Some New Things
Rather than a single coherent post this afternoon, I have a collection of bits and pieces of interesting news all looking for a home, so I reckon one big jumbled post of stuff was probably the way forward.
PAWS: First up, that video above is a new song by well-established Toad favourites PAWS. Phil apparently wrote and recorded the song one night when he couldn’t sleep, and the footage is all stuff shot in the woods around Tain, where he’s from.
Apart from the rather scrappy genesis, what I like about the song is that it sounds very much like a PAWS song, whilst being of a very different pace and feel to their more characteristic, raucous pop music.
It bodes really well for the album, because if they had a challenge ahead of them for that (apart from continuing to write good songs of course) it was to be able to break up the stream of bouncy pop gems with some stuff which was a little different, just to give the album some ebb and flow. Between this and the brilliant, largely improvised instrumental they recorded for our split 12″ it looks like a band known for their mental live shows and irrepressible pop tunes have an awful lot more range to them than people might have come to suspect. This is a good thing.
Yoofs: I think these guys ended up with two songs on my end of year Festive Fifty, which tells you all you need to know about how highly I rate them. They are loosely affiliated with bands like The Black Tambourines and Joanna Gruesome down South, and have a split coming out on the brilliant Art is Hard Records later in the year, I believe.
Before that, however, this. Whilst Yoofs clearly show leanings towards the lo-fi, garagey, sometimes surfey stuff being made quite a lot in the South of England at the moment, they actually prompt me, for the second time in a week, do draw a comparison to the Bees. This is rougher and growlier, but I think the comparison still stands, and it’s one of the reasons I find this band so interesting: because instead of drawing their influences directly from the States, be it slacker indie, lo-fi, psychedelia, surf or whatever, these guys also seem to add in something more distinctly British. Apart from the Bees comparison I can’t put my finger on exactly how that manifests itself, but I do think it’s there.
Anyhow, they have a splendid new single out called Hazy Days which you can download for 50p from here.
Dolfinz: And finally, PAWS’ bedroom record label Cath Records is spluttering into life at the moment as well, which is really good news. As well as the excellent, if a little odd, Generation Scum record (of which more later this week) Cath will be releasing a four-song tape by fellow Song, by Toad Split 12″ band Dolfinz.
The EP is called Mean Girls and is, I kid you not, about the film Mean Girls. I don’t know if they were inspired by Sex Hands writing all their songs about Friends but umm, well I’d rather people wrote songs about this bollocks than some of the po-faced crap which does get released.
