This week there will be fuck all happening in Edinburgh, or at least there better be, because I will be participating in none of it.  Apparently there’s some pagan bollocks going on at the end of the week related to a fat man and some reindeer, but I wouldn’t bother paying that too much attention if I were you.

Actually, there is the Christmas Songwriters’ Club down in Leith on Thursday which looks rather excellent.  I have been trying to buy tickets, but am finding WeGotTickets to be an unspeakable shitfest of password requirements and expired logins and all this other shite.  If you can manage that though, tickets are to be found here and I’d recommend it, because the lineup looks splendid.

Last week, however, was fucking spectacular.

The Song, by Toad Christmas Party was fucking excellent, if a little bit hectic (for us anyway, there was no evidence the audience really noticed).  Everyone came round straight after work, so we had no more than an hour and a half to set up two PAs and soundcheck six bands.  This, as many of you will know, is simply not possible.  Nevertheless, we seemed to get away with it entirely.

The Queen Charlotte Rooms was decked out to the nines in tinsel and fairy lights, and the whole affair was a ludicrous, brilliant shambles.  I was working a bit too much to properly let my hair down (one pint all night, one fucking pint!) but everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and in general I can’t imagine a better way to close out what has been a rather dizzyingly dramatic year for all of us.

A massive thank you to everyone who came, and everyone who played. The Scotsman wrote us a five star review the very next day, and the Herald tried to, but apparently there was a mistake somewhere and we were robbed of two stars, dammit.  They are sorting this as we speak, I believe. Thanks to David Pollock and Nicola Meighan for the writeups.

Eagleowl’s Stars in Your Eyes was the following night at Pilrig St. Paul’s and, although I wasn’t there myself due to parental commitments, apparently I (and any of you who also rather foolishly neglected to attend) missed Neil from Meursault as Tranny Lennox, Jesus H. Foxx as Johnathan Richman, eagleowl as Talking Heads, and Broken Records as REM.  I dearly wish I had been able to go, but I am going to have to content myself with watching Milo’s video above, stolen from this post here, and sighing wistfully to myself.

By Saturday, Kid Canaveral’s Christmas Baubles was the final nail in my liver’s coffin.  I was DJing inbetween bands and, for all my combination of naff eighties hits, indie obscurata, and the odd inclusion of I Feel Pretty from West Side Story and Nothing Like a Dame from South Pacific, I have to confess I rather doubt that my contribution was at all significant.  I did, however, save everyone from a constant repeat of Now That’s What I Call Christmas 64 or whatever else they had on the stereo when I got there, so let’s not underplay it either.

In any case, it was a bloody brilliant night, and by the time I staggered home I think it is fair to say that the weekend had been officially seized.

I am not personally going to bother doing a ‘Best of 2010′ podcast based around my own choices.  Over the next couple of weeks you’re going to get more than enough of that in text form anyway, so I think we can all live without a podcast as well.

What I thought I might do, though, was just do a quick rundown of the Song, by Toad Readers’ song and album of the year voting because… well, why the fuck not, I suppose.  As much as anything I felt like doing it because there were a couple of surprises in there, a couple of omissions and a couple of disagreements, so I guess  it gives me something to whinge about when introducing the songs, eh.

Direct download: Toadcast #153 – The Mobcast

01.The Japanese War Effort – Summer Sun Skateboard (00.21)
02. The National – England (06.05)
03. Foals – Spanish Sahara (11.17)
04. Broken Records – The Motorcycle Boy (24.31)
05. Kid Canaveral – Her Hair Hangs Down (29.06)
06. Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) (33.51)
07. Micah P. Hinson – My God, My God (41.13)
08. David Tattersall – The Typewriter Ribbon (43.44)
09. Meursault – What You Don’t Have (52.46)
10. eagleowl – No Conjunction (60.54)

The results of the only real award that matters this Winter season (apart from the oracular annunciations of my own opinion, of course) can now finally be announced!  AWESOME! I hear you cry in unison.  Maybe.

Last year we had these votes as well, but I rather neglectfully failed to actually add up the final scores.  In all honesty, it’s the making of the lists which is often the best bit, so picking a winner at the very end is probably not entirely necessary for fun to take place, but given you all did me the honour of voting it seems a little rude not to fulfil my side of the bargain.

So yes, my enormous and profoundly complex algorithm (also known as a tally chart) has finally processed all the entries, and we can announce the winner of the Song, by Toad Readers’ Top Five Songs of the Year.  On Friday we will vote for our top five albums, so you might want to start thinking about that one in advance.

Anyone who actually followed the votes will know two things about this particular vote: firstly, that the winner was completely obvious from the very start; and secondly, that there are dozens and dozens of songs with no more than a single vote each, which is kind of inevitable in this kind of thing, but at least suggests that for all Song, by Toad probably represents something of a musical monoculture, there is at least a fair bit of diversity within that narrow vista.  So congratulations to the likes of CTel for coming on here and posting five entirely different songs from a notably different genre to the norm around these parts, and balls to the indie kids who don’t like it!

So, in reverse order, we had many songs tied for sixth place.  They’re not really part of a top five, of course, but I thought you would be interested to see them:
Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Arcade Fire – We Used to Wait
Meursault – One Day This’ll All Be Fields
Meursault – Weather
The National – England
The Scottish Enlightenment – Little Sleep
The Walkmen – Angela Surf City

Getting into the top five, we ended up with a three-way tie for third place (in alphabetical order):

=3. Broken Records – You Know You’re Not Dead (Buy here)

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=3. Foals – Spanish Sahara (Buy here)

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=3. Meursault – What You Don’t Have (Buy here)

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There was a really close-run race for second throughout the voting, with Meursault, Foals and Broken Records all in there at various times, but in the end a little burst of enthusiasm carried the following tranche of epic gorgeousness over the line ahead of the others:

2. eagleowl – No Conjunction (Buy here)

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Which leaves the winner, obvious from the very start of the voting, and a song which, from the moment it was first released, generated so much excitement for the album from which it comes that High Violet was almost guaranteed to do well weeks before anyone heard more than a single song.  Bloodbuzz Ohio may not even be my personal favourite from that record (that would be England) but it does embody the rich, luxuriant sombreness of the album beautifully.

1. The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio (Buy here)

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And so there we go, your favourite five songs from 2010, a year which I thought was brilliant for new albums, far better than the extremely disappointing 2009.  A few things stood out to me from the voting, which are sort of worth mentioning, just by way of follow up.

1. No Sparrow & the Workshop?  Come on, people. I know the Sparrows have been quiet for a while, working on their new album, but I reckon they deserved a little more love than they ended up getting in this particular vote.

2. Ha ha ha, no Joanna fucking Newsom or Laura Marling. Well done.  They’re fucking shit.  I am proud of you.

3. Meursault and The National got a lot of votes. The National scored marginally more total votes than Meursault, but they were mostly for Bloodbuzz Ohio.  Meursault had about five or six songs, all of which could easily have been nudged into the top five by a couple of stray votes here or there.  In the end, I think it’s fair to say (with some pride) that the consistent excellence of their album, and their general schizophrenia as a band, cannibalised their own vote.  No matter though, because these two bands both scored almost double as many total votes as anyone else on the whole list, which is accolade enough in itself.

4. How do I know nothing at all about Foals? I assume that you all read this site because you more or less agree with my taste in music.  Otherwise, I can’t entirely see the point.  So how come, given we all listen to broadly the same kind of music, do you all love Foals so much while I have never once made the time to sit down and listen to their stuff.  Shame on me.  Homework for Christmas!

5. We got a lot of votes. This fact gives the results a sheen of respectability which I could never hope to generate on my own. Thank you.

So, a day late with this, sorry.  I blame a combination of Virgin Media and vast amounts of drinking.  I woke up yesterday, still slightly hungover, and found that Virgin have managed to break our internet.  Here I am today a day and a half later and it is still fucking broken.  They offered us a fiver refund without me even asking for it, so I assume they must have fucked up something pretty significant, but I felt too shitey to venture out to find an internet cafe to write this, sorry.

All of this meant that I missed the chance to plug the Withered Hand gig at the Wee Red Bar last night, sorry.  He is playing tonight at the Captain’s Rest in Glasgow though, with the excellent Japanese War Effort, so I recommend getting along to that if you accidentally find yourself on the wrong side of Scotland this evening.

It’s funny, I remember a couple of years ago the mere fact that there was one music based Christmas party was enough to pique my interest.  This year it seems that every cunt in fucking Scotland is having on, ourselves included.  After the awesome Gerry Loves Records one a couple of weeks ago, this week is the week it all kicks off proper like:

Thursday 16th December 2010: Song, by Toad Records Christmas Party at the Queen Charlotte Rooms, Leith.

We’ll have six bands, and two stages, with Jesus H. Foxx, Inspector Tapehead and Meursault on the noisy stage, and Yusuf Azak, Rob St. John and The Savings and Loan on the quiet stage.  We’ll stagger the bands, but whilst we can sell 180 tickets, only eighty or so people can fit in to the upstairs acoustic room at any one time, so please be understanding if you can’t get in – and prepared if there’s something you really want to see.  Tickets are shifting rather quickly, so I’d recommend getting them in advance (or turning up rather early – but we’ll be starting promptly to get all six bands on, so that might be wise anyway) from either Brown Paper Tickets, or the new Avalanche Records shop down on the Grassmarket.

Friday 17th December 2010: Stars in Their Eyes Christmas at Pilrig St. Paul’s.

This is going to be magic.  Broken Records, eagleowl and Toad Records superstars Jesus H. Foxx and Meursault will be performing as their favourite bands.  Tickets are very, very nearly sold out for this though, so act very sharpish if you want to go along – available here and from Avalanche.  There will be a couple left on the door, but this is not something I recommend you count on.

Saturday 18th December 2010: Tentracks at the Forest Cafe.

As part of the ongoing efforts to save the Forest Cafe from closure, Tentracks are hosting a night there, featuring Not Squares, Foxgang, Logikparty and Fueldiva.  Given that Kid Canaveral has already sold out Saturday’s Christmas party this looks like the perfect place for all you lost and wandering souls in search of a gig this weekend.

Well I was really looking forward to seeing Julie Doiron’s new project Daniel, Fred & Julie this week, but it turns out the fucker’s cancelled, leaving us with little else but a gigantic, all-venue clusterfuck to disentangle on Saturday evening.

I generally don’t feel like the poor relation in musical bun-fights in Edinburgh, but on Saturday Yusuf’s album launch at the St. Stephen’s Centre is going toe to toe with the Leith Tape Club all-day special and, if that wasn’t bad enough, the three-venue, all day extravaganza which is Sneaky Fest.

I feel a bit like a comically feeble Disney character, armed with little more than a dinner fork, with a fire-breathing dragon on one side and an army of homicidally angry vikings on the other, desperately wondering if we can’t all just get along.  But these coincidences, annoying as they are, do just happen in the world of promotion, so only one thing to do: stop whining and just deal with it.

Actually, the Song, by Toad Records Commercial Strategy Department suggested that I just quietly neglect to mention either Sneaky Fest or the Leith Tape Club this week, but the grizzled, indomitable editorial team at Song, by Toad held out for journalistic integrity in the face of insidious commercial pressure – brave chaps, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Oh, and apart from those gigs listed below, Wounded Knee and Remember Remember are listed as playing the Electric Circus this week, but whilst it seems clear enough that Remember Remember are on Thursday 25th, the Electric Circus website is an utter nightmare to get any kind of useful information from, and although Wounded Knee are clearly written down there in the live music bit, it is not next to anything so useful as an actual date.  So erm, good luck.

Oh, and Laura Marling’s at the Liquid Room on Sunday too, but it’s already sold out and she’s incredibly fucking boring anyway, so no skin off anyone’s nose there.  Although a few of you perverts do actually like her stuff, don’t you?  I will never understand the internets.

Saturday 27th November 2010: Yusuf Azak, The Japanese War Effort and Ethan Ash at the St. Stephens Centre.

I’ve talked about the three Scottish launch dates in much more detail here, so suffice to say that I think the St. Stephens Centre looks like a fantastic venue, now that we’ve finally found one, and I would be deeply grateful to anyone forsaking our more glamorous competition to potter on down there on Saturday and enjoy some fine tunes and a glass of wine (it’s BYOB, incidentally, but there are plenty of places nearby).

Yusuf Azak – Eastern Sun

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Saturday 27th November 2010: Leith Tape Club All-Day Special at Cruz.

From Withered Hand to eagleowl, and from FOUND to Over the Wall, taking in a special mystery guest on the way, I have to confess that this looks like a brilliant evening.  And apart from sitting on the top deck in the blazing sunshine, it may be the first recorded instance of actual Fun taking place at Cruz since the days when it was the Guinness family yacht, and presumably saw parties that would turn even Lindsay Lohan’s hair white.

Withered Hand – Religious Songs

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Saturday 27th November 2010: Sneaky Fest three-venue, all-day bonanza.

This takes place in the Electric Circus, Cabaret Voltaire and Sneaky Pete’s, with one ticket covering all shows in all venues all day.  The full lineup is to be found by following the Sneaky’s link above, and includes the likes of Kid Canaveral, Washington Irving, My Tiny Robots, Kid Canaveral and Three Blind Wolves.

Serendipity struck for Woodpigeon at End Of The Road this year, when fellow Canadian act Timber Timbre were delayed on the way to the festival, leaving a vacant slot to be filled on the site’s main stage, the Garden Stage.

Frontman Mark Hamilton was the only Woodpigeon to make the trip over from Calgary for the festival. Fortunately, however, he has a ready-made backing band waiting for him on these shores in the form of our very own Eagleowl – the two band’s origins are entwined with each other following Mark’s time spent living in Edinburgh a few years back – and the collective heroically stepped into the breach.

The band had performed the previous day on another stage, and – during a barnstorming set – had covered Withered Hand‘s wonderful No Cigarettes.

I was looking forward to a repeat performance when I heard about them covering for Timber Timbre, and thought it might be a good idea to film the song this time.

The video quality’s not exactly High Def because it’s only from my little Sony point-and-click instant camera, and it’s a bit shaky in places because - well – it’s me filming it; but it’s not too bad all things considered.

So, whilst the first half of 2010 was relatively quiet on the live music front, August was absolute mayhem. And as the dust settles on another festival period, and we try to assess the physical and financial damage in a calm and orderly fashion, it doesn’t look like things are slowing down on the gig radar. Which I’m rather pleased about.

Monday 6^th September 2010: Miaoux Miaoux and Wounded Knee at Electric Circus. Bart’s House. Sneaky Pete’s.

The rather talented Justin Corrie – not content in being in one third of indie popsters Maple Leave – brings his solo electronic project to Edinburgh. Also I’ll be intrigued to see how Wounded Knee’s looped folk meanderings go down amongst the glitz and glamour of Electric Circus.

Tuesday 7^th September 2010: Super Adventure Club, Luis Franscesco Arena and Hopwood & Black at Sneaky Pete’s.

I’ve no idea about the other two, but Super Adventure Club are brilliant in a really mental way. Or maybe mental in a really brilliant way.

Tuesday 7^th September 2010: Kath Bloom, This Frontier Needs Heroes, Woodpigeon and eagleowl at the Roxy Room.

Basically, an End of the Road warm up gig. And I may be biased, but I think this is one of the most interesting line-ups the cities seen in a while – an incredible coup for first time promoters Powan Presents. This Frontier Needs Heroes will be playing their own set before joining the legendary Kath Bloom as her backing band, just as eagleowl will do the same before swelling the ranks of Woodpigeon. So basically one big old alt.folk love-in.

Thursday 9^th September 2010: Panda Su, The Occasional Flickers and The Last of Private’s Balladeers at Sneaky Pete’s.

The Occasional Flickers will be playing a stripped down set for their first show in a  long while.

Friday 10^th September 2010: The Buzzcocks at The Liquid Rooms.

The Buzzcocks are one of only three good bands that have ever come out of Manchester. Discuss.

Friday 10^th September 2010: Francois & The Atlas Mountains at The Roxy.

Francois & the Atlas Mountains pretty much single handedly turned this year’s Homegame from a really nice community folk festival into an all out weekend dance party. And I’ll love them forever because of that.

Friday 10^th September 2010: Come on Gang!, FOUND and Jesus h. Foxx at The Caves.

Come on Gang! Single launch, featuring support from two of the most exciting and interesting bands in Edinburgh. You can’t go wrong, really.

So, a holiday coming up (an actual one this time – no computer, no work, no nothing) and so many things to get done.  I reeled them off in the van this morning when I was driving Mrs. Toad to work and she asked me if there were actually enough hours in the day to get everything done, and I had to answer in the negative.  Not even if I didn’t actually sleep at all.  So now it’s just a case of choosing what to neglect, which for an obsessive like me is not a comfortable decision to have to make.

So, if anyone has ever wanted to write anything for these pages, this week would be a splendid time to get in touch.  Dylan can be reached at sunday@songbytoad.com – just email a post through as he has kindly offered to generally administer the site in my absence.  It can be anything, from a gig review to a band recommendation, to a rant about something, to just a general ramble about something in your musical past – anything really.

Anyhow, after an enforced absence of several weeks due to holidays, Haarfests and suchlike, it is time to get back to the Wark of a Friday evening.  Mrs. Toad and I haven’t been there for bloody ages, and we are both starting to get twitchy with withdrawal symptoms.

Oh, and of course, the Festival is nearly over, so if you want to take one last chance to catch some things then this is the last week you’ll have the chance.  Lach’s Antihoot finishes this weekend, and they are getting in sort of a greatest hits lineup to mark the finale.  And of course, the Retreat Festival is this weekend at Pilrig St. Paul’s Church in Leith.  If you like music and you don’t go, you are an idiot, it is as simple as that.

So all that remains is for me to ask you to delurkify and chip in your answers to five stupid Friday questions, and then piddle away the rest of your day bickering with people because, let’s face it, you were never really going to do any work on Friday afternoon were you?  Honestly?  Nah, of course not.

1. Chore you will avoid doing this weekend.
2. Biggest treat in store for the weekend.
3. Tune for the afternoon.
4. What should you be doing at the moment instead of fannying about on the internet?
5. Bit of really mindless entertainment you will enjoy most this weekend.

Five bands from the Retreat Festival sampler, which can be downloaded here for free:

Enfant Bastard – Twix Party

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The Wee Rogue – I Cross My Heart

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eagleowl – Eat Hats

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The Douglas Firs – Soporific

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The Leg – Switches

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This is my video diary from the third day of the Fence Collective’s Haarfest 2010.

The power was so doubtful in morning that the people repairing it managed to shut down even more houses, so it wasn’t until about five or six that we were confident that the whole evening wouldn’t have to take place under steam or pedal power, but come back on it did, eventually, and things were able to proceed as normal.

The lineup switched around a bit, with eagleowl having to go on a little early because of babysitting commitments back in Edinburgh (yeah, rock ‘n’ roll, bitches!), so eventually Inspector Tapehead ended up headlining their own unofficial album launch at long last.

And it was a fucking beauuuutiful evening in Anstruther.

For those of you not so keen on the cut and thrust of the bleeding edge of alt-folk, there is the opportunity to do something to satisfy a couple of the other senses this week.   On Thursday 5th August there is a bit of a foodie event taking place at the Drill Hall on Dalmeny Street, called World Kitchen. Also, on Thursday, after having your ears assaulted by my dubious DJing skills, you may wish to pop down to the Wee Red Bar for the inaugural Chops club night.

Myself and Mrs. Toad are taking a bit of holiday too, bravely leaving our house and retarded cat in the hand of Mrs. Toad’s brother.  It works quite well actually.  He crashes with us for a bit, we get the house and cat looked after, and he gets to make a bit of money renting out his house during the Festival.  And then I’ll be back just in time to bugger off to Haarfest in Anstruther for a week and erm… well, there is a Festival in Edinburgh in August isn’t there?  It looks like I might actually miss most of it, although by an odd coincidence  I will be around every Sunday.

And that is a convenient happenstance, because for the month of August Ruth and my good self will be returning to Fresh Air Radio for our Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show with Toad and Ruth, with shows from seven to half eight in the evening on Sundays the 15th, 22nd and 29th August, and a kick-off preview show which will be broadcast (Ruthlessly, unfortunately) this Wednesday 4th August from half eight.  As usual we’ll be looking to get guests and live music on the show, starting with legendary New York anti-folker Lach on the 15th, who will hopefully play a few songs and chat about Lach’s Anti-hoot, his Festival show in which he will be trying to recreate the spirit of New York anti-folk in Edinburgh.  Kinda like the Bowery, then.

Wednesday 4th August 2010: Calvin Johnson, Ben Butler & Mousepad and eagleowl at Pilrig St. Paul’s Church.

Pilrig St. Paul’s is on the corner of Leith Walk and Pilrig Street, and is just the latest in a long list of gorgeous venues sniffed out by Jillian and Emily from Tracer Trails.  It will also be the venue for this year’s christonafuckingbikeimohsoveryexcited Retreat Festival (free sampler of some of the bands involved to be found here), so this will be a chance to sneak preview the place before committing to a weekend of unspeakable joy and drunken liver-punches later in the month.  I know little about this particular lineup, I have to confess, apart from the fact that Calvin Johnson shares a label with the utterly unspeakable and profoundly punchable Jeremy Jay.  But I assume Mr. Johnson himself is a hell of a lot nicer or the Tracer Trails team would never be dealing with him in the first place.

Thursday 5th August 2010:Born to Be Wide Festival Special at the Electric Circus, with all sorts of DJs and bands.

This night is a preview night for Retreat, the Forest Fringe and Acoustic Edinburgh and a general statement that, Festival and imported musical exotica aside, there is plenty of awfy good stuff to be found here the rest of the year too.  There will be mini acoustic sets by a selection of bands on the hour, interspersed with equally mini DJ sets of local music toilers such as myself playing five-song sets of our favourite Edinburgh records. Enfant Bastard, Meursault, Emily Scott and the brilliantly named Haftor Medboe stand out for me on the list of artists booked to play.

Meursault – Love or Limb

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Friday 6th August 2010: Villagers at Sneaky Pete’s.

Villagers were very nearly reviewed on Song, by Toad when they released their debut album a month or so ago.  I found it all just a tad too nice, to be honest, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be genuinely interested to hear them live.  A live performance is often a little more raw than a recorded song, which often leads to me quite considerably preferring a live setting for some of the current rash of polished folk-pop.

Villagers – Becoming a Jackal

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Friday 6th – Sunday 15th August: Acoustic Cafe at the Roxy Art House.

This acoustic mini-festival starts this weekend and runs through to the end of the following one.  On Friday we have Iona Marshall and the Last Battle, Saturday is The One Ensemble and Yusuf Azak and Sunday Meursault (solo) and Esperi.  As well as Electric Circus, Ed from the Roxy seems to be one of the few committed to supporting local music during the tidal wave of imported bumph which swamps the place in August.

Yusuf Azak – Eastern Sun

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Saturday 7th August 2010: FOUND & Milk (I’m not sure that’s the right MySpace link) at the Electric Circus.

FOUND’s rather fantastic (Machine Age Dancing!  MACHINE AGE DANCING!!!) new album is out soon.  How soon I don’t quite know I have to confess, but I can tell you this about it: it’s more of an abrasive indie-rock album that I ever expected from these lads which, frankly, is just showing off.  Get back in your pigeonhole you alt-folk glitch-hopsters!

FOUND – Freaky Freaky Chancer

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