Song, by Toad

1. Knives and Forks.

Apparently sales of knives are half those of forks in the UK at the moment.  This has been attributed to the rise in ready meals, which come chopped into nice easy little bits, presumably because they think you’ve got flippers for fucking hands and can’t cut up your own food.  Either that or they have no confidence in your ability to use utensils properly and fear lawsuits from people who accidentally stab themselves in the back of their hand with a fucking fork whilst trying to eat their dinner.

But it’s not the prevalence of shitty, poisonous ready meals which is getting on my tits, it’s basic table manners.  You see it in movies all the time: people who are actually eating normal food doing so with only a fucking fork.  They cut using the edge, and then turn it upside down, with the curve facing towards the plate like it was a fucking spoon, and then stab everything up into one great big kebab and shovel the resulting abomination down their fucking cakeholes.

Someone sitting leaning on their left elbow shovelling food in in this manner simply has no table manners.  You cover your mouth when you yawn, you hold the door open for people and you USE A FUCKING KNIFE WHEN YOU EAT.  Who were you fucking raised by, goats?

Beirut – Forks & Knives

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2. The Rain.

It’s fucking July for fuck’s sake.

The Builders and the Butchers – When it Rains (Daytrotter Session)

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3. Copyright on Stupid Things

I am trying to sort out the artwork for our vinyl releases and the company I’m dealing with have templates for the artwork which I can download and print, but can’t open in a graphics package because they are fucking copyright protected.  So I can print them off and waste my fucking time copying out the bastarding things, but I can’t actually just open them and drop in my artwork, which would be a million times easier.  And from their perspective, it helps their customers and virtually guarantees they get artwork to the correct fucking specifications.  Whose damn life does it make any easier to have this fucking shit locked, for Christ’s fucking sake, and how can anyone lose any money by making them freely accessible?  It’s just a series of dimensions and a list of basic instructions for fuck’s sake, locking it off is just a massive and pointless fucking waste of everyone’s time.

Dead Kennedys – Stealing People’s Mail

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4. Trees.

Actually trees are not pissing me off today.  I had a long walk to the bank at lunchtime when it was pissing it down, but I was able to walk under the trees and stay dry, so today I like trees very much.

Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree

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5. Toilet Brushes.

Seriously, my colleagues seem not to know what they are for.  I would be only too happy to fucking demonstrate – with some vigour.

The Coathangers – Don’t Touch My Shit

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Generally, though, I think you would agree that I am not an angry man.

This week, the Friday Five commemorates Mr. & Mrs. Toad’s official state visit to Italy, with questions and music that reflect the culture and history of that great nation.

They’re staying in Puglia, apparently. The ‘heel’ of Italy’s ‘boot’, geographically speaking. An agricultural region, it’s well known for its abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables. Obviously, however, the Toads will be happy anywhere they can get their hands on gin in biblical quantities.

I’d also like to say how well I think Euan’s been doing so far at the conn of the Starship Toadiprise. It’s certainly been a refreshing change of direction for the site, perhaps a little bit more intimate in tone than usual, and with some unusual but rewarding detours. I particularly like the article about the We Sink Ships online photgraphic exhibition. Nicely done, sir.

So, as usual at this time of the week, here’s your opportunity to creep out from the woodwork and talk arse with a bunch of other skiving ne’er-do-wells. This week’s five is possibly not the most biting piece of reportage you’ll have ever encountered, but it’s a vast improvement on last week’s disaster!

So, with a note of apology and a view to casting all memories of Matthew’s despicable scatological fetishes aside, here’s the Friday Five.

1. Which tantalisingly delicious Italian delicasy do you find most maddeningly irresistible?
2. Ferrari, Lamborghini or Maserati?
3. Most notable Italian historical figure.
4. What would you do with a fortnight in Italy?
5. What did the Romans ever do for us?

Beirut – Postcards From Italy

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Pet Shop Boys – King Of Rome

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Turin Brakes – Long Distance

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Bad Manners – Rose Of Italy

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Tiziano Ferro – Stop! Dimentica

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Erm, this is fucking awful.  I loved Beirut’s first two albums, and maybe if I hadn’t heard them I might think this was okay, but this is like watching your football team struggle against a non-league side.  Partly it’s embarrassing, partly it’s frustrating as fuck, and partly you find yourself wondering what they’ll be like if they ever have to play someone decent ever again.

Had I never liked Beirut I wouldn’t care that this seems to have been phoned in from a beach resort in fucking Lanzarote, but it matters.  Reviewers use terms like ‘no passion’ all the times, and it kind of gets on my nerves to be honest.   Bad album or not, no artist doesn’t try, doesn’t care about their work , or just faxes in an album.  Not until they’re the Rolling Stones, playing at writing a seventy-fourth piss-poor shitfest, but not on your third.

That said, I have some sympathy, because that is exactly what this sounds like.  It sounds listless, lifeless, lazy, limp, tedious, tawdry, ter..  t… something that begins with t and means fucking pointless, anyway.  I assume that this is not the case, but this sounds like he is just vacantly reproducing the same sounds as he has always done, albeit with a vaguely different stylistic sheen, without having bothered to take the time to write any songs to go with the sound.  Peh.  As I said, I assume that this cannot actually be the case, but believe me it is just what it sounds like.

Erm, so… well.  I guess that Beirut have enough fans at the moment that most people will just buy this anyway, but I would recommened caution.  In fact I would simply recommend not buying this album.  It’s like pulling Brad Pitt, then unzipping his jeans to find the saddest little cocktail gherkin ever to disgrace a tawdry 80s wife-swapping cocktail party.  And the electronics are fucking shit.

Beirut – No Dice

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Beirut – Venice

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Oops!  Sorry we’re late.  Thankfully, we’re not pregnant.

What a couple of tech-fart heavy days.  Firstly, the show we done prepared/recorded for Wednesday 29th done got killed dead by our glitch-ridden editing software (now retired & replaced) as we were transferring it from one format to another. Gone, it were, plain old gone. To compensate & salvage some professional pride we put the show back to Saturday 31st in order to allow room to breathe & re-record the entire thing (essentially a re-record of the pre-record).

Secondly, we took it as a given that the show was all uploaded & ready to air, via an auto-post for 10pm Saturday 31st, so we turned the computer off & took a much needed relax/sleep.   Imagine our aghastness, then, when today, late afternoon, Sunday 1st February, we discovered the damn auto-pilot had (again) failed to launch.  Buggeration.

Thirdly, we forgot to bloody write the post for this here site – jetlag, see. A contemporary middleclass disease, I’ll have you know.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here we go folks: the first ever Toad Session, with local band and all-round Toad pals Broken Records. These sessions are generally going to take place in my living room, but seeing as these guys were quite keen to record one and their single release is imminent, it seemed sensible to rush things a little. So given my equipment has yet to arrive, we went down to Banana Row Studios and recorded four session tracks and had a bit of chat, and this is the result.

There’s a full podcast, mp3s of the individual songs, a Flickr photo gallery and couple of videos of the whole business, so there’s lots and lots of stuff to play with. I think in terms of workload I can possibly manage about one of these per month, so keep an eye out in the future.

Toadcast #26 – Broken Records Toad Session

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The mp3s include their forthcoming single If the News Makes You Sad Don’t Watch It, a couple of new tracks, Wolves and They All Fell Into the Sea, and a special Toad request, the truly beautiful Out on the Water.

Broken Records – If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It

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Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea

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Broken Records – Wolves

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Broken Records – Out On the Water

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The videos are all posted on the main Song, by Toad YouTube page. There are session videos of Out on the Water and Wolves, but the video of the whole session will be posted a little bit later. We’re new to this, so the video editing is taking a little bit of time. It should be up in two weeks’, hopefully, so you’ll have to gird your loins until then I’m afraid, but I promise to let you know as soon as it makes an appearance.

Toadcast #26 Playlist:
01. Broken Records – If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It (03.34)
02. Broken Records – A Good Reason (07.27)
03. Micah P. Hinson & the Gospel Of Progress – Don’t You Forget (14.33)
04. John Cale – Paris 1919 (24.32)
05. The Moulettes – The Cannibal Song (29.40)
06. Yann Tiersen – Comptine D’un Autre Ete – L’apres-Midi (39.07)
07. Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (40.21)
08. Beirut – Elephant Gun (45.24)
09. The Waterboys – Sweet Thing (52.11)
10. Broken Records – Wolves (63.23)
11. My Latest Novel – When We Were Wolves (66.34)
12. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Love Letter (72.39)
13. Broken Records – Out On the Water (83.16)

If I have one slight issue with these it’s that they’re a little too polished and sensible, really. Not enough of the rude, random style I tend to think gives this site its character. Maybe recording them in the house will change this, but then the recordings won’t be as good. Thoughts? Too shiny? Good like this? Let me know what you think.

I was on Blogfresh Radio this week, talking about Broken Records. I don’t know if I converted everyone there, but I certainly gave it my best shot. The episode is here, for those of you who’d like a listen. I like Blogfresh actually. It’s shorter than my own ramblings and they must get through an awe-inspiring amount of blog-scouring in order to find the stuff they like. So thanks Bill, and I hope this week’s episode goes down well.

In other Broken Records news, they have a single coming out in just under a month’s time. The launch party will be at the Bongo Club in Edinburgh, with a London night the following evening at the Proud Gallery. So you Southerners get to hear what they sound like when monumentally hung over – ha ha, fuck you! The single will the the brilliant If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It and can be pre-ordered from Rough Trade here.

In REALLY FUCKING AMAZING NEWS the lads recorded the first ever Toad Session this weekend just gone. Morgan and I are working our arses off to get the audio and the video assembled into something coherent for you all by the weekend, but I don’t want to make any promises. I’d rather it was done right than rushed, but what you should get will be something like this:
- A podcast with an interview with the lads, some of their song choices and the session tracks.
- All four session tracks in mp3 format.
- Either one or two videos of live session tracks.
- A movie of the whole day, including the interview and at least some of every song.
- Some of Dylan’s pictures from the session.

You may think you’re excited, but there is just no fucking way you’re as excited as I am! I’m desperate to offer a sneaky preview of one of the session tracks in this post, but I think I’ve just about managed to restrain myself – just. In the meantime, here are a couple of tracks that didn’t quite make the podcast and a preview of one of the shots from the session:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – There She Goes, My Beautiful World
Beirut – Postcards From Italy
Yann Tiersen – Ginette

I wasn’t looking forward to this as much as I should have been. I’ve become so used to highly anticipated albums being rubbish this year that I kind of ignored the approach of The Flying Club Cup like one of those world-weary naysayers who go around tediously telling everyone that they’ve heard it all before. And then it turns out to be excellent.

Instead of ferreting about the Balkans for inspiration, this time around Mr. Condon has been fishing around France. The dusty cafe orchestra sound is still very much in evidence, but the frenetic energy of Gulag Orkestar is a little mellowed. It doesn’t sound overly French to me, most of the time, but it’s about interpretation not imitation, so that may be a stupid observation to make.

Where the last record rattled and skipped along the crazy klezmer gypsy beats, this one has a gentle lilting rise and fall to it, the accordion and trumpet being roped into more dreamy Sunday afternoon ambiance than before. It’s a different style, but oddly it feels like little has changed here. You could imagine any of these songs on Gulag Orkestar quite easily. So somehow, even though he’s exploring new territory, it doesn’t feel like Condon is breaking new gound, really (do I get extra points for such a splendidly confused mixing of metaphors?).

I don’t get the impression this record will either win him new fans, nor fail to delight old ones. It’s nothing new exactly, despite what you would assume to be the contradictory fact that it is clearly written in a different style. I love it though, and would definitely recommend it to anyone entertaining even the slightest doubt. I just love the sounds that Beirut make.

Beirut – Nantes
Beirut – Forks & Knives (La Fete)

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There’s no real theme to this week’s podcast, but there’s plenty of splendid new music. Basically I felt so guilty about the crazy rant that the Pink Podcast descended into that I have tried to say as little as possible in this one.

I’m off to the End of the Road Festival this weekend, which is why I recorded an advance post, so you’ll be enjoying this while I’m away getting rained on. The lineup is just phenomenal actually, so it should be really quite a splendid weekend. Tim from the Daily Growl will be there, as will Jamie from the Runout Groove and I believe possibly Sweeping the Nation as well, so it may turn into quite a blog-in. Tragically, however, I will be without my Midget Companion. Mrs. Toad is away in Australia (jammy bitch) with work and doesn’t get back in time to come along, so I will be taking a book and enjoying the pleasure of my own company as best I can.

There was at least one inevitable balls-up though – when describing the Catherine Howe song I said ‘I can’t believe this is current – it sounds so old-fashioned!’ and I have since discovered that in fact it is a 2007 re-release of a 1971 record which may just explain that. In the process I also discovered that I am something of a fucking idiot.

So, End of the Road, and in the meantime, enjoy the podcast – Toad on his very best behaviour!

Toadcast #11 – Not Sure What This One’s About[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo11.mp3]

01. A.A. Bondy – Vice Rag (00.52)
02. White Rabbits – The Plot (03.39)
03. The Courteeners – Cavorting (08.19)
04. Alaska in Winter – Close Your Eyes/We Are Blind (11.46)
05. Beirut – Fork & Knife (La Fete) (18.32)
06. Band of Horses – Is There a Ghost (21.57)
07. Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs – We Go Down (26.52)
08. David Dondero – Rothko Chapel (30.34)
09. Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game (38.15)
10. Calexico – All the Pretty Horses (41.45)
11. Catherine Howe – In the Hot Summer (48.53)
12. Little Name – How to Swim & Live (53.31)
13. Emma Pollock – Adrenaline (56.36)
14. George Pringle – Fellini For Prime Minister (63.52)
15. Octoberman – By the Wayside (67.27)
16. The 1900s – When I Say Go (74.54)
17. (The Real) Tuesday Weld – Kix (79.44)

I loved Gulag Orkestar, and the Lon Gisland EP was also great, so I am really looking forward to the new Beirut album.  It lands some time in October (the 9th in the States, not sure when over here) and will be called The Flying Club Cup.  According to Beirut’s website:

It is very much inspired by the music and culture of France, especially the emotional pull of a musician like Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel was of course Belgian, much like French Fries, but you get the drift.  There will be contributions from folk from Final Fantasy and A Hawk and a Hacksaw, so it all sounds very promising.

The pre-release track, A Sunday Smile, doesn’t sound like much more than a less lively version of what we’ve already heard from Condon and his cohorts, but I’d be surprised if the record itself wasn’t a joy – I just love the faded carnival atmosphere of Beirut.

Beirut – A Sunday Smile