No, seriously, a cartoon combine harvester, I kid you not.  What sort of ridiculous synaptic misfire is responsible for that image, you ask?  Or at least, I pretend you ask. Well here’s a needless insight into how these Friday Fives come about for you, seeing as I pretended you asked.

These things are all about finding one of those weird tangents your brain shoots off on at times, and embracing it.  So I was having a piss this morning… no, too much information.  There I was this morning, contemplating how efficient I had been with my inbox this week.  I generally have an ‘On Trial’ folder for unreviewed or undecided mp3s or albums and it can get a bit too full.  By the start of last week it was so bad it contained a second folder call ‘New’, containing all the previous week’s zip downloads and so on.

Now, you will have noticed, as did I, that that is a slippery slope, and a potentially infinite set of Russian Dolls full of new music.  So this week I systematically went through all the top level albums and either reviewed or deleted them, so yesterday I was able to unzip all the folders in ‘New’, move them to ‘On Trial’, and nip this little problem in the bud.  I still have an overflowing inbox, but I feel that it is at least back under control again, which is a relief, because I like to give everyone a fair listen rather than miss them because I have too much to listen to.

So I was standing there having a p… no, there I was contemplating this week’s efficiency and I smugly compared it to being like a combine harvester.  Ho ho, I thought to myself, more like a combine harvester wielding a giant axe.  Yeah, a combine harvester with an axe, that’s what I was like.  And the only place I could imagine seeing a combine harvester with an axe was one of those Disney films like Cars or some such, where there would probably be a big bad combine harvester (probably a thug, so not very bright) wielding and axe and using it to threaten our plucky hero, who is probably something wholesome and American like a Dodge or a Chevrolet*.

So, yes, a cartoon combine harvester dreamt up while I was hav… , that is how this week’s five was born.  And you thought it was magic, eh?  Sheesh!  So if that’s how clever the five tend to be, there’s no excuse not to delurk and chip in five frivolous answers to these questions, and then while away the afternoon bickering about them in the comments.

1. Favourite computer animated film (these can probably all be ads or music videos and stuff, why restrict ourselves).
2. Favourite hand-drawn animated film.
3. Favourite live-action version of a cartoon character.
4. Favourite hero from one of those Disney/Pixar new animations.
5. As a kid what was your favourite picture book?

This week’s five songs are from a compilation called 12″ 80s.  No I don’t really get it either, don’t worry, I’ve not suddenly tried to become cooler than I really am.

Stephen Tin Tin Duffy – Kiss Me (Mixe Plural)

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Lloyd Cole – My Bag (Dancing Mix)

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Echo & the Bunnymen – Never Stop (Discotheque)

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ABC – Tears Are Not Enough (12″ Mix)

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Kid Creole & the Coconuts – I’m a Wonderful Thing (Baby) (12″ Mix)

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*As opposed to something which actually fucking works, like a Volkswagen, but those are made in Socialist Yurp, aren’t they.  Which might be why they work in the first place.

The Great Arcade Fire Hoax?  It is this:

“The prevailing belief amongst j0urnalists that the Arcade Fire invented music. They invented bands with actual instruments, and anything vaguely epic.  None of these things existed before Funeral, and therefore any band exhibiting these characteristics must necessarily sound like the Arcade Fire. “

When Broken Records first emerged they were a lot folkier than they are now, and of course Rory does regularly play both violin and accordion, so I can see how it would have been confusing for journalists, but the ‘Scottish Arcade Fire’ tag applied to them was as amusingly stupid as it was utterly ubiquitous.

Now, to me that made it really quite funny, particularly as quite a few real journalists have an hubristic habit of sneering at bloggers for being ill-informed fanboys, incapable of writing anything with economy, balance, context or objectivity.  Consequently, watching them be collectively stupid, unimaginative, lazy and just plain incapable was something I found highly entertaining. Not so much the band, of course.

Jamie from Broken Records is a sensitve wee soul at the best of times, but the Arcade Fire comparisons went from amusing to tedious to really fucking annoying rather quickly for him.  And then he began to notice that it wasn’t just Broken Records.  Every band – every single fucking indie band – which wasn’t either indie rock or pastoral ‘alt’-folk got compared to the Arcade fucking Fire, particularly if they picked up an actual instrument or made a lot of noise at any point.

Now, as a writer myself I laughed tolerantly at this particular idea.  Yes, millions of bands get compared to the Arcade Fire, but I too have spent ages wracking my brain for a comparison I can feel in my bones but just can’t quite put my finger on.  So I know how maddeningly elusive these things can be, and I’ve certainly made some weak comparisons myself in the past.

Then the Meursault reviews started to come in and yes, you guessed it, Arcade Fire comparisons were being made left right and centre, to the point that Bearded Magazine even brought them up by explicitly refusing to make the comparison, so the fuckers were still mentioned: “This follow-up to their critically-acclaimed debut album, Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues sees the seven-piece move away from the Arcade Fire comparisons which flew in from all directions after that first release.”

Now, when Meursault are being compared to the Arcade Fire, things really have descended into parody.  “The Scottish seven-piece, whose sophomore album sounds a lot like music, owe a heavy debt to music through the ages, with their latest album full of ideas borrowed liberally from, er… music.”

But how the fuck did they do it?  I mean, as Jamie rightly points out, the Arcade Fire basically just sound like Echo and the Bunnymen but with more folk instruments and a bit of David Byrne for good luck, so how the fuck have they hoodwinked the world of journalism into believing that they invented… well, pretty much everything? Anyway, everyone knows that was Tom Waits.

Broken Records – Nearly Home

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Arcade Fire – Ocean of Noise

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Meursault – Salt Pt.1

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Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon

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This is a not entirely accurately-titled podcast, in that the whoring only takes place over a couple of songs at the tail end and does not at all influence any of the rest of the playlist.

What am I talking about, you ask?  Well when I played a few trendy songs a few months back the listership of the podcast doubled over the course of a few weeks.  I noticed this back when I was a bit more rigorous about the blog in the early days: if I reviewed high-profile new releases in the week of release it generated a large spike in readership.

So I’ve dropped a couple of very hype-friendly songs into the end of this podcast to see if that actually has any influence on anything at all.  I found nice ones – ones I actually like, I mean – so don’t worry, your normally glittering listening experience will not be tarnished one bit.  But bear in mind that this week we are all the guineau pigs in a silly internet hit-whoring experiment.  Sorry.

Toadcast #125 – The Whorecast

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01. Burnt Ones – Sunset Hill (03.46)
02. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat (09.34)
03. Girls Names – You Should Know by Now (18.32)
04. Pagan Wanderer Lu – Banish Negative Thoughts (20.26)
05. The Cure – Pictures of You (28.01)
06. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (35.37)
07. Taken by Trees – Watch the Waves (42.12)
08. Wild Nothing – Summer Holiday (49.21)
09. The Beets – What Did I Do (53.20)
10. Silver Columns – Warm Welcome (56.17)
11. Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs (62.41)

Yes, another one. Mwah hah haaa. Lock up the kids, Campfires & Battlefields, because the Song, by Toad musical cuss-o-rama is back on air for more blethering, swearing, slurring and first class tunery.

Actually, I don’t think this one is anything like as good as the first, if I’m honest. It’s a bit over-long at fifteen songs so I think in future I’m going to limit myself to ten or twelve at the most, not least because my shitbox of a computer starts having a panic once I’ve stuffed that many audio files into a single project. So, fifteen songs then, with a bit of an emphasis on late 80s jangly indie guitar and containing one of the most brilliant ever drunken fuck-ups about three-quarters of the way through. Beware the horrors of letting your children turn into indie kids, people! So a bit too long, and occasionally too much inconsequential chatter, but we live and learn and the next one will be better, I promise.

Toadcast #2, the 80s English Indie One

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1. My Teenage Stride – Terror Bends (01.00)
2. Honeytrap – Let’s Do Naked Dancing (03.37)
3. The Mutton Birds – The Queen’s English (09.38)
4. The Veils – The Wild Son (17.38)
5. The 63 Crayons – Devils (21.40)
6. The Smiths – I Started Something (26.05)
7. Honeytrap – Death Before the Silver Screen (31.03)
8. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Morning is Broken (36.14)
9. The Indelicates – New Art For the People (41.57)
10. The Indelicates – Stars (45.51)
11. MJ Hibbett & the Validators – The Lesson of The Smiths (50.32)
12. The Specials – Guns of Navarone (55.02)
13. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (57.20)
14. Honeytrap – Mussolini’s Son (66.06)
15. Frank Turner – Heartless Bastard Motherfucker (73.25)