Well well well, this was really rather excellent.  I went along to an absolutely rammed Third Door last night (you know, that place which used to be Medina, but now has a brand spanking new soundsystem, which is excellent news for Edinburgh gig-goers) for an absolutely cracking three-band bill, and a forceful reminder that I have been rather neglecting Jeffrey Lewis for the last couple of years.

Viking Moses – I am really pleased Viking Moses rather randomly turned up on this bill, because he was absolutely excellent at Rob St. John’s album launch last Saturday, but I felt a bit weird reviewing one of my own gigs, so it’s nice to have the chance to put that right here.

Once again, Brendon was brilliant.  His songs have that old fire-and-brimstone gothic folk feel to them, and the wild mood swings of his delivery, from a tender croon to a distressed wail, keep you in a suitably ambiguous sense of uncertainty.  He doesn’t seem to sing songs so much as he seems to simply think in music, and when he lets it spill out, this is what we get. It was another performance which was both intense and whimsical, and full of charm.

Seth Faergolzia – I know almost nothing of Faergolzia’s previous band, Dufus, beyond the reverence in which they are held by certain friends of mine. I am definitely going to be putting an end to that ignorance though, because this was fantastic.  A little like Viking Moses and Jeffrey Lewis, the personal charisma of the man himself was absolutely central to the performance.

He varied from the sentimental to the outright bizarre, at times reminding me more than a little of Fife-based Fence hero Gummi Bako.  There were acoustic guitar songs, supplemented with a thumping kick-drum when real emphasis was needed, and a couple of absolutely masterful monologues, delivered over a pre-recorded track of wonky electronica.  The best way I can think to describe these tracks is to try and conjure a slightly woozy chip-tuner after a few too many beers, slurring a half-remembered version of Tom Waits’ Diamonds on My Windshield.

It’s not unusual for people from bands to be kind of cringeworthy when they dip their toes in this kind of territory, but this was absolutely inspired, and by some miracle seemed to fit perfectly with the rest of the acoustic stuff.  And when he ended the set duetting with Jeffrey Lewis on a song called Weird Old Toad… well, it was like I was being personally serenaded!

Jeffrey Lewis – As for the man himself, well I left with something of a guilty conscience actually.  I thought Lewis’ previous album Em Are I was pretty good, but not really much better than that, so I ended up taking my eye of the ball a little as far as his recent stuff goes.

Well he has a new album out now, and although I don’t know it yet, and although he played a considerable number of old songs last night, I realise I have allowed myself to become a little lazy about a fantastic artist.

Having seen Withered Hand put in a truly excellent performance at the Queen’s Hall on Monday, the comparisons are pretty clear: a talent to be gulp-inducingly touching and laugh-out-loud funny in the same song, and to base their lyrics so heavily on pathos without ever seeming self-indulgent or self-pitying clearly applies to both artists.

The band switched seamlessly from a wistful sway, to frantic lunacy, to playful larking, and in general they neatly reflected the way that Lewis himself seems to have perfected that way of dropping all sorts of thoughts into his music, whilst always maintaining an odd unity of feeling, from the random spoken word histories of Marco Polo set to a cartoon slideshow, to exhortations not to waste your life as time ticks away from you, to a joyous (and recurring) cover of the Bob Seger System’s 2+2=?

And somehow the tangents on which they embarked never seemed incoherent or messy, it just all fit well together, presumably because deep down the entire project is based pretty honestly on the character of Lewis himself, and however much this kind of honesty in music is rarely ever entirely unguarded, his work seems to have a kind of frank integrity and gentle humour which lets him pull off things other artists could never get away with without seeming just a little too intense or self-regarding.

Being one of the best lyricists around and having the ability to write a seemingly endless supply of hummable tunes presumably helps too.

Jeffrey Lewis – You Don’t Have to Be a Scientist to Do Experiments on Your Own Heart

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Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard – Roll Bus Roll

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 If you get this in time, then turn off the internet and scarper down to the Queen’s Hall right now, as they will be screening the Sigur Ros movie INNI tonight, starting at 19:30, with live performances by Meursault and Withered Hand immediately afterwards.

And as for the rest of the week’s gig round-up, it’s actually quite an eclectic one this week, with noise, classical and antifolk on the calendar, all within a few days of one another.

But enough chit-chat, I need to shower and get out the door quick-smart or I shall miss the start of the movie.

Monday 24th October 2011: Sigur Ros ‘INNI‘ screening at the Queen’s Hall, followed by Meursault & Withered Hand.

Umm, I think I already covered this one, didn’t I.

Tuesday 25th October 2011: ASTRO, Okishima Island Tourist Association, Muscletusk at Sneaky Pete’s.

I don’t know too much about this one I have to confess, and I actually am not even entirely sure I myself would enjoy it because I’m a bit of a pop kid at heart, all told, no matter how much distortion and reverb I tend to like it slathered in.  But Braw Gigs have been doing an amazing job putting on noise and experimental shows around Edinburgh in the last year or so, and this is their latest.  Follow the Sneaky’s link to read the promoter’s description of the night, which will tell you more than I ever could.

Wednesday 26th October 2011: Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard with Seth Faergolzia (of Dufus) at The Third Door (formerly Medina).

Jeffrey Lewis is a bit of a hero, basically.  He is one of the sharpest wits around, whose songs can be by turns bleak as hell, or drenched in pathos. The Third Door have installed a brand spanking new sound system in the old Medina, and suddenly we might have a new and decent venue on our hands, because the actual space down there has always been good.

Saturday 29th October 2011: The Rose Street Quartet RSE CONCERT – Music for Strings, Voices, Organ & Percussion at St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral.

This particular listing, I have to confess, is pure nepotism.  I happen to be pals with a couple of members of the Rose Street Quartet but, as Pete said when he suggested I list this particular event, people might fancy a bit of a change and it will be a pretty varied programme, so if you don’t like any particular part they’ll be moving on pretty sharpish. So if you fancy a change from the drearie indie pish (copyright Mrs. Toad 2006) I tend to recommend here, then get along to this instead.

And what, you might ask, is a Stinky Liberace?  Well I will tell you.  It comes from a strange and strangely detailed dream I had last night, which I will try and explain in the sanest way possible.

Myself and a random other person were monitoring someone’s internet usage for some unspecified reason or other.  We noted that the pages were flicking by so fast that it was probable that they were just scrolling through but not actually reading anything.

Then, for the briefest second, another page popped up and then vanished again.  ‘Oh,’ I thought to myself, ‘so they are reading something.’ I went to have a look at what it was, and as I did I was vaguely aware, out of the corner of my eye, of someone running out of the front of the building to the public toilets across the road.  At this point I became aware, in that vague way you do in dreams, that we were in South America.

Anyway, I went to investigate the page which had snagged the attention of the person we were (for no reason that remember being aware of) spying on.  It was just a plain text ad a bit like the ones on Google, and not very interesting, and beside it was a link which said something like those captions you see on Page 3 of the Sun: ‘Michelle, 23, from Taunton’ or something like that.

‘You dirty bastard’, I thought to myself. ‘You don’t pay attention to anything, but you’re aware enough to find the link to the titillating picture of the pretty girl.’  And then I thought, ‘ah fuck it, I might as well’ and clicked on the link myself.

There was nothing there, though, just a small, vague jpeg of what looked a bit like one of those 3D barcodes.  ‘Ach, just bait for spyware’, I thought and peered at it to see what the fuzzy little thumbnail might actually be.  At that point someone jumped up and pointed and screeched with laughter “He got a Stinky Liberace, he got a Stinky Liberace!”

Everyone around me was cackling with glee and pointing, but I had no idea what they were on about, but I happened to put my hand up to my head, and found I had this nasty glue-like substance in my hair.  It suddenly dawned on me why that guy earlier had dashed across the road to the public toilet – he had to wash it out fast.

So I charged off myself and frantically barged someone out of the way, to plug up the sink and run the hot water.  Because the toilet was a bit of a shack in South America there wasn’t much handsoap, so I scrabbled around trying to cobble together whatever I could to wash whatever it was out of my hair.

Around now it dawned on me that a Stinky Liberace was one of those nasty internet pranks to dupe people into clicking on links and then shaming them by getting them to lean into the monitor to peer at the vague thumbnail before shooting some sort of nasty gluey stuff at them as the punchline. There was even a song everyone was singing at me, with a sort of circus-like tune: “He got a Stinky Liberaaaa-chee! He got a Stinky Liberaaaaa-chee!”

And all the time I was wrestling people out of the way in that public toilet in South America to get at the sink and all the handsoap I could get my hands on was ‘How is that fucking possible, it shouldn’t be possible to make something like that squirt out of a computer’ while that fucking annoying song rang around the bloody place.

So now you know what a Stinky Liberace is.  Be careful what you click on on the internet people, or you could end up trying to wash your hair in the sink of a public toilet in South America.  And then what a tool you’d feel.

And you thought you were strange.

I even, as soon as I woke up, looked up the term ‘Stinky Liberace’ to see how the fuck it ended up popping into my head, but it seems not to exist.  Entirely a product of my sleeping brain, apparently.  Which is reassuring in some ways, and kind of terrifying in others.

Anyway, ummm… yeah, I’ll stop now, here’s the Friday Fives.

1. In a word, how did this post make you feel?
2. Stupidest email/attachment anyone ever forwarded you.
3. Of which beast would you like stuffed and mounted head to hang above your fireplace?
4. Best prank you’ve ever played.
5. Best (ie worst) prank that has been played on you.

These five songs were foisted upon me by Neil from Meursault because (with the exception of a particular Scottish emo-folk band) he thinks my music taste is fucking shite.

Beck – Burnt Orange Peel

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The Notwist – Gloomy Planets

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Melanie – What Have They Done to My Song, Ma

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Fog – Ditherer

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Dufus – Radiation

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I love how I’m the self-appointed expert around here, but every damn fucker I know has better taste in music than me.  DAMN YOU, INTERNET!