Poor old DanDanDan probably thought I’d either ignored their email or hated their music, when in actual fact I was just being a disorganised twat buried under a pile of promo submissions.  Because I like this.  Not all of it, but there’s some really great stuff on this album, and when it’s really good it is pretty fucking awesome.

Originally formed in Edinburgh, two of the band are now resident in Manchester, and there’s a lot of the Fall/John Cooper Clarke era Manchester indie in the sound.  They remind me a little of the excellent Monster Island, although less firmly rooted in that particular sound.

Instead, DanDanDan have that sort of thing at one end of their spectrum, and full-on howling rage at the other, with a little bit of nineties U.S. indie guitar rock thrown in for shits and giggles.  There are times when the melodies get a little lost in the mess, but mess in general is good for me, and generally these guys wield it really, really well.

This opens really strongly, with the brilliant riff of Match of the Day Background Music, and just as my expectations of melodic-yet-nasty garage rock settle in they are enthusiastically kicked in the nuts and told to pull their heads of their arses.

The EP then lurches into that slightly Fallesque territory I mentioned earlier, before fucking off in a rather different direction on Everything’s Just Peachy, one of the EP’s more epic tracks, and following into the far briefer Sexual Freedom of Cats.  I don’t personally have enough familiarity with the reference points here to give you particularly great comparisons, but there is tuneless screeching, indecipherable lyrics and all sorts of guitar battering all going on at once, and it’s… well, it’s bloody good actually.

It took me a while to get into, I have to confess, I think because the first song repeatedly skewed my expectations of the EP, no matter how aware I was of what was going to happen.  By the time I managed to adjust my relationship with Happy Happy Joy Joy to the point where it depended more on the rest of the songs than the first, I began to really enjoy it. Nice work lads.

DanDanDan – Match of the Day Background Music

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DanDanDan – The Sexual Freedom of Cats

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 The Raincast is so called because we have had three days of sporadic, but at times absolutely torrential rain here in Edinburgh this week.  The leak in our ceiling has sprung back into action with some vigour, although this time it manifested itself in a manner which didn’t ruin all sorts of my vinyl, which was generous of it.  We really must get that looked at before the whole bloody ceiling comes crashing down.

The rest of my day will be spent sticking things into envelopes to publicise the Lach release, which is really, really soon, as well as the new album by Trips and Falls, which isn’t out until the end of September.  I will be back on the gocco printer hand printing the artwork for that one though, which isn’t something I’ve done for a while, so rather looking forward to it.

Anyhow, in the meantime, have a wee listen to this. It’s an interesting mix this week, from the utterly obscure, to the borderline famous, to the might almost have been nearly famous five years ago, but not really likely to crack it now.  And then Radiohead. Yes, I’ve finally listened to King of Limbs.  At last.

Direct download: Toadcast #182 – The Raincast

01. Barry Adamson – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis (00.29)
02. DanDanDan – Match of the Day Background Music (08.47)
03. Anna-Anna – Mirrors of America (13.17)
04. Clem Snide – Ice Cube (21.56)
05. Lambchop – Up With People (24.29)
06. Public Dims – Lorimer (31.09)
07. Rollor – Energies are Dead in the Mind Constellation (40.17)
08. Camera Phone – Artifacts (43.44)
09. Radiohead – Lotus Flower (50.55)
10. I Like Trains – Sirens (Remix) (57.19)