Mrs. Toad's Lettuce

The above picture shows how our veggie patch is doing, for those of you who give a flying fuck, which admittedly might not be many of you.  Sunday was spent lying about in the garden reading books, which was nice and relaxing after getting pished late into the night with Monster Island, These Single Spies and Kid Canaveral after the Henry’s gig on Saturday night.

This Saturday we will be collecting for the RNLI in Stockbridge, so if you want to help out please do get in touch as we will need all the people we can get our hands on.  We promise to feed you and ply you with booze, and it’s generally a really enjoyable day.

Tuesday 26th April 2011: Golden Grrrls, The Oates Field & Fuzzy Star at the Wee Red Bar.

Fuzzy pop reigns this week at The Gentle Invasion’s latest gig, with The Oates Field performing alongside two relatively longstanding Scottish bands I have to confess, rather shame-facedly, to never having heard of.  A bit of an internet poke-around later and it sounds like the whole lineup should be right up my street.  And, hopefully, yours.
WrldPeace by Golden Grrrls

Wednesday 27th April 2011: Pensioner, PAWS & Pinky Suavo at Sneaky Pete’s.

This is likely to be quite similar, in a sense, to the Gentle Invasion gig the night before, with the emphasis on rock rather than pop, but nevertheless blanketed in a haze of guitars.  It is also the Pensioner album launch – they have a new album out on Olive Grove Records.

PAWS – Miss American Bookworm

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Thursday 28th April 2011: Nan Turner & Enfant Bastard at the Collective Gallery.

WH666 presents another rather interesting lineup.  Nan Turner sings and plays drums in New York anti-folkers Schwervon, but listening to her MySpace page that doesn’t give you much idea what to expect from her music.  Also, Enfant Bastard has started adding more to his chiptune stuff which, if I am being honest, pushes it back much closer to the kind of thing I personally am into.  Come along, it’ll be a good ‘un, this.

Friday 29th April – Sunday 1st May 2011: The Grassmarket Festival (Facebook event).

The Grassmarket Festival is a street festival involving all the traders with shops on and around the Grassmarket, and will involved vintage clothing, tat stalls, book and records as well as lots of live music.
The lineup looks roughly like this:
Friday 29th: 6pm, The Last Battle; 7pm, Ballboy.
Saturday 30th: 5pm, Star Wheel Press; 6pm, The Gillyflowers; 7pm, Burnt Island.
Sunday 1st: 3pm, A Right Royal Open Couch Session (in Red Dog Music); 5pm, Edinburgh School for the Deaf; 6pm, Second Hand Marching Band; 7pm, TV21.

Burnt Island – A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

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Edinburgh School for the Deaf – 11 Kinds of Loneliness

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The Second Hand Marching Band – Don’t!

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Sorry, this is the best I can do.

Tuesday 14th September - Skullflower, Fordell Research Unit, Noma and Scrim at Banshee Labyrinth

Wednesday 15th September - The Vaselines at The Bongo Club

Thursday 16th September - Naval Cassidy and Usurper at The Roxy

Saturday 18th September - The Last Battle album launch with Matt Norris and Burnt Island at The Roxy

Saturday 18th September - Kid Canaveral and Night Noise Team at Sneaky Pete’s

Christ, my liver is suffering quite badly from Festival Burn as it is, and I have barely attended this year’s festival at all.  I am hoping for a few nights spent drinking tea when we go to China, because God knows I can’t handle much more bloody drinking.  Still, this week looks like a relatively kindly one in terms of personal chemical punishment, so the people of Edinburgh have the best part of a week to prepare themselves for the fireworks which mark the end of the Festival.

Christ I need a glass of orange juice.

Monday 30th September 2010: The Low Anthem & Avi Buffalo at the Queen’s Hall.

This appears to be the last of the big shiny Edge Festival gigs for the year, and it’s a good one to go out on.  The Low Anthem, for those who are yet to hear them, can be rousing blues rock or delicate and beautiful alt-country, depending on which side of the bed they get out of that particular morning.

The Low Anthem – Charlie Darwin

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Monday 30th September 2010: Burnt Island, Adrian Crowley, Ryan van Winkle at the Spiegeltent.

This event is actually part of the Edinburgh Book Festival, and explores the links between, in their words, “ideas written, spoken and sung out loud”. Even as an unapologetic philistine this sounds really very interesting indeed to me, and the bands booked to play are all very good indeed, so I would very much recommend popping along if you’re in town.

Burnt Island – Me and All of My Friends are Alright

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My brother heads off today, so I figured we’d take one last chance to do a podcast while we can.  This is mostly new stuff and inbox though, so I am not sure how he’ll react.

Actually, he was in the room last week while I went through my inbox, played stuff, replied to emails, deleted things, and so on and so forth.  I think his response was that he simply wouldn’t be able to handle the avalanche of shit I have to get through, and that it would simply turn him off music completely.

I don’t mind that, I have to confess, because although some people do send me wildly inappropriate things, after two hours of listening to one ‘psychedelic rock band who are blazing a trail across the LA scene right now’ after another I then open an email from Allister Izenberg, which was possibly the most terse, abrupt and non-sugar-coated promo email I have ever read, even including Trips and Falls.  It was such a bad email actually that even before listening I had a sneaky suspicion I was going to really like the music, and boy oh boy was I right.  It makes all the ‘rock, hip-hop, funk fusion’s next big thing’ emails easily worthwhile.

Toadcast #131 – The Brocast

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01. Hot Lava – Pink Lemonade (02.52)
02. Burnt Island – Hiding Out (07.42)
03. King Post Kitsch – Monomaniac (11.26)
04. Glass Animals – Leaflings (19.17)
05. Allister Izenberg – Little Swan (24.24)
06. Television Keeps us Apart – Voices (33.22)
07. Ola Belle Reed – High on a Mountain (41.01)
08. Clarence Ashley – Cuckoo Bird (51.54)
09. Willard Grant Conspiracy & Telefunk – The Cuckoo (54.23)
10. Soft Cat – Blackbird (62.41)

Mrs. Toad has been stranded in God Bless America by that infernal cloud of Icelandic ash, so I am home alone for the last week and all of the next one.  This is very much Not Fun, because as much as she’s a mean old bitch, I do seem to have developed a grudging affection for the silly old mare so a fortnight apart is very much unappreciated.  It’s about time those Icelanders re-established some bloody discipline, honestly.

Anyhew, there is some excellent stuff on this podcast, even though it really doesn’t hang together around a particular theme as they sometimes do.  In actual fact, I don’t think I’ve done a themey one for a while – might give that a go next week.

Toadcast #118 – The Ashcast

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01. Johnny Flynn – Kentucky Pill (4.11)
02. Burnt Island – A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (10.51)
03. Draw Me Stories – Becomes the Hunted (18.25)
04. Haunted Stereo – Lock the Doors (22.29)
05. Ragged Claws – Lamed Wufniks (30.44)
06. Fleet Foxes – Silver Dagger (36.07)
07. Hezekiah Jones – I Love My Family (40.13)
08. Cocorosie – Lemonade (42.14)
09. Br’er – Crocus (50.41)
10. Devolver – Promise (56.24)
11. Giant Sand – Anarchistic Bloshevistic Cowboy Bundle (58.44)

There’s something wonderfully uncomplicated about this gorgeous EP by Burnt Island. It’s not simplistic or basic or anything like that, it just has a confidently slow pace and an effortless manner – they just make it all seem so easy.

I think what they’ve mastered, which makes this so good, is the art of the Tiny Surprise.  Eels are very good at this as well – there’s hardly been a Big Surprise in Eels’ music in about the last ten years, but E has consistently maintained his knack for a subtle shift in melody or rhythm which, although slight, is just enough to give his songs something enigmatic and satisfying, no matter how familiar his arrangements have become over the years.

Within a song or two you can pretty much tell how the rest of Music and Maths is going to unfold, in a general sense – it’s all gentle, lovely, largely acoustic indie-folk, if you’re looking for a vague pigeonhole.  What the band do brilliantly, though, is take what is a very familiar template and fill it full of little shifts and eddies and distractions, so each song is full of little moments which make you sit up and take notice.

Not infrequently these moments come from the fiddle, which is simply but beautifully played, without any flourishes and showing off.  In fact this applies pretty much to every aspect of this music.  The singing is not overly beautiful nor attention-seeking, electing instead to simply deliver the song, deliver it well, and do no more than that.  Nothing is over-embellished or florid; there’s not a hint of rock ‘n’ roll attitude about this, nor a trace of musickyness, it’s just there in front of you, plain as you like.

Tracks like Hiding Out show that the band can bring up a fuller sound when they want to – in this case sounding just a little like The Veils, actually – but this is something they rarely ever choose to do, and I like that.  It just serves to give this EP a restrained and comforting feel; the impression that everything is just as it should be. I’ve listened to this band’s material before, and I am pretty sure I sent them a ‘thanks but no thanks’ email.  Listening to this (which may or may not be the same stuff, I can’t find the email) I find myself wondering what on earth I was thinking.

Burnt Island – Man on Fire

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