The Mysterious Production of Eggs and Weather Systems are two of my favourite albums in the world, so what do you do when someone who is such a favourite becomes very good instead of pupil-dilatingly inspired?  Well, inevitably you end up feeling slightly disappointed, even by excellent albums like this one.

Since Eggs, Bird seems to have pushed towards a more thickly layered sound, rich with instrumentation and somewhat at the expense of some of the clarity of his earlier recordings.  Where previously every violin pluck or guitar strum was audible to the listener, now there is so much rich, textured swooning going on that I find myself missing the sparser early records.

There is, of course, a lot to love in this album.  He lilts and sways his way through songs that tease the borders of sadness and whimsy, rarely entirely abandoning one for the other.  And his musical virtuosity means that the actual listening experience is very rewarding, well beyond the casual ‘Can I hum this?’ reaction to a standard pop song.

Nevertheless, I do find myself thinking that the last two albums don’t quite match up to the genius of the two which preceded them, and although you can never expect a musician to simply repeat a successful formula ad nauseum, I am not sure I am a hundred percent in tune with the direction in which this Bird is currently flying.

Andrew Bird – Oh No

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Andrew Bird – Effigy

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from his website

Well, kids, it’s been a strange old sleepless week & a bit. Of course, what with the Presidential pageant all a hoo-ing & a hah-ing at every turn, I managed to mince about pretty much unnoticed for the most part.

The weather has been atrocious to say the very least. Did I pack for ground frost? Torrential rain? Near hurricane-strength winds? Like fuck I did. Added to that, I’ve been averaging 2am to bed (a foldout in the livingroom of the rented space – sharing with 4 others) & 5.30am wake up calls.

Ed, my (un)usual USof travel companion, has insisted on cooking breakfast for us every morning at 5-cunting-am. The smell of slowly charring bacon has gagged me awake every fucking day – including my one & only day off. On Monday, at 6am, he set the smoke & fire alarms off in the whole apartment complex as he set fire to the electric oven hob with another of his dodgy homegrown concoctions.

The cooker was ruined &, as the rental is billed to my credit card, I’m expecting a sizable bill in the near distant to repair or replace. I’ll go into the finer details of our latest adventure on next week’s show.

So, then, to this week’s show, which has been done on the hoof, via laptop, as I flitted about the States like a ninny. There’s not so much chatter – I was knackered most of the time & the mic I had wasn’t up to much & I am to much of a tight arse to buy another just for one show – but the music more than makes up for it. Some of it, in my humble, is nothing short of astonishing.

Expect, then, many brand new tracks from as yet unreleased albums by the likes of: hillary & the democrats, brooke waggoner, little boots, anna kramer & the lost cause, pete & the pirates, meursault, babian, the welcome wagon, hurray for the riff raff, the cotton jones basket ride, andrew bird, plants & animals, raise high the roof beams, jolie holland, bobby bare jr., hari & aino, the kazoo funk orchestra, warpaint, climber, alela diane, anya marina, the decemberists, basket of figs, miss emily brown, ragged claws, clem snide, & samantha crain & the midnight shivers.

You know what to do.

The Waiting Room: Wednesday 21st January

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Hello people, more podcastenfun once again.  Having done the Deathcast recently, I thought it might be nice to do the polar opposite – the Birthcast.  This week’s podcast is all about the birth of Song, by Toad.  I’ll tell you about how I started writing about music, how I discovered blogs, how I discovered that what I was writing was in fact a blog and how I ultimately ended up on WordPress writing what you are now reading.  r casually skimming over, depending on your bent.

It has also ended up being something of a 2004 retrospective, because that’s when this all started, however slowly, and that side of it has been nice.  I had met Mrs. Toad by this point, and I was all excited, and despite the fact that my job was bollocks, living in London was great fun.  I was on a narrowboat at Nine Elms Pier at this point, which was an amazingly brilliant place to live, and I used to cook myself kettle noodles because I couldn’t be arsed firing up the stove.  I’d boil some water, throw it over some noodles and some stock and chuck in lots of fresh veg – bloody delicious.

Toadcast #40 – The Birthcast

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01. Modest Mouse – Bury Me With It (01.39)
02. The Fiery Furnaces – Chris Matthews (07.57)
03. The Innocence Mission – I Have Not Seen This Day Before (Live) (17.54)
04. American Music Club – Only Love Can Set You Free (22.57)
05. Brian Wilson – Cabin Essence (28.40)
06. Andrew Bird – Lull (35.30)
07. Jim White – Static on the Radio (42.52)
08. Tom Waits – Trampled Rose (49.09)
09. The Dears – Lost in the Plot (54.36)
10. Giant Sand – Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle (59.43)

Bill Oddie, for those of you who don’t know, is a legendary British television birdwatcher – twitcher as they’re known.  He is also the subject of one of the most famous of all mondegreens: Madonna’s “Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie, put your hands all over my body”.

Anyhow, as a legendary feather flutterer it seemed only appropriate that his name should adorn a podcast entirely made up of bands with ornithological names.  We have everything here, from the albatross to the gull to the guillemot to the owl to the sparrow to the pigeon.  Honestly, this podcast could have been twice the length that it is, there were just so many appropriate bands – no Flock of Seagulls, for example, no Sparrow & the Workshop, no Sheryl Crow.

So I hope you enjoy it.  While you’re listening to this, Mrs. Toad and I will be enjoying the End of the Road Festival, and hopefully getting a few interesting interviews in for you all.  It’ll be my first ever attendance as a legitimate press person, so I am feeling very full of myself at the moment, but with a bit of luck I’ll justify the inflated sense of self-importance and bring back some fine bits and pieces for you to enjoy in the next week or two.

Toadcast #37 – The Oddcast

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01. Hate Beak – Feral Parrot (02.27)
02. The Eagles – Outlaw Man (04.52)
03. Eagleowl – Motherfucker (10.55)
04. Woodpigeon – Knock Knock (15.22)
05. The Lovely Sparrows – Department of Foreseeable Outcomes (19.45)
06. The Bowerbirds – In Our Talons (23.47)
07. Doves – A House (35.30)
08. Counting Crows – Start Again (38.12)
09. Andrew Bird – Why (Live) (46.32)
10. Guillemots – Take Me Out (Live Lounge) (50.43)
11. A Hawk & a Hacksaw – Portlandtown (56.07)
12. Gossamer Albatross – Held Hands (59.57)
13. The Housemartins – Me & the Farmer (63.26)

Ah, Mr. Toad enjoys yet another supercilious snigger at the stupid from his entirely imaginary ivory tower. There’s a survey on Forbes.com about the American Dream and what it means today (scroll to the bottom of this page to read it).

I have two favourite quotes from the few that I idly flicked through, firstly from the truly dismal political posturer Al Sharpton which is probably not too far from the truth:

“I think the American Dream is equal protection under the law and equal opportunity.”

It’s a bit vague, but it’ll do for me, but the true gem was this little wonder from the splendid Hugh Hefner:

“It’s an idea unique to America and shared by other countries as well.”

Unique to America and shared by other countries. How can a man clever enough to be rolling around on a bed of firm young buttocks and silicone boobies at his age be stupid enough to come out with something as prize-winningly vacuous as that, then? There’s also this lovely bit of deluded idiocy from the ever-hilarious Chuck Norris:

“When you’ve got God, you’ve got the gold–and all you need to achieve and experience the American Dream.”

If you’ve got Toad, you’ve got the gold baby. We are all about the gold here on Toad and that is something unique to me, and something that you all have too. Aww yeah, Song, by Toad, bringin’ the gold day after day, one vituperative, vicious rant at a time.

U2 – The Playboy Mansion
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – I Had a Dream, Joe
Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire – The Idiot’s Genius

Due to the sort of behaviour generally unheard of in an obsessive music anorak, I missed St. Vincent’s support slot for Mr. Bird due to spending the time in the pub with an old friend, chatting and catching up.  I do acknowledge that this is unacceptable behaviour for a blog pervert though, and unreservedly apologise.  In future I will endeavour to remember where my priorities lie.   So I’m afraid that ‘discovering’ St. Vincent will be another job for another day for Mr. Toad.

Andrew Bird, on the other hand, had me positively sweaty with anticipation.  I’ve heard much and downloaded a fair bit, and generally I’ve always had the impression that he was absolutely mind-blowing live.  Ultimately, I think I expected a little too much and, although he was very good, he didn’t bowl me over.  Probably this is my own fault for expecting a near-religious experience, which really isn’t fair on anybody, but nonetheless I would say ‘very good, but no better’.

One thing the gig did give me was the more ramshackle heart of the supremely polished recent album Armchair Apocrypha.  I’ve found that album a little too slick and shiny to truly love, but the versions here had all the imperfections that generally let me relate to music more closely, which is a very good thing.

There were some moments of genius here too, my favourites being a theatrical solo version of Why? from The Swimming Hour and a lovely rendition of Weather Systems, both from genuinely pre-fame era stuff.  It stood out that Bird might be one of the most technically superior musicians I have ever heard.  His violin playing, to the ear of the pig-ignorant philistine, was absolutely ear-meltingly lovely and, honestly, I could happily have listened to him play the entire gig by himself with little more than his violin for accompaniment.

So, he’s great, I’ve now seen him and it was really very good.  Maybe my excessive expectations led me to be a little disappointed, but there was something there that I didn’t quite connect with, heart and soul, and occasionally, when a performer hits you clean between the eyes, that’s exactly what can happen.

Andrew Bird – Why? (Live)
Andrew Bird – Weather Systems

Would it hurt anyone’s feelings if I said that I just wasn’t convinced by this album, particularly? Which is not to say that I don’t think it’s superbly done, more that it is now just an excellent pop record whereas previous Bird efforts have been right up there at the top of my pantheon of wondrousness.

When I first got into Andrew Bird the thing that pulled me in more than anything – even more than the brilliant violin, the intelligent lyrics and the, erm, well yes, the whistling – was the slightly ramshackle eccentricity of the whole thing. Weather Systems and Mysterious Production of Eggs had a sort of scatterbrained meandering quality which I loved. It was sort of like listening to a folk version of Howe Gelb at times. This aspect of the music is all but gone here, and inasmuch as it doesn’t influence his capacity for writing brilliant tunes, sweeping, emotionally captivating violins and some of the cleverest wordsmithery around, it somehow does take away from the garden shed folk genius aura he had before.

Ultimately though, this feels like an incredibly churlish complaint. This is slick record of intelligent, catchy pop perfection. Very few people out there can come close to matching his ability to generate a single-finger desk drumming pop-along rhythm. Nor his now quite expansively orchestrated musical backgrounds – still a little unusual, despite the sheen. I am going to see him live in London shortly and, assuming he won’t be bringing a whopping great band with him, I am guessing I’ll get to see the scruffy heart of these songs then. Until then – pure pop perfection from Mr. Bird, although I do sometimes miss the shambolic folk weirdo. But maybe that’s just me being a bit too precious.

Andrew Bird – Heretics
Andrew Bird – Scythian Empires

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