Morning.  Fucking brilliantly awesome get tae fuck good fucking morning to you all.  Grrrmpf.  You know those days which start out fucking shite from the very get go and before you answer a single email or deal with a single individual you’re already within a whisker of just telling everyone to piss off because you just can’t be fucking arsed with them?  Yep, one of those I’m afraid.  Hopefully El and Brian will cheer me up on Fresh Air this afternoon.

This is the last show on Fresh Air this entire term, I think, so we’ll be playing a combination of Christmas tat and end-of-year favourites, I believe.  And after that I shall be scuttling off for a much-deserved pint.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here

In the meantime, after the hugely successful song of the year vote, we are at that time of year, where I ask you to tell us all which albums you have loved the most this year.  I’ll add them up as we go along and on Monday I will announce the winner.

This is of course the perfect opportunity to de-lurk and say hello.  It’s always nice to hear from people I had no idea were reading, and of course our readership is orders of magnitude larger than our commentership* so I am forever wondering who these shadowy thousands are who read the site regularly but hang about in the shadows saying nothing.  Make today the day!

So, simply, just list your five favourite albums, in no particular order, preferably in the format band – album so I can tally them easier, and we’ll see who everyone’s been enjoying the most in 2011.  And the tracklisting for the radio show will appear live below as we go along, once the show starts at half three.

1. Ian Humberstone – The House on the Hill
2. Seth Faergolzia – Weird Old Toad
3. The Leg – Witch on the Speakers
4. Jesus H. Foxx – So Much Water
5. Louis Barabbas & the Bedlam Six – Away in a Manger
6. Meursault – Christmas in Kirkcaldy
7. Warpaint – Billie Holiday
8. Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol
9. Yusuf Azak – Swim
10. Plastic Animals – Post-Rapture Blues
11. Trapped Mice – Just Like Christmas (Low cover)
12. Waiters – Tomorrowland
13. Battles – Ice Cream
14. Easter – Damp Patch
15. Hookworms – Teen Dreams
16. Dead Rabbits – All You Need
17. Sons of Joy – Go Tell it on the Mountain

*My sincere apologies to the English language.

My friend Morgan has decided that he is going to make it his mission to take me to gigs I am not going to like. Frankly you lot should be sponsoring him because anything that breaks my whining indie kid tunnel vision is surely going to be a benefit to your reading experience here at Song, by Toad.

Having treated me to the glorious experience of an hour spent gazing at Regina Spektor’s wonderful breasts last year, this year he has even more treats in mind, commencing with the sonic assault that is Battles. I may be new to this lot, but I imagine most of you aren’t, given they’ve been talked about in a rather breathless fashion by an assortment of music press for some time now.

Seeing them live, it’s easy to see why. To begin with one of them wanders on stage and begins casually twiddling knobs until he’s set up a slightly reverby guitar loop. One by one the other member of the band join him and so it grows and grows. By the time all four of them are playing you get this wall of sound being generated that you have to simply let wash over you as you bask in the noise.

There is no such thing as lyrics, as they use the voice pretty much just as if it were any other instrument, but it nonetheless brings some welcome variation to the intense atmosphere they create. If there’s one thing this kind of noodling needs however, it’s a solid base, and Battles certainly have that. In amongst the driving guitars, echoing loops and random punching of the keyboard they are anchored by their superlative drummer John Stanier. He is formerly of Helmet apparently – although this means little to me – but his stamina is amazing though, and it is his amazing performance that really impressed me most about the evening.

I have no technical knowledge, so I am in no position to judge talent or any of that, but I’d say it’s worth going to see these lads just for him. By the end of the show, much as I’d enjoyed it, I was losing my fascination with their relentlesly swirling ambiences, but watching him drum like a fiend was something I was happy to do all evening.

This isn’t pop music, this is experimental performance art – almost sonic theatre. As such it doesn’t make for an easily assimilated listening experience for those of us, like myself, who have become so habituated to the four minute pop song with a catchy chorus, but there’s no doubt these lads are good. So I won’t be buying their records, I don’t think, but what a phenomenal gig!

Battles – Atlas
Battles – Tonto

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