I first heard about The Coathangers back when Rich from Cable and Tweed was writing about them, something like four years ago.  For a band who I was introduced to by hearing songs titled Nestle in My Boobies and Leave My Shit Alone, this is a pretty tight rock ‘n’ roll record.  And actually, it’s nothing like the novelty act you might imagine from those two song titles.

The way the vocal duties are passed around reminds me a little of The Sandwitches, with a similar tendency to shift from a coy yelp to a deranged wail at the drop of a hat.  In general the songs are more a mish-mash of garage rock, riot grrrl and the innocence personified of certain C86 female-led bands.

The Coathangers – Nestle in My Boobies

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It’s a broad record though, with songs like Go Away drifting close to twee pop, and then on personal highlight Jaybird the use of the organ reminds me more than a little of recent Song, by Toad Records signing Lil Daggers.

Perhaps the least interesting songs on this, from my perspective, are the ones like recent single Chicken: 30, where it simply sounds like they’ve jammed some old girl-group pop music through a garage punk grinder and seen what emerges.  It’s not that this approach is bad, exactly – indeed I like a lot of bands who are a lot more formulaic than that – it’s just that the songs themselves don’t always quite have the sharpness, and that lively mixture of brash confrontation and lively twinkle in the eye which I like so much about the Coathangers at their best.

So they’ve sensibled-up a little, and made a really good record in doing so.  I personally would be tempted to just loosen up a little the next time around though, and get that reckless, playful spirit back in charge.

The Coathangers – Jaybird

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The Coathangers – Well Alright

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Website (somewhat out of date) | More mp3s | Buy from Insound

This podcast is all about our week’s record shopping in Austin, although I promise I am done going on about SXSW, so those of you bored to tears by the whole business are entirely safe, I promise.

We did buy a fair bit of vinyl while we were over there though, whether it be directly from the bands at their shows (usually whilst still pished and giddy from enjoying the gig) or on one of our particular excursions to either End of an Ear or Waterloo Records.

There is such pleasure to be had from poking through rack upon rack of vinyl, and whilst I have no real quibble with digital music, I think the sheer ritual and physical relationship it sacrifices can’t really be matched in the digital realm.

Direct download: Toadcast #167 – The Shoppingcast

01. X-Ray Eyeballs – Crystal (00.22)
02. The Magnetic Fields – All the Umbrellas in London (08.15)
03. Sparklehorse – Homecoming Queen (11.33)
04. The Coathangers – Chicken 30 (17.35)
05. Lost in the Trees – Walk Around the Lake (24.30)
06. Kurt Vile – My Sympathy (32.44)
07. Pavement – Range Life (35.15)
08. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart (43.57)
09. The Books – The Future, Wouldn’t That be Nice (50.19)
10. Deerhunter – Earthquake (58.27)

Hooray for us – possibly the vilest and least romantic Valentine’s Day Podcast yet!  And before anyone whinges about that picture, go to fucking Wikipedia and complain, because that’s where we bloody got it from.  I know!  Scandalous!  Someone should complain.

So erm, yes.  I don’t think we left anyone unoffended this year.  I sincerely hope not because I don’t like to think of people out there nurturing an anticipated false outrage complex only to be let down.

We do not like romance, we do not like being told when to have fun by people who are simply hoping to exploit our disposable income, we do not like it being implied that being single is some sort of failure, we do not like people measuring their self-worth by how much their partner can be emotionally blackmailed into spending on them, we do not like having to live up to commercially defined standards to demonstrate that we love one another, we do not like having to skip the football just cos we’re supposed to behave one some particular day or other, we do not like fucking teddy bears or fucking chocolates, we do not like sitting in tumbleweed-infested restaurants whilst people glance nervously around them wondering if they’ve done it right, and we do not like having a list of things to live up to before our relationship is considered functional thank you very fucking much.

We do like lazy Saturdays in the garden, swearing at the fire for twenty minutes trying to get it to light with damp logs, meals with friends, new places, listening to vinyl so loud the floor shakes, a bit too much to drink with people that we really like, laughing/shouting at films, arguing about the side of the bed, swearing blind it’s not your turn with the chores when you know damn well it is, drinking coffee in the garden when it’s sunny, slagging off almost everyone, shouting at reactionaries on TV, emailing one another stupid stuff all day, insulting the cat, surprise cups of tea, buying shit on the internet when we’re drunk, only coping with the washing mountain when it threatens to start a SARs epidemic, watering the plants mere minutes before death and walking hand in hand through the park and peering at cool old dudes chuntering around at the allotments or sailing model boats in the park pond.

Oh, and getting pished and recording offensive podcasts for Valentine’s Day… enjoy!

Toadcast #108 – The Boabycast

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01. Cracker – Mr. Wrong (03.10)
02. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key (09.57)
03. The Smiths – Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (17.11)
04. Eels – Love of the Loveless (20.16)
05. The Clash – Brand New Cadillac (29.40)
06. Bill Hicks – Pussywhipped Satan (31.41)
07. Evan Dando – Hard Drive (44.33)
08. The Coathangers – Nestle in My Boobies (48.11)
09. Virgin of the Birds – She’s in the Moon Again (59.10)
10. David Cross – Your Baby is FUCKING BORING! (65.59)

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.

I fucking hate it when people go to gigs and talk all the way through the bastard things. If you don’t want to pay any fucking attention to the songs, then piss off to another fucking pub. This is Edinburgh, there are thousands of places to go, so why don’t you just piss off somewhere else? Secondly, it’s just plain fucking rude.

So what could be more mortifying than to find myself at the Kays Lavelle gig at the Village in Leith last Friday, actually being the one talking too loud all the way through the fucking show. It wasn’t my fault, or at least to a certain extent it wasn’t. At least, there were mitigating circumstances anyway. Basically, because we ended up talking to this really nice couple outside, they talked to us inside, which is fine. Except that they talked really loud, were far too nice to tell to piss off, and very difficult to just quietly shuffle away from.

So basically, I am a coward and found it easier to be rude to Euan who was at least four metres away instead of the person a foot away chattering in my left ear, for reasons of basic proximity. Pathetic excuse isn’t it?

Anyway, I think the band had other more pressing problems, with some deranged old bag, a bottle of Buckie and a fistful of Es down, cavorted somewhat unpleasantly in front of them. You know when not-even-slightly-sexy-not-even-a-little-bit people try and do sexy dancing? It was like that. Actually it was worse – imagine someone who has clearly spent a lifetime jamming her wrinkled body with drugs and booze and nicotine, is probably pushing forty but looks nearly sixty, it at once saggy, emaciated, pale, malnourished, smothered in makeup, and with a crooked lear that would put the fear of god into the penis of even the most diseased gigolo? Now imagine trying to play heartfelt, emotional music with this gargoyle gyrating threateningly at you from a distance of mere feet away – I bet Euan never wished more sincerely for a grand piano in his life.

Anyway, the talky people left halfway through the Kays set, so I was able to enjoy the rest of it with minimal humiliation. Despite their fears for their stripped down lineup, just guitar and piano with Graham the guitarist playing a little drums from time to time, I thought they sounded excellent. There was something a little harsher about the guitar sound, for being so naked, and the general silence in the room served only to emphasise every droplet of piano. Once I’d managed to get my head out of my arse and actually listen to the bloody show, I really enjoyed it. I think Euan has a bigger, more anthemic sound in mind for the band, but I liked their spare set at the Village: there was lots of empty space to let the chords breathe.

It was a great night in general, actually. The Village is a really nice pub, and there are very, very few venues in Edinburgh that are nice places to be irrespective of the music. The importance of this is that indie kids – mostly blokes – will never be able to get girls along to Henry’s, because it’s a shit bar to hang out in if you aren’t really there for the music. And if we ever want to get big audiences for independent music in this city we have to reach out beyond the devoted fans because there just aren’t enough of us to go around. We need to get the people involved who are only kind of interested. So there. Rant over.

Check out Dylan’s excellent pictures here.

The Kays Lavelle – Swanfields
Hothouse Flowers – Shut Up and Listen
The Wedding Present – Always the Quiet One
The Coathangers – Shut Tha Fuck Up

Yes, I know, I should have seen it coming.

I am currently talking to iTunes and Amazon and a few others about joining their affiliate programs. It’s nothing too shocking, just lets them know when someone follows my little text links I tend to leave at the bottom of artist posts and I get a (quite embarrassingly small) royalty for anything someone following these links happens to buy. Given my hosting fees are increasing at an alarming rate, this would help a little, to be honest.

This morning however, my folly was punished. I was faced with this abomination in my inbox, from the iTunes people: “Browse our selection of artwork and choose creative that fits well with your site.” Yes, you read that correctly: “choose creative”. Fuck me, creative is an adjective you retards. Christ al-fucking-mighty, it sets my f*cking teeth on edge so it does. People like this shouldn’t even be allowed to even use the English language until they have proven beyond any doubt that they are going to do so responsibly and without fucking it mercilessly up the arse for no other reason that some sort of Nathan Barley-esque cloyingly desperate grasp for credibility.

I was going to blame Americans to begin with – after all, they replaced the perfectly serviceable ‘colleague’ with the clumsy mouthful that is ‘co-worker’ so are rightly to be treated with suspicion – but I don’t, on reflection, think that’s fair. This is the fault of marketing people. The sort of be-suited fanny that sits in a meeting trying desperately to use the sort of language that implies that they are that tiny little bit more up to date than everyone else at the table. And why do they do this? Why are they so ghoulishly determined to scrabble about like pigeons over breadcrumbs, shedding every last vestige of dignity and respectability in the process, for the slightest shard of recognition? Because there’s fucking thousands of them, and what they do contributes not a single thing to society and requires no fucking skills whatsoever, that’s why.

Instead of actual skills, these clueless fuckwits invent a new language in an offensive attempt to persuade the world that we shouldn’t just seal the doors and windows of every single advertising, PR and marketing company in the world and fill the bastarding buildings to the brim with napalm.

“Choose creative”! I will peer in at them as they burn with a look of amused satisfaction on my face and hold up that expression, printed in huge letters on a massive placard, and make them understand, through the medium of sign language, that this is why they have to suffer and die. Because they forsook God’s creation and made a parasitic abomination of themselves and Jesus just doesn’t fucking love them anymore.

Here’s a group who’ve been doing the rounds on the internet for a bit. It’s The Coathangers with Don’t Touch my Shit. The Shit in question being the English language in this case, clearly. They’re great, if a bit mad, and they cheer me right up. Shout along to this, this weekend:

The Coathangers – Don’t Touch My Shit
The Coathangers – Shut Tha Fuck Up

hype | myspace (a couple more to download here)

PS, I know it’s a bit late to warn you, but this post probably isn’t safe for work. Your IT department’s Swearometer is probably going into something resembling an epileptic fit at this point.