Song, by Toad

Ah, mates.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.  Mrs. Toad’s best friend from her reckless yoof is visiting us here in Edinburgh with her gentleman friend, and consequently I got to thinking about my own old friends, and all the people who, over the years, have introduced me to so much brilliant music.  So I started to patch together a playlist of all the important friends who have added a lot of music to my life.  The problem is that it became way too long for my one hour restriction, so for this week I cast that aside, and allowed myself an extra ten minutes.

Honestly though, old friends are so important, this could have gone on for two hours, easily.  Every one of the people I mention here has a whole story of their own, and it was quite difficult to resist telling all of them in proper detail.  It seems such a shame, actually, to reduce all of these people to a two-minute link.  I could almost do a whole podcast for any one of these scenarios really, and maybe I’ll do that in future.  For now, though, you’ll have to make do with this.  It may be shabby, but it really could have been so much worse.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Toad is fucking plastered.  Oh good.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #50 – The Friendcast

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01. Pink Floyd – On the Turning Away (02.27)
02. Pearl Jam – Black (11.23)
03. The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings (18.30)
04. Gene – Her Fifteen Years (25.23)
05. Radiohead – Black Star (28.04)
06. Verve – Lucky Man (34.41)
07. Weeping Willows – Eternal Flames (39.19)
08. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (45.41)
09. Bob Dylan – Po’ Boy (49.42)
10. Elbow – Newborn (55.46)
11. Blanche – Do You Trust Me? (63.19)
12. Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure (69.07)

During the year I’ve been so desperately thrashing about, trying not to get behind with this blog, that I’ve never really had a worry about what to write about next, apart from choosing between the dozen or so things fluttering about in my head at the time.

I’ve never seriously suffered from writer’s block, and I’m not suffering from it now exactly, but I don’t actually have anything to write about today. Habits form quickly, and I have not blogged for almost two weeks over the Christmas period and am squarely out of the habit of writing. I suppose that during the year I was always thinking about posts, even if not writing them, and for the last few days I’ve not been thinking about posts at all. So here I sit at the computer to write one and there just isn’t one there.

Which, in a way, is refreshing. That’s what a holiday is for, and I have a bulging inbox of new things, some of which are presumably going to be at least half decent – including an email from someone in Pakistan which I am looking forward to – so there’ll be no shortage of new stuff coming up I shouldn’t think.

Also, there are new releases by The Magnetic Fields, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Mountain Goats, Cat Power and Honeytrap to look forward to over the first few months of 2008, so things are looking good. Honeytrap in particular is one I’m looking forward to. There’s also a new Destroyer record and an apparently folkier album by Goldfrapp on the horizon as well, which should be interesting. I love Alison Goldfrapp’s voice, but there’s only so much disco I am really up for, so this new project sounds interesting.

So we set sail for 2008 on the Good Ship Toad and all, it would appear, looks rather rosy. Here are some old American folk songs, which is an area I think I might just explore a little more in the year ahead, along with some contemporary versions of the same songs.

Carlton Rees – 99½ Won’t Do
The Detroit Cobras – 99½ Won’t Do
Doc Watson – John Henry
Bruce Springsteen – John Henry
Burl Ives – Wayfaring Stranger
Blanche – Wayfaring Stranger

I first became aware of Blanche back in, erm, 2004 I think, when they supported The White Stripes at Alexandra Palace down in London. I got tickets at the very last second from a Radio 1 friend and, although I’d heard their name, I knew nothing of what to expect from Blanche.

They were absolutely superb live, all raucous American country with that macabre carnival atmosphere I generally associate with Nick Cave . I bought their EP on the spot and rushed out to buy debut album If We Can’t Trust the Doctors later that year. Doctors is a good record, but it’s patchy and it didn’t quite satisfy my need for that crazier, darker Blanche I had seen on stage.

Little Amber Bottles, on the other hand, does just that. They get called Gothic Country a lot and this is a decent enough pigeonhole.  I tend to put the Willard Grant Conspiracy in this bracket too, although with Blanche there’s less of the sinister, brooding shadow that tends to hang over a Willards record. It can be dark at times, but it reminds me more of The Handsome Family with a little added stomp and rattle than anything else.

Reviewers often use the word ‘mature’ to describe second albums by groups when what they often mean is that they just like it better than their debut. I’m tempted to do the same myself because although I can’t describe exactly how, this does sound like a more mature Blanche. Maybe because it seems to have a little more depth and drive to it, more conviction perhaps. I’m just trying to verbalise impressions here, so I can’t literally explain how these things are embodied in the music.

I love this album though, and this is good. So many shitty sophomore albums in 2007, this may not be famous but it’s great to see a band make a solid start and then really push on from that and get better and stronger. If they keep this up, Blanche should be able to carve out a prominent position for themselves at the very crowded peak of the alt-country genre.

Blanche – A Year From Now
Blanche – Oh Death, Where is Thy Sting?

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Back in the days of CDs, vinyl and cassettes music collections were nice and neat: you had a collection of albums and singles and a small stack of accompanying compilations. On the occasion you found stray songs from compilations, poor albums, samplers and the like then they ended up on the compilations which became records in their own right, with an identity, an atmosphere and a rhythm.

Now, especially since I have started reading mp3 blogs regularly, I have hundreds of isolated songs which don’t belong with other songs. This is a bit odd. I don’t think it’s a good thing, but I’m not sure about that yet – maybe I’m just taking time to adjust.

So this post is about a few things I can’t honestly fit into a proper, coherent post, don’t really know what to do with, but would like you to hear because you might well like them. Musical pick ‘n’ mix, so to speak – the legacy of the digital age.

The Chaos Emeralds have a song on the Tough Love Records sampler.  I have listened to some of their other stuff and not been as impressed, but I like this one.  They’ve split up now anyway, so this song is rather orphaned.  Give it a home, Toadlings.
The  Chaos Emeralds- Furious Trims, Unhappy Haircuts

Parts & Labour (sunglasses recommended if you follow that link) are a group I read about recently on mp3hugger.com and, having really very nearly stopped the song after thirty seconds, was subsequently so impressed I bought the album.  So far the album has yet to grab me, so this song may also be left a little stranded.  It starts out like a dance nightmare, but the minute that guitar kicks in, I’m converted.
Parts & Labour – Fractured Skies

There is a new Blanche album, Little Amber Bottles, approaching on the 18th of June.  I first came across their brand of ramshackle gothic Americana when they supported the White Stripes at the Alexandra Palace down in London, and was entranced.  Their last album was no better than very good, but their recent EP was excellent and I am looking forward to the new record.  I don’t think I convinced the Loose Records chappie that I was important enough to merit an advance demo copy, so you may have to wait until my finances can afford a legitimate copy to hear more.  In the meantime, this is from the What This Town Needs EP.  Enjoy.
Blanche – Child of the Moon

Another one from mp3hugger, this.   I am not an enormous fan of their EP, but I like Alanalda for the following reason: they write current political protest songs.  Not generic ‘the war is bad’ ones, nor ‘the government are all liars’ ones.  But songs like this one, angry about the surveillance culture and the fact that we can all be tracked twenty-four hours a day, from CCTV to credit card transaction records, to mobile phone bills.  It is surprisingly rare to hear people write these sorts of songs and I think they’re important.  Is there anyone else you can suggest – people who read the news, get angry and write songs about it?
Alanalda – Always Someone Watching