You all know I’ve been doing a regular slot on DC’s radio show, The Waiting Room, of late, don’t you? Well this week’s slot saw me picking a track by Sky Larkin, as well as three wonderful songs from the splendid Happy Realease Records from darn sarf*. I may have been a little rude about their sound actually, but it was inadvertent. I was trying to head off the criticism from indie snobs – What? Who? None of those round here, surely? – about the fact that they are just plain enjoyable indie-pop for the most part, and ended up implying that I thought they were lightweight. The Genius of Tact strikes again. I should teach courses in this shit.

Anyway, swing by The Waiting Room to download this and past episodes, and Error FM to see what sort of crazy fools agree to put this sort of rubbish on the airwaves. The, er, internet airwaves. Interwav… oh never mind, you know what I mean.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 12th March 2008

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* Darn sarf, for my non-British readers, is the phonetic spelling for how a cockney might pronounce the words ‘down South’. Which is where they are from. Yes, I know, hilarious wasn’t it.

And here’s a sneaky little bonus podcast from myself:
Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

A week or so ago, I recorded a demo show for Fresh Air FM, the local student radio station, with a view to applying for a slot during next term, only the computer ate the bastard thing. Fucking technology. Anyhow, Sunday was Mrs. Toad’s birthday, and for some reason she was keen to get plastered and do a podcast with me, so we re-did it together. It wasn’t played quite as straight as I’d hoped, and by the time I’d had time to reflect on submitting it I was pretty certain Fresh Air would chase me out of the building with sticks. Fortunately for me, however, they didn’t hate it, didn’t seem to think I was a smart-arsed twat and didn’t dispatch me from the building with a boot print in my arse.

As this show is just a pre-record and will be going out randomly over the night when they stop broadcasting, I thought I’d pop it up here for you to have a listen. I won’t be doing this with any more Fresh Air things because, well, you need to go over there and listen for yourselves really, don’t you. But for this once I thought you might like it seeing as you shower of treacherous fuckers all seem to love Mrs. Toad so very bloody much. Be warned though, because it was made for a different audience, so there may be a bit of duplication from previous podcasts, and it’s rather long, as apparently there is a lot of time to fill overnight when there are no presenters in the building.

The Fresh Air plugs themselves were enough to see us kicked out.

Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

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01. Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave It (03.09)
02. The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing (06.41)
03. The Cave Singers – Thinking of Heaven (13.05)
04. Preston School of Industry – Straits of Magellan (17.23)
05. Adam Balbo – Talkin’ Bush (27.11)
06. Donnan Linkz feat. Baje One of Junk Science – The N Word (29.18)
07. Riff-Raff – Romford Girls (36.44)
08. The Pogues – Dirty Old Town (38.58)
09. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City (46.44)
10. Edith Piaf – Elle Frequentait la Rue Pigalle (50.11)
11. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (53.34)
12. AA Bondy – Vice Rag (59.12)
13. Relatively Clean Rivers – Hello Sunshine (68.09)
14. The Eighteenth Day of May – Lady Margaret (71.05)
15. Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar (81.27)
16. Nightjar – Poor Man’s Son (84.01)
17. Ravens & Chimes – General Lafayette, You Are Not Alone! (93.03)
18. Eels – Love of the Loveless (95.59)
19. Glasvegas – It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry (106.49)
20. Flashguns – St. George (111.01)
21. Elle S’Appelle – Little Flame (123.09)
22. Elk City – Cherries in the Snow (125.58)
23. The Low Miffs – Also Sprach Shareholder (130.41)

I mentioned The Cave Singers a little while ago, and I am going to see them on Thursday when they support Band of Horses in Glasgow. So no Edinburgh gigs for me this week, but I can live with that. I got into these guys by virtue of a piece of promotional vinyl which I was sent by their label, which goes to show that if you pick what you send to people carefully enough then you can still get good results with relatively old-fashioned methods.

It’s not the kind of music that is likely to make a shuddering impact on your psyche. As Tim from The Daily Growl observes, there are precious few directly obvious hooks as such, more a creeping atmosphere that shifts and sways and pulls you into the song more slowly.

What we have here is a sort of scratchy, backwoods folk sound that sounds like it originated in a cabin deep in the forests of America’s Pacific Coast. This isn’t exceptionally far from the truth, seeing as the band come from Atlanta, but their collective past in rougher indie spheres brings a growling undercurrent to their music that lifts it away from the realm of pure folk.

The North-West coast is awash with brilliant bands at the moment, most of whom seem to be exploring folk music from one angle or another, with varying degrees of indie tension and feedback mixed in there – Loch Lomond, Horsefeathers and The Builders & the Butchers, to name but a few. The Cave Singers perhaps bring a little more uneasiness to proceedings than most others, but that’s more an issue of the spectral atmosphere of some of the music than any predilection for feedback. A grumbling guitar simmers under the surface of a few of these songs, bringing just that hint of darkness that tilts Invitation Songs away from the prettiness of much folk-influenced output these days.

As such the result is an album which, although it tails off in the latter third, brings an splendid ambiguity to the listening of it. There’s warmth and comfort in much of the sound, but often a slight undercurrent, as with the sterling Helen. The nasal voice adds a little to the uneasiness, but overall this is a comforting and, yes, inviting record of lovely indie-folk that will, if you let it, seep slowly and warmly into your consciousness. Gorgeous.

The Cave Singers – Helen
The Cave Singers – Called

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IT disasters in Toad Hall meant that this podcast was delayed so long that I ended up posting pretty much all of it on the blog before I got to record the thing and all the news was so outdated that I had to find some more news. Fortunately we have some pre-release splendidness from Elbow, Goldfrapp and Stephen Malkmus to make up for it.

There’s also some excellent unsigned music to be had as well, from Maxwell Panther and Meursault, as well as some splendid new singles from Elle S’Appelle and Operahouse. So it’s late, but some of this stuff is really quite excellent. And then there’s LCD Soundsystem who have taken me so long to get into that I am only starting to even enjoy the album now, some eight months or so after its release. What a fuckwit.

There’s a fairly detailed explanation of what is going to be happened with Song, by Toad Records in the new year as well, and how I am going to move these podcasts onwards and upwards. Unfortunately it takes the longest bloody link in recorded history to actual explain it all, but explain it I do. There’s always the track timings listed at the side of the songs if you want to skip it altogether though! Have fun, chaps.

Toadcast #20 – The Late, Late News

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1. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks – Gardenia (01.27)
2. Elle S’Appelle – Little Flame (06.49)
3. Operahouse – Born a Boy (09.40)
4. LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends (14.54)
5. The Hollies – The Air That I Breathe (24.50)
6. Goldfrapp – Little Bird (28.51)
7. Maxwell Panther – Too Many Magazines (35.47)
8. Meursault – The Furnace (39.37)
9. The 4Qs – Pieces of a Puzzle (48.03)
10. Kid Harpoon – Riverside (50.42)
11. Dubious Ranger – Slow Day (56.18)
12. Roger McGuinn & Calexico – One More Cup of Coffee (68.29)
13. The Heavy Circles – Henri (72.45)
14. The Brute Chorus (feat. Tiggs) – The Cuckoo & the Stolen Heart (80.15)
15. Elbow – Grounds For Divorce (88.13)
16. The Cave Singers – Seeds of Night (94.51)

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy of The Cave Singers’ single Thinking of Heaven quite recently, and it’s taken me ages to realise just how good it is.  They are from Seattle and  appear to be pretty much a folk group, but one who approached the genre from a rock ‘n’ roll perspective, not a rinky dinky tin whistle perspective.  Fortunately.

Gothic folk is the standard term, I suppose, for folk music that focuses on the darker side of the canon: rolling, picked guitar undercurrents, dark viola, a slight air of foreboding to the music.  I sometimes get the impression that people also use the term simply to mean ‘folk music that isn’t shit’.  Either use applies here.

Lead vocalist Pete Quirk has an incredibly nasal voice, slightly reminiscent of The Builders & the Butchers.  The music is perhaps more of a type with The Willard Grant Conspiracy, although not quite as grand, and Oregonians Horsefeathers spring to mind as well.

They have a limited edition vinyl single available from Matador here, a single available on emusic and an album due to be officially released in the UK in early February.  A little exhasperatingly with these staggered releases, it came out in the States last year so it is actually already available, which seems to me to slightly defeat the purpose of ‘releasing’ an album, but I guess they need a proper launch over here at some point.

In any case, it’s bloody good, so go and avail yourself of some right away.  And they’re supporting Band of Horses on tour in the UK in February, so make sure you get to these shows early enough to see them.

The Cave Singers – Belmar
The Cave Singers – Seeds of Night
The Cave Singers – Helen

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