It’s that time of the week once more, when I pop over to Fresh Air Towers and pollute the airwaves of Edinburgh’s innocent student population with my ranting and rambling for a couple of hours.  Yes, I am on Edinburgh’s student radio station between the hours of 6.30pm and 8pm this evening (British Summer Time, I think)

To listen, go to the Fresh Air homepage and click on the big Listen Live button in the top left.

I’ll update this post with the playlist as I go along, and you should all feel free to chip in with comments here and there, should you have anything to add, or just generally feel abusive.  Oh, and apparently I was voted Best Specialist Show at the awards on Saturday, while I was rather ungratefully off getting pished at Trampoline so, er, sorry guys and thanks very much.

1. Monty Python Theme Song (Oh yes, yes I did!)
2. Cherry Ghost – Mathematics
3. Elk City – Los Cruzados
4. Tom Waits – Just the Right Bullets
5. Barton Carroll – Those Days Are Gone and My Heart is Breaking
6. Helicopter Girl – Cry Mississippi
7. Lucky Jim – Our Troubles End Tonight
8. Sad Day For Puppets – Little Light
9. Haunted House – Rattled Out in Makeup
10. Donny Hue & the Colors – Oh Lord
11. Tom Waits – What Keeps Mankind Alive
12. Eels – Devil’s Dog
13. Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Bananfish Revolution
14. American Music Club – Mantovani the Mind Reader
15. Tom Waits – Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

That’s all for this week, folks.  Tune in again next week, same time, for the last show this semester.

Sorry chaps, but this just isn’t very good. It’s Radio2-a-gogo, medium in all senses and at its best it has still been done better by Richard Hawley.

Mathematics, People Help the People, the title track and 4am are all pretty good but the rest has realised my worst fears: medium, medium, medium.

Meh.

Cherry Ghost – Mathematics
Cherry Ghost – 4 a.m.

website | myspace | amazon

It’s all gone a bit American this week, Toadlings. I have no intention of putting out a series of strictly themed podcasts, but it’s still early days and there are so many massive chunks of my music collection I want to poke about in that this may happen a couple of times before things settle down. So I started with a couple of vaguely American-sounding tracks this week and before you know it I ended up with a podcast with a definite Americana theme.

I’m quite happy with how it’s all turned out though, I must confess – a nice combination of classics and small, small bands, so the playlist is working quite well by itself. And actually handling the microphone is getting easier as well. I am quite liking this podcasting business, I’d say!

Toadcast #3 – With added Americana

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1. The Band – The Weight (02.16)
2. Hem – Half Acre (09.18)
3. Elvis Perkins – While You Were Sleeping (12.38)
4. Cherry Ghost – Mathematics (20.27)
5. The Holy Modal Rounders – Hey Hey Baby (25.30)
6. Night Jar – Sweet Annie Lee (28.30)
7. Caramel Jack – Lincoln Jackson Incident (33.45)
8. The Builders & the Butchers – Spanish Death Song (39.27)
9. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Ballad of a Thin Man (49.51)
10. Rick Redbeard – Blood (54.06)
11. Billie Holiday – Georgia on My Mind (59.26)
12. Night Jar – Big Black Horse (64.05)
13. Broken Records – Lies (71.45)
14. DeVotchka – The Enemy Guns (77.57)

Cherry Ghost released their second single a week or so ago. It’s called People Help the People and follows Mathematics in a drive to build anticipation of their debut album Thirst For Romance, released on Monday.

It won’t be a massive surprise to regular readers of Toad when I warn you to prepare for some potentially massive amounts of hypocrisy on my behalf when it comes to this band. Their sound is too pleasant for me not to be really, really wary, but their two singles are genuinely excellent. The b-sides aren’t bad, but they’re not mind-blowing, so I await the album with a little trepidation.

Basically, if their tunes hold up and they remain no more than moderately popular then I will probably love them. If, on the other hand they become as huge as the Guardian reckons they wil after seeing their Glastonbury performance (read it here, but you may have to pull the author out of Simon Aldred’s arse by the ankles first, he’s that far up there, slurping away for all he’s worth) then I will drop them like a hot potato and disavow all knowledge.

How do I justify such blatantly shallow chicanery, you ask? Well, simple: I don’t really, I know it’s bad. That said, they have such a pleasant and mellifluous sound that they are dancing a cheese-wire tightrope between gorgeously uplifting lounge Americana, delivered in a rich and gravelly croon that warms the very cockles of your soul on one hand, and mediocre muzak for the prematurely middle-aged on the other. It really could go either way, and there’s nothing like the over-worship by Pipe & Slippers FM to help nudge anything this finely balanced into a testicle-severing plummet off the wrong side of the tightrope.

Basically, if Coldplay weren’t Coldplay, I could almost like them, albeit in a sort of inoffensive, write passively hummable tunes, yeah sure whatever, kind of way. But the minute this sort of behaviour is elevated to the ludicrously exalted hights that Chris Martin & chums have so bafflingly achieved, then it grates. Hang on, you think, they’re passable, but they’re not really good or anything, and then the Bile of Toad starts to rise and mild indifference turns quickly into psychotic loathing. And then you see and hear the fuckers absolutely everywhere and it just gets worse and worse. And worse.

Well here we sit with Cherry Ghost – are they going to be a terrific little band ploughing the Richard Hawley furrow – an old-fashioned sound, laid back croonery, something to cherish – or will they drift into the sort of depressingly over-rated muzak the likes of Turin Brakes, Starsailor, Travis, Keane and Coldplay have depressed us with over the years? Who knows, but rest assured if it’s the latter I shall be off like a prom dress and nary another mention shall you hear in the Words of Toad.

But if the album’s as good as the first two singles, which can be previewed on their MySpace page, then we might just be in for a treat – a warm and fetching one, all dressed up in clothes that look at once quaintly familiar and strangely new. The first big band of the nu-croon movement, perhaps. But that’s another post altogether…

Cherry Ghost – Thirst For Romance
Cherry Ghost – Mathematics
Cherry Ghost – Four Eyes B-Side to People Help the People

website | myspace | amazon

I know I sound 100% certain of myself all the time, but I’m not as bad as all that. I know that the inner machinations of the record industry are probably a little bit beyond my ken, for example. That said, I don’t think for a second that they can be all that hard to understand. There are plenty of world class idiots making a perfectly good living in virtually any industry in the world, so don’t any of you suppose for a second that anything is ‘just a bit too complicated’ for you. And fuck the sneers of the insecure, suit-sporting arse-monkeys trying desperately to protect their precarious positions by pretending that the general public can’t possibly understand the subtle nuances of what they do. If you can do it, sunshine, with that beaver’s arse of a haircut, then I can certainly fucking do it. And probably with both hands tied behind my back and an angry emu trying to peck my eyes out, because you just don’t seem that fucking bright to me.

[More below the fold, but be careful; it's long and there's no music at the end. Sorry.]

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You’ve all heard me go on about my friend Strath, I believe. Well he was the one who introduced me to such luminaries as Yo La Tengo and The Wedding Present (yes, Liz, he was that important!) back at university. He still sends me quite a few emails about groups these days as well, and it was Strath who introduced me to Camera Obscura. Last year he also tipped me off about the new Walkmen and Veils albums.

Last week sometime he emailed me about a Manchester band called Cherry Ghost, who sit somewhere between the latter day crooning of Richard Hawley and Cousteau and the more slowed down, acoustic affairs you’d find in early Doves.

They have just released a new single which can be downloaded by following the links on their website, and previewed on their myspace page. For the money I bloody well expect you all to go out and buy it – there’s a lovely roll to the music and I really like stuff with this kind of pace to it – laid back, but also with a sort of undulating, forward moving undercurrent that just bowls you along with it. Good stuff, but let’s face it, any group named after a Wilco lyric were always likely to be half decent, weren’t they.

[Edit: WARNING - If you're thinking of buying this, then buy a physical object like CD or vinyl, DO NOT buy the digital single. It is so riddled with DRM I can't even burn it to CD so I can listen to it at home or in the fucking car. So now I have digital fucking files trapped on the computer at work that I can't even fucking listen to in the house. I love how imbecilic record labels do their best to alienate the fans of emerging groups. Really well fucking done boys, give yourselves a pat on the back.]

Cherry Ghost – Thirst For Romance

website | myspace

[Second update:  Fuck me, I can't even play these fucking songs in MediaMonkey, my music software of choice.  Christ almighty, lads, get a fucking grip.  This sort of stupid behaviour leads directly to illegal downloading and if you want to protect your band and get them the recognition their skills deserve you desperately need to get your heads out of your arses.  Jesus wept you people are idiots.]