Song, by Toad

16. Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

This is far from Elbow’s best album, in my opinion, but it’s bloody good nevertheless.  There’s a definite confidence about Elbow these days – a swagger almost – that is pretty much the defining characteristic of this record.
Elbow – Starlings

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17. Devotchka – A Mad & Faithful Telling

It’s slightly amazing to think that these guys started off as a novelty cabaret band, considering that they’ve now released two bloody great albums of their own.  It’s more indie rock and a bit less world music, and I think I’d say it was the better for it actually.
Devotchka – Transliterator

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18. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – A Larum

I am not sure why this album finds itself so far down my list.  Maybe by the time it was released I was already so familiar with most of the songs that it failed to register quite the impact it might have made had I been hearing it all for the first time.
Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Brown Trout Blues

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19. Honeytrap – Follies in Great Cities

I’ve been waiting some time for this, and it didn’t disappoint.  I don’t know if it’s the tortured wail of the vocals or the demented screech of the fiddle that does it for me, but they’re both amazing.  It’s got a sightly old-fashioned sound about it as well – something of the early nineties that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Honeytrap – Eleven

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20. Ghostkeeper – Ghostkeeper and the Keepers of the Great Northern Muskeg

It’s plain-jane indie rock, this stuff, but for some reason this album really grabbed me.  It’s not earth-shattering, just really really enjoyable from beginning to end.
Ghostkeeper – Cruisin’ the Chev

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I suppose it’s pretty obvious to point out that gypsy music, or Eastern European folk at the very least, is to the noughties what Irish folk was to the eighties. That much, I suppose, is fairly clear but what I can’t quite imagine is gypsy stuff falling quite as out of fashion with my own ears as Irish folk music has. I know that this is the very nature of fashion – it’s such an instinctive thing, and so inconceivable at the time how things can drift so comprehensively in and out of favour – but it still seems odd to think of.

I say this because I adored the sound of Irish folky stuff back in 1990 at least as much as I am currently loving all the groups dabbling in the music of Eastern Europe at the moment. But listening to Irish folk-rock now it just sounds so incredibly dated, and I assume the same must happen here eventually.

Pointless waffling aside, of course, I have to point out that this is an incredibly good album. It’s less tinny than some of the early Beirut stuff, less frenetic than A Hawk & a Hacksaw and less pop than a lot of other imitators. They aren’t a straight up folk band by any means, of course, as their excursion into soundtracks with Little Miss Sunshine and their origins as a Burlesque band emphasise.

I don’t know quite to describe what they have that sets them apart from a standard carnival folk band, but there’s something deeper and weightier in the sound. Perhaps it’s something more grandiose or more cinematic, although it’s quite possible I’m only saying this because I know they’ve done film work. There also seem to be hints of Mariachi in there as well, although given my musical ignorance I don’t know if this is because there actually is some Mariachi in the music or if it’s just because they remind me of Calexico.

Anyhow, I reckon you’ve pretty much got the point by now. I’ve struggled slightly to get into their stuff in the past, but this appears to be the album that’s cracked it.

DeVotchKa – Along the Way
DeVotchKa – Undone

website | hype | amazon

I am about to fall foul of Godwin’s Law in my first sentence, but sometimes I wonder why we all demonise Hitler quite so much. Good start, eh? By this I do not mean to make excuses for anything he did or to play down his significance or the horror of the world he tried to create, I mean to talk about other people because Hitler was not as exceptional as you would think, given his status as human horror figure par excellence.

This all arose because I mentioned to a friend of mine that Mrs. Toad and I were planning on painting a massive Soviet Constructivist mural on the back wall of our living room. He said that it sounded like an incredibly cool idea, which of course it does, if a little nuts. Anyhow I said that I knew it was a little politically sensitive, but the actual graphic art from that period was just stunning, so sod it. The only other propaganda stuff I like as much is the Nazi stuff which, idelogy aside, is also amazingly gorgeous graphic art.

His response was interesting. ‘Oh, but you couldn’t ever do that, that would just be way too controversial’, and of course he’s right, it would be too controversial. Brian Ferry expressed a liking for their architecture and was absolutely slaughtered for it. There may well be much more personal context to that, but frankly that’s beside the point. A Nazi mural on the living room wall of your house would cause people to draw breath very sharply indeed.

But why would the Constructivist one not? Constructivism as an artistic movement flourished during Stalin’s reign and was directly influenced by his ideology. Stalin was actually responsible for a similar number of deaths – roughly 20 million* which compares pretty neatly with Hitler’s 20 million. These figures represent just murders, not war deaths. Hitler did pretty much single-handedly cause the Second World War of course, which counts for an awful lot. Nevertheless, even though Stalin is increasingly recognised for his excellence in the field of genocide, the fact that his rate of simple cold-blooded murder compares with that of Hitler makes it a little odd that the mention of his regime and his ideology does not elicit anything like the same horror in the West.

Now obviously Stalin didn’t really threaten direct geographical conquest of our homes, but then Hitler was never going to conquer America either, and yet this mentality still prevails there. It could be argued that Stalin predominantly killed his own people and was thus less of an threat to people outside his borders, but that is nonsense. Russia was very much an empire at the time, so try telling the Ukrainians, the Uzbeks, the Georgians, the Chechens and everyone else he slaughtered that it was only Russians who he threatened.

The other thing is that in percentage terms, apart from in Poland, Hitler wasn’t that efficient either. He killed almost 18% of the Polish population**, but elsewhere he was far less successful. Why is that worse than the likes of Pol Pot who exterminated a similarly massive proportion*** of his population, albeit lesser absolute totals? Hutus versus Tutsis anyone? And the daddy of them all, the relatively unknown Mao Zedong, who managed to eradicate, by conservative estimates, over 40 million people. Forty million. In fact estimates get as high as 43 million for the Great Leap Forward alone.

Now, as I said, I am not under any circumstances trying to downplay the horror of Hitler and the Nazi regime. What amazes me as much as anything is actually that he wasn’t as exceptional as you’d think. And it’s odd that he seems to be the poster child for deranged genocidal lunatics when there were actually worse. I suppose in that sense he has become a symbol in Western culture as much as a historical figure.

As much as anything it interested me that my friend visibly flinched at the idea of a Nazi mural, but thought a Soviet one sounded cool. Fascinating, I thought. Although now that I think about it, perhaps a Soviet mural from the Space Race era might be a less creepy thing to have on our wall. Ugh!

DeVotchKa – The Enemy Guns
Calexico – Dance of Death
Adam & the Ants – Deutscher Girls

Notes on sources:
* All sources are from this site unless otherwise stated. This gentleman is not an historian, he merely works in a library, but he provides massive numbers of direct citations so appears to me to be a reliable source. You are free to dispute this and anything he says of course, and I know the dangers of straying too far from source material, but I am not an historian either.
** From a BBC wiki-ish project, described here.
*** The New York Times.

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)