wangle guesties to this sort of thing.

Oh, and Song, by Toad is back on Fresh Air this evening, going live at about 8pm I think, but more of that later.  During the meanwhilst…

Monday 15th February 2010: Jesca Hoop, Run/Lucky/Free & the Wintergreens at Sneaky Pete’s.

There’s a touch of the alt-country power pop to this lineup, some of which strays outside my personal taste a little.  I was first introduced to Jesca Hoop by DC on The Waiting Room a year or so ago, and although I have not listened to lots of her stuff, I like the stuff I do know.  It’s a nice mix of influences, from old folk, to a bit of country, to radio pop and it’s all blended together very well. Maybe not for the sulkier indie kids amongst you, but still a good one, this.

Jesca Hoop – Summertime

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tuesday 16th February 2010: Robin Grey at the Forest Cafe.

Robin Grey’s stuff doesn’t exactly demand attention – it’s not forceful or attention-seeking or anything like that – but it deserves it.  He is largely an acoustic singer-songwriter, although he’ll be playing with a band tonight.  I think the difference with Robin is in his confident, unassuming style.  He’s also a really strong lyricist so I definitely recommend taking the chance to see him play if you can.

Robin Grey – The Finchley Waltz

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 18th February 2010: Hexicon, The Just Joans & Cancel the Astronauts at the Wee Red Bar.

The third Gentle Invasion gig in about a week brings the easy acoustic pop of Hexicon to the Wee Red Bar, supported by The Just Joans, who must write the most Scottish lyrics of any band in the world, and indie-poppers Cancel the Astronauts.

The Just Joans – What d’we Do Now?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 18th February at Cabaret Voltaire: The Mill with Ambulances and Carrie Mac, followed by Hot Club de Paris live at Sick Note.

There’s a lot going on at Cabaret Voltaire on Thursday with the excellent Ambulances bringing their easily-paced, old-fashioned indie to the Mill, alongside Edinburgh’s Carrie Mac.  After there will be Sick Note with Hot Club de Paris, who have kind of slipped off my radar in the last year or so.  They’ve a new album which is there or thereabout though, so this is probably a good time to catch up with them.  The new stuff on their MySpace sounds pretty good, so it’s all quite promising.

Ambulances – Come With Us

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hot Club de Paris – 3:55am

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Friday19th February 2010: First Aid Kit & The Last Battle at Sneaky Pete’s.

Scandinavian ingenue Americana alt-folksters, with Edinburgh’s most upandcomingest folk-pop band makes for a pretty cast-iron lineup if you ask me.  This has been a long post though, and I am bored of writing about gigs, so to see what I make of First Aid Kit, just read my recent review of their album.

First Aid Kit – Hard Believer

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

16.Richard Hawley – Truelove’s Gutter
There’s something incredibly intimate about Richard Hawley.  See him perform, and he’s a lively, witty raconteur, but on record that is all dialled back to a deep, comfortable and incredibly domestic sort of warmth.

Richard Hawley – For Your Lover Give Some Time

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

17.AA Bondy – When the Devil’s Loose
AA Bondy has similar qualities to Richard Hawley, in that he conveys a confidential sort of intimacy, but there is a lot more weariness about this stuff. It didn’t really make much impact on me the first time around, I have to confess, but the general aching sadness of this record is just inescapable.

AA Bondy – False River

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

18.The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
I confessed in my review that I don’t love every song on this by a long shot, but the almost confrontational refusal to be inhibited or even all that disciplined has resulted in an album with a real feeling of integrity and individuality.

The Flaming Lips – See the Leaves

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

19.Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard – Em Are I
Jeffrey Lewis has a lovely turn of phrase, and a habit of simply following his trains of thought wherever they might lead.  I’d maybe call this album a little inconsistent, but when it’s good it really is excellent, and Lewis himself is so personable as a narrator that it’s hard not to warm to his music.

Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard – Whistle Past the Graveyard

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

20.Ambulances – The Future That Was
I really enjoyed their live performance at Sneaky Pete’s in August, and I realised then what I like so much about this band: restraint.  There are an awful lot of them, but they keep everything really tightly under control.  The album is like that too – an economically assembled and really well executed record of guitar-based indie music.

Ambulances – Cease to Exist

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Well the truly mental Edinburgh August schedule is nearly past and I have to confess that, for the purpose of writing this post anyway, that is something of a relief.  This week I am involved in a couple of things – firstly, Thursday’s Born to be Wide in the Speakeasy at Cabaret Voltaire, Olaf Furniss’s regular night of chat and help and networking and stuff like that.  This week I have been asked to put together a playlist of unsigned Edinburgh bands for the Wheel of Fortune.  There’s something of a grey area in that signed/unsigned stuff, so I might cheat slightly and take the opportunity to plug Song, by Toad bands, which is highly dishonourable.  But then, I am a highly dishonourable man, so what do you expect.

Secondly, I have put together a lineup for Sneaky Pete’s Edge Festival stuff, including brand new Fife indie characters Ambulances, whose debut album I am really enjoying, as well as Art Fag, and the excellent Enfant Bastard.  It’s  a bit more of a loud and scruffy lineup to those you might be used to, but we all need to quit being so fucking delicate from time to time.  I may also do a spot of DJing, but hopefully the true masters will take over before anything too serious needs to be accomplished.  Any volunteers to help out?

[EDIT: Whoops, like a fuckwit I forgot the excellent Shipping Forecast Garden Party.  It's between 1 and 7pm at the Peartree (ie perfect for pre Toad Night bevvying) and you will be entertained by the splendid Woodenbox, Zoey Van Goey, The Stormy Seas and Come in Tokyo, amongst others.  Sorry for missing this one, lads.]

Wednesday 26th August 2009: Dinosaur Pile-Up & The Curators at Sneaky Pete’s.

I don’t know too much about Dinosaur Pile-Up, but I quite like some of the stuff I’ve heard.  It’s quite NME-friendly indie rock, but I remember rather liking a good few of their earliest tunes, although I’ll admit I’ve somewhat taken my eye off them since.

Dinosaur Pile-Up – Love is a Boat and We’re Sinking

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 27 August 2009: Malcolm Middleton & The Red Well at Cabaret Voltaire.

Do I need to tell you anything about Malcolm Middleton?  I shouldn’t, really, should I.

Malcolm Middleton – Fuck it, I Love You

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Friday 28th August 2009:  Frank Turner & Sam Beer at Cabaret Voltaire.

Frank Turner’s early solo stuff put me quite strongly in mind of Billy Bragg.  I really liked it, but I have to confess I haven’t seen him for a while now, so all I can tell you is that his newer stuff appears to embracing a more rounded, full rock ‘n’ roll sound.

Frank Turner – The Real Damage

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Saturday 29th August 2009: Penny Black Remedy, The Red Well, The Stormy Seas, Fanattica & All at Sea at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

The Stormy Seas and Fanattica I know and can recommend.  The others sound quite promising too, and Henry’s is bound to be a bargain, unlike some of the shinier venues in the city.  Should be a good night, this one.

The Stormy Seas – Blood on the Carpet

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sunday 30th August 2009: Song, by Toad Night at Sneaky Pete’s, with Enfant Bastard, Ambulances & Art Fag.

You never really know what you’re going to get with Enfant Bastard, but I will say that I have never seen it be bad, and when he’s good he’s fucking amazing.  Art Fag, whose side project Meursault are doing quite well too, will support, as will the very-promising-indeed Ambulances.

Ambulances – What I Thought Of

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve been waiting for fucking ages to review this album, having first been contacted by the band back in April, but it’s finally available to buy, so here we go.  At the time they contacted me Ambulances were a band I had never seen on a bill anywhere in Scotland (although they are playing at the Song, by Toad night at Sneaky Pete’s on the 30th August). I had at that point never read about them on a blog and had never heard them on the radio, although that has since changed.  But when I first heard from them they were, in short, a complete mystery.

Also, they’re from Fife and are not an alt-folk/electronica band.  Given the ascendancy of Fence Records and Benbecula in those parts I thought indie bands were illegal in the Kingdom these days.

But indie this certainly is.  It has aspects of the latter half of the 80s in some moments, but for the most part I find myself thinking of that element of post-grunge which, instead of making more and more noise, went all moody and started using the long, low growl instead.  I’m being reminded of bands like Preston School of Industry quite a lot, actually, which is a good thing, in my eyes.

As an album The Future That Was is perhaps a tad long, and there are times when the sequencing seems to lose a little bit of purpose, particularly about three quarters of the way through.  I’m not sure what I personally would recommend at this point, so maybe I should shut up, but to my ears, despite the good songs, there’s a slightly wobbly aspect to some shadowy notion which I would descibe as the ‘direction of the album’ around that point – the forwards motion of the record just seems to stall a little.  That’s a pretty vague and unimportant point however, so don’t take it too seriously, I’m just nitpicking.

For a record which came so entirely out of nowhere, as far as my awareness is concerned anyway, this is really very good indeed.  I might be tempted to add a little urgency to a song here and there in future, because fourteen songs at a fairly consistently unhurried pace does get a little cloying here and there, but nevertheless I am really impressed with this record.

Ambulances – What I Thought Of

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ambulances – Cease to Exist

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace – Buy the album here too, or go to Avalanche Records on Cockburn Street, Edinburgh.

This is the last Song, by Toad show on Fresh Air for this term – so the last one until about October time, basically.  As the band are long time Toad friends, and as their long (loooong)-awaited debut album is being released on Monday, it seemed only fitting that Broken Records pop into the studio and have a chat about things, talk through the album itself (read: TOAD EXCLUSIVE!!!1!1 or something like that), and generally shoot the breeze.

To tune in, go to the Fresh Air homepage and click on the big Listen Now button on the left hand side, from about 6.30pm-8pm, UK time.  As per usual, I’ll fill in the playlist below, and you can take the opportunity to leave compliments, questions and abuse in the comments section as you see fit.

01. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Hard to be a Saint in the City (Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1975)
02. White Antelope – Wild Mountain Thyme
03. Broken Records – Wolves (Toad Session)
04. Linfinity – Holy Rain
05. Ambulances – Come With Us
06. Broken Records – Lies
07. Sparrow & the Workshop – Last Chance (Toad Session)
08. The Lovely Eggs – Have You Ever Heard a Digital Accordion
09. The Low Miffs – Dear Josephine
10. Broken Records – Nearly Home
11. Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark

Whee – pub!

Me and the missus are rambling away together on this one.  It’s largely new music, bookended by a couple of more well-known things.  We Invent a new term – a weird combination of food and sex called culiniungus.  We offend the Irish and the Scots.  In fact, we are as offensively and predictably us as you could imagine.

We were out and totally smashed at the Broken Records gig at the Bowery yesterday, followed by some hot Sneaky Pete’s action.  There are some disastrously embarrassing pictures here, if you want to point and laugh.  The gig was amazing.  I knew a group like Broken Records would be amazing in a small space like that, and so it proved.

I had to do some very pointed Standing Up though, which was fucking annoying.  What the fuck is it with people, sitting down at fucking gigs?  If the room’s empty that’s one thing, but the room was full, people were on tiptoes up the back, and this shower of cunts insisted on sitting on their fucking arses down the front, protecting a meter and a half of empty floor space between them and the band.  So, as Mr. Discreetandtactful, I went and stood in front of them.  Fuckwits.  The band did get everyone on their feet after a song or two, which was a fucking relief, but honestly… it’s rock ‘n’ roll bitches, get up off your fucking hippy folk arseholes and stop acting like the Chipping Sodbury Chapter of the National Union of Knitting Champions.  It’s not, to paraphrase a friend of mine, the fucking Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

This delightful little anecdote does have a darker side, however.  Some lass tugged on my sleeve to ask me to sit down during the first song, and I attempted to politely but firmly say no thank you.  Unfortunately I may have succeeded more at the latter than the former, and ended up just being rude to the woman.  Who was very pregnant.  Well done me.  Picking fights with pregnant women isn’t really all that clever, is it.  So, er, sorry pregnant lady, I didn’t mean to be quite so terse, nor did I mean to imply that you should just stop moaning about your baby and stand up.  But then, you can’t really expect to sit two metres back from the stage and object to anyone standing in front of you either, because that’s just silly.

Oh, and we met Peej, a reader from New York, who was in town for the week and said hello.  He was a really nice chap, so why he reads this fucking site is a mystery, to be honest, but it was brilliant of him to say hello, and then to put up with our drunken stumbling later on as well.   Sometimes I love teh internetz.  Not times like this of course, but sometimes.

Toadcast #68 – The Leprecast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

1. Joy Zipper – Dosed & Became Invisible (01.40)
2. Love Like Fire – William (08.37)
3. Rock Plaza Central – O Lord, How Many are My Foes (13.17)
4. Animal Magic Tricks & Neil Pennycook (17.24)
5. Ambulances – Last Old Fiver (24.45)
6. King Creosote – Camels Swapped for Wives (27.11)
7. Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were (33.51)
8. God Help the Girl – Act of the Apostle (44.15)
9. The Limes – Dead Furniture (46.47)
10. The Pogues – Night Train to Lorca (58.06)