Sometimes I take the wrong message from advertising.

You know those adverts where they hysterically proclaim that there are many more bacteria on your chopping board than there are on your toilet seat?  Well I assume the message they are intending to put across is something like this:

“Aaaagh, ohmyfuckinggod, what have I done, I’ve poisoned my child, I’m a SUCH A BAD MOTHER I MUST BUY MORE OF YOUR CHEMICAL SHITE!”

I, on the other hand, take the message to be this, pretty much:

“Ah well, no need to worry about the toilet seat then.”

But then I don’t think I’m entirely in their target audience, although I could be wrong.

Anyhow, for all there isn’t really all that much going on this week, it does rather annoyingly all seem to be taking place on the same two days at the end of the week.  And once again, I happen to have accidentally ended up putting on a gig at Henry’s at the same time as Pendulum Man puts on a Song, by Toad Records band at the Banshee Labyrinth.  Balls.

Friday 6th April: Edinburgh School For the Deaf, Chris Devotion and the Expectations & Blank Canvas play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

I haven’t seen Edinburgh School For the Deaf since noise-merchant Kieran Naughton moved down South and the band had to rejig their lineup slightly, so this looks really good.  The whole lineup is strong actually, because CD/EX were fantastic at the Ides of Toad earlier in the year, with an awesome set of boisterous rock ‘n’ roll.  And Blank Canvas I have yet to see at all, despite their generating a good bit of buzz around these parts recently.

Edinburgh School For the Deaf – Love is Terminal

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Friday 6th April: Indie Funday Friday with Cancel the Astronauts, The Cosmonauts, Fishing for Seagulls & Astronaut Head and at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

All the proceeds from this night of pure bouncy indie-pop fun go to Capability Scotland, so as well as fun, you can also reassure yourself that you are making a positive contribution to the world, rather than just going out and getting pished like you normally might on a Friday night.

Cancel the Astronauts – I am the President of Your Fanclub (and Last Night I Followed You Home)

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Saturday 7th April: North American War, Plastic Animals & Palms at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I’ve been trying to get these two bands through to Edinburgh for a while, and it is finally happening this weekend.  Palms still only have a single song on their Soundcloud page, so I honestly don’t know all that much about them, but North American War’s five song Me and My G.I. Joes EP is really good, and Plastic Animals have been recording recently, so they should be ready to release EP4 into the world relatively soon.  All in all this should be an excellent evening of guitar music which is pretty constantly on the verge of falling to pieces.

Palms – Wolf

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Saturday 7th April: The Japanese War Effort, Ten & Convex Mancave at the Banshee Labyrinth.

For those of you not so very much interested in guitars, across the city on Saturday there will be something altogether more layered and experimental, with Song, by Toad’s favourite buckie-fuelled smart-arse The Japanese War Effort on a bill with Ten and Convex Mancave.  Tickets can be bought here, and come with a free download of a couple of tracks from the bands on the bill.

The Japanese War Effort – Summer Sun Skateboard

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11.David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got No Sole The first song we heard from DTB’s fantastic album, and perhaps the poppiest of the lot.  Catchy, unusual and immensely hummable.

12.Kurt Vile – Baby’s Arms Another album from which it is tricky to extricate just one song as a highlight, but for some reason I’m giving this the nod above Jesus Fever or Puppet to the Man. I think it’s the most late night and glass of red winey song on the album, but it’s close.

13.The Sandwitches – Lightfoot Are you still allowed to describe songs as joyous romps these days?  Because that’s what this feels like, an idiosyncratic, gleeful romp of a song.

14.Josh T Pearson – Country Dumb It’s hard to pick out just one song from this record, but this one seems to stand out for some reason.  Maybe it’s related to the number of times I’ve heard it and the circumstances, but there’s an unsettling fatalism to this which lifts it above the autobiographical confessional of the rest of the album.

15.John Knox Sex Club – Above Us the Waves This kind of sincere, epic grandiosity is really difficult to pull off without coming across as a bit po-faced or joyless, but this is just spell-binding.

16.Jonnie Common – Summer Is For Going Places There are so many incredible songs on this Jonnie Common album I could easily have picked four or five for the Festive Fifty, but I didn’t want the whole thing to be dominated by one or two artists.  Summer is For Going Places is as laid back and infectious as the rest of Master of None.

17.Crystal Swells – Mellow Californian Another masterpiece of feral, overloaded lo-fi brilliance.  And no matter how messy they make this stuff, Crystal Swells always make sure the pop song isn’t lost, so it may not sound like it, but I reckon they know exactly what they’re doing.

18.Yoofs – John Actor is Monkfish I love the chorus on this, the vocal refrain, how well-controlled the momentum of the song is – and once again we have an unknown DIY band with two songs in my Festive Fifty.  Keep an eye on Art is Hard Records in the new year.

19.Hookworms – Teen Dreams For unheard of DIY bands to produce stuff with this much oomph is unusual.  This is from a self-titled 12″ now out on Faux Discx, and it’s, well, epic, I suppose is the best way to describe it.

20.Easter – Damp Patch For a band with three songs on a Soundcloud page and nothing else, I am a bit wary of over-stating my own enthusiasm for this band.  They have a sort of slow-burn to them, but then that spills over into raucous endings, a bit proggy, a bit krauty and all messy.  This track isn’t their most aggressive, but it’s bloody great.

21.Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Of Scottish Blood And Sympathies Epic, post-rocky, shoegazey awesomeness from a band who threw their biggest beast of a track down right at the very beginning of their debut album.

22.Earth Girl Helen Brown – Girls of My Dreams The weird sense of otherworldly fuzz on this record made it absolutely compelling from the first listen.  It’s like listening to a lost gem from the sixties with a brain so addled you can barely make out the stereo.

23.Jarad Miles – Miles Away Rocketship is a lovely record, and there are some gorgeous, touching songs on it, but perhaps the quietest, most low-key one of the lot caught my attention the most – touching and full of pathos.

24.Pillars and Tongues – Thank you Oaky Grandiose and beautiful, rich and enveloping – if one song sums up why you should own and love this album then I reckon it might be this one.

25.The Sandwitches – Heaviest Head In The West As much as the jaunty, carefree pop songs on this album caught my attention, one of the best songs on the album is this one, which is both far darker and contains one of the most arresting, enigmatic squeals in pop history.

26.Elbow – Lippy Kids I am not all that into the new Elbow album, but this track is an absolute blinder.  It’s gorgeous, and contains some of Guy Garvey’s most poignant lyrics.

27.Crystal Stilts – Shake The Shackles It wasn’t all that consistent an album, but there are some cracking songs – sort of like the Ringo Deathstarr album in that sense – and this is the best of them.  The crooned delivery almost has a New Romantic edge to it, but the rest of the song is shoegazey, garagey goodness.

28.FOUND – Machine Age Dancing The wonky breakdown in this had me sending text messages to the band the first time I heard it.  Songs like Vincent Gallo and Anti-Climb Paint may have been well familiar to FOUND fans by the time Factorycraft came out, but they kept plenty of gems to themselves, and this is one of them.

29.Tom Waits – Hell Broke Luce This is far from a vintage album, but the deranged crashing about of this song is probably as close as Bad as Me gets to vintage Tom Waits.

30.Palms – Wolf Despite the really, really rough recording (those cymbal crescendoes actually quite hurt my ears) this is still clearly a brilliant song.  It’s a more brooding approach to garage rock (and I use that term, as with all genre terms, extremely loosely) than some of the more frantic stuff I’ve heard this year, and is a song I played something like ten times consecutively the first time I heard it.

Zip file download: right-click, save as.

1-10 | 11-30 | 31-50

 Right, all the amateurs have had a go, and we’ve seen disturbing amounts of Bon Iver and PJ Harvey on lists from Bradford to Boston this year, but it’s time for those of us who really know what’s good and what isn’t to step up and set the record straight.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the definitive list of what’s been good this year, so you can all stop pretending to care what Drowned in Sound or Pitchfork think, and find out what you should really be thinking about music.

That’s all bollocks of course, and I am not stupid enough to believe that my list is any better than anyone else’s (apart from not having PJ Harvey, Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes on it of course), this is just a list of what I have been enjoying the most in 2011.  As I’ve been listening to a lot of DIY garagey stuff, I’ve actually listened to an awful lot of EPs and mini-albums and stuff like that, so I’ve been pretty loose with my definition of what an album actually is, so you might well think a couple of these picks are cheating a little bit.

 20: Horsecollar – You’ve a Big Heart, Sweet Tiger For a DIY pop album recorded on what appears to be the tiniest of budgets, this record more than makes up for its technical shortcomings by having charm, wit and pathos all engagingly interwoven to produce an album which is both hummable and incredibly likeable.

Horsecollar – Courtland Street

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  19. John Knox Sex Club – Raise Ravens I actually think this record is slightly uneven, which may enrage a few people I know who think it is entirely brilliant.  When these guys hit the heights, though, they are absolutely spellbinding, both on record and live.

John Knox Sex Club – Katie Cruel

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  18. The Quiet Americans – Medicine Alright, alright I know that I suppose I should strictly call this an EP, but I told you I was going to be a bit loose with that particular definition on this list.  I bought this on tape a month or two ago and it has hardly been out of the van stereo ever since: simply awesome pop tunes, and that’s why it’s on this list.

The Quiet Americans – Be Alone

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  17. Edinburgh School for the Deaf – New Youth Bible These guys have rather inevitably gone a little quiet since they lost a guitarist to the charms of London earlier in the year.  Nevertheless, before he left, they fortunately found time to crank out this ambitious, epic bit of grumbly shoegaze.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Love is Terminal

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  16. Dirty Beaches – Badlands This is perhaps the pinnacle of my fad for unlistenably muddy recordings, which has rather dominated my listening this year.  It’s murky as fuck, but there’s something enthrallingly obtuse about it at the same time which, even months later, I still can’t put my finger on exactly.

Dirty Beaches – Sweet 17

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  15. Powerdove – Be Mine This is an incredibly beautiful record of wonderfully constructed music.  A combination of the skeletally minimal arrangements and the whispered, barely audible vocals just draws you in, to the point you’re almost staring at the stereo.  Also, unlike a couple of other albums which employed this approach this year, it is short enough and varied enough to be constantly engaging from start to finish.

Powerdove – Impact

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  14. Former Bullies – Golden Chains Former Bullies have been around for a good few years now, and I am admittedly rather late to the party.  They are part of a Manchester scene which I have really, really enjoyed exploring this year, and this album couldn’t have been better timed.  It’s as lo-fi as a lot of their contemporaries, but less garagey or loud, opting more for a laid back pop vibe instead.

Former Bullies – Golden Chains

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  13. Earth Girl Helen Brown – Story of an Earth Girl The first song I heard from this release dazzled and thrilled me in equal measure.  Following up on how the record came about introduced me to Sonny and the Sunsets, to The Sandwitches, to the 100 Records project, to Endless Nest and Empty Cellar, and was as such probably the single most effective mp3 emailed to me by a PR person since I started the blog.  And as for the album/mini album/EP/whatever itself, well it really is just fucking brilliant.

Earth Girl Helen Brown – Hit After Hit

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  12. FOUND – Factorycraft It’s hard to tell what I actually think of this album.  I’d already danced like a fool to most of these songs so many times by the time the album came out, that it felt entirely familiar pretty much from the word go. But we had friends visit recently, and played them this, and it was the act of playing it to people entirely unfamiliar with the band that I remember exactly how good this record is. It is straightforward indie, by FOUND’s standards, but by anyone else’s it’s a really fascinating pop record, full of surprises and weird bits, but still, crucially, hooks as well.

FOUND – I’ll Wake With a Seismic Head No More

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  11. Sonny & the Sunsets – Hit After Hit This is one of those titles which almost entirely sums up the record itself: one pop gem after another.  I described it in my review, if I remember, as ‘Hill Valley 1955 doesn’t give a fuck’ because it is an odd combination of soda pop funtimes and a weird, slacker undertone which is maddeningly hard to pin down. Neverless, with tunes like this it can be what it bloody well wants, because this album is excellent.

Sonny & the Sunsets – Heart of Sadness

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1-10

It’s a relatively manageable week, this one.  It’s quiet enough, until Saturday, which has a couple of rather unfortunate clashes, but there are definitely some great gigs on.

Pick of the bunch would, for me, be the Mazes and Milk Maid show at Sneaky’s on Wednesday, but the Emily Scott album launch also looks rather promising, with the presence of extra strings for both herself and Yusuf Azak adding a bit of extra incentive.

Once again I seem to have managed to start the week with a little bit of a hangover, annoyingly, so I have been sitting here feeling groggy all day.  Balls.  Tomorrow will be different, as I keep telling myself.

Wednesday 5th October 2011: Mazes & Milk Maid at Sneaky Pete’s.

Having recorded a (rather fantastic, if I do say so myself) Toad Session with Milk Maid when they played up here in the Spring, I am really looking forward to seeing them again, along with Manchester compatriots and Fatcat label-mates Mazes.

Milk Maid – Not Me (Toad Session)

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Thursday 6th October 2011: Born to Be Wide music video seminar at the Electric Circus.

Born to Be Wide put on consistently interesting seminars designed to help out today’s DIY musician.  This month’s topic is music videos, and confirmed for the panel so far we have this lot: Aman Khullar – VPL, Scott Macdonald – KFM Records, David Weaver – Detour.

Friday 7th October 2011: Indie Funday Friday at Henry’s Cellar Bar with The Asps, Morris Major, Son of Portslade, Steven Borthwick & The Friendly Vibes.

Raising money for the Sick Kids Friends Foundation, this is the second Indie Funday Friday.  Morris Major played the very first Ides of Toad night in January this year, but I have to confess to not knowing all that much about the other bands.  That’s what those links are for of course, so you can decide for yourselves.

Morris Major – Seymour Grove

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Saturday 8th October 2011: Birdhead, Edinburgh School for the Deaf & Plastic Animals play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

More Limbo jollies, this time with plenty of guitar noise. I will be extremely interested to see what people make of Edinburgh School for the Deaf, now that co-vocalist and guitarist Kieran has moved to London.  The last time I saw them play, he battered his head off the wall at Henry’s and played his guitar so loud his fingers bled. Is it too much to demand that his replacement do at least as much?

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Love is Terminal

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Saturday 8th October 2011: Emily Scott album launch with Yusuf Azak & Lorraine McCauley at The Third Door.

I believe The Third Door is the venue which used to be Medina, just downstairs from Negociants on Bristo Square. It was never a bad space before, although the PA was horrible, but that is all changing apparently, with a new system, new decor, a new layout and a new name all slowly being sorted out. Both Emily and Yusuf will be playing with added strings, so this should be a lush, gorgeous gig.

Yusuf Azak – The Key Underground

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Saturday 8th October 2011: Papi Falso at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

Papi Falso isn’t a band, nor is it strictly a ‘club night’ per se, although I suppose it cleaves closer to the format of the latter than the former.  It is a bunch of interesting people with good taste in music playing records all evening, simple as that.  There is no obligation to make people dance or sing along, and the general guiding principle is, as far as I know (I’ve been drunk every time I’ve discussed it, sorry), eclecticism. Perfect, in other words, for those of us who love music, want to drink late and fucking hate night clubs.

 Changing their name from Deserters Deserve Death (because they ended up getting some dodgy emails from people who thought they were associating themselves with the Third Reich, if I remember correctly) seemed to work pretty well for Edinburgh School for the Deaf.  At least from my perspective it seemed to allow me to hear them with fresh ears, after their initial guise seemed to elude my attention altogether, for some reason or another*.

Anyhow, although the penny finally dropped, it might end up being a case of too little, too late, because just as I started to really get into the band, their guitarist and co-front-person (I apologise to the English language for that clumsy, clumsy word, but what else could I do?) ended up relocating to London, for personal reasons.  The band will continue, but without Kieran, and what that will change about them I suppose we will have to wait and see.

Part of Edinburgh School for the Deaf is composed from the remnants of St. Jude’s Infirmary, a local band signed to SL Records who seemed on the verge of making a bit of a breakthrough a few years ago now, but never quite managed to prod their momentum up to the point that it reached critical mass. You can hear some of that band in this one too, albeit more in Ashley’s distinctive vocal delivery than anything else.

Either way, the debts owed by this music are more to much older forms than to anything coming from the local scene or anyone’s previous bands.  This is an old-fashioned, epic, shoegazey guitar album, and could as easily have sprung into existence in 1988 as now.  Live it descends frequently into a shrieking noise of feedback and distortion, with blood spilled and musicians staggering about the stage in a delirium.

The recordings are a little more disciplined than that, to the extent that songs like Memories of Wounds don’t quite get off the ground at all, for me, but these moments are not particularly common. The album starts, somewhat oddly, with what is traditionally the band’s epic set-closer, a song which can take a quarter of an hour to stumble to a stop, and generates as blistering a wall of free-form guitar noise as I’ve heard anyone make in a long time.  It works though, as the song itself takes a long while to build up, and when you have plenty more good songs you can afford to use up an absolute belter this early.

One of the things which stands out about this album is not that it sounds like the endless shoegaze rehashes we’ve been hearing recently, but more that it actually sounds like the real, original thing.  It’s not 2011 shoegaze, it sounds much more at home amongst the older stuff, actually.  This, again, might be related to Ashley’s vocal, which has a clear, high quality to it very reminiscent of that cusp between the original eighties indie movement and the Britpop behemoth into which it eventually morphed.

All in all there might be a couple of sticky patches here, songs which perhaps don’t quite gel for me, but overall this is a really good, really promising debut album and I really hope Kieran’s departure doesn’t change the dynamic of the band for the worse.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Of Scottish Blood and Sympathies

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Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Love is Terminal

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Soundcloud | More mp3s | Buy from Bubblegum Records

*Yes, I know, shame on me.

This week’s podcast is named the Northcast because I was just up in Inverness at GoNorth, which is I suppose the biggest official Scottish music industry chatfest.

I am getting better at these, I have to be honest.  The music industry is heavily based around status and I do not do well when I suspect people might be looking down their nose at me, consequently my first few were quite a challenge to escape from before I picked a fight with someone I shouldn’t, but as my general stature within music, and Scottish music in particular, has slowly grown I am finding these events easier to handle.

It also helped that as well as helping Lloyd from Peenko and Jason from the Popcop curate one of the stages, I did some one-to-one mentoring sessions (yes, I know!) and was on two of the panels myself.  That in itself gives you a kind of status which means people seem less awkward if it comes time to approach them asking about something they can do for you – I suppose it just feels like you’re on a more equitable footing.  And in general this makes me less jumpy.

None of this stops you drinking far, far too much at these things though.

Direct download: Toadcast #178 – The Northcast

01. David Thomas Broughton – Nature (00.06)
02. Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Orpheus Descending (07.09)
03. John Knox Sex Club – Katie Cruel (14.57)
04. Post War Glamour Girls – Ode to Harry Dean (Concrete Hearts) (21.00)
05. Tim Minchin – Storm (24.46)
06. The Pineapple Chunks – Look Back in Horror (40.01)
07. Scott Hutchison & Rod Jones (Fruit Tree Foundation) – I Forgot the Fall (45.23)
08. PAWS – Jellyfish (52.40)
09. Kid Canaveral – And Another Thing!! (55.29)
10. Crystal Swells – Goethe Head Soup (63.15)

Well there’s no real way of stitching this little lot together coherently, so I suppose a big old pile of stuff in no sensible order is the only real way to do it.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf have a new single out. It’s digital download only, so I can’t very well put it up here for you, but you can expect a song in this week’s podcast, so keep an eye out there.  For those disinclined to wait, you can simply pop over here and buy a copy from Bubblegum Records.

It’s a two-song business, with Orpheus Ascending being more acoustic and pretty, and their trademark (alright, alright, they’re a bit new to have a ‘trademark’ yet, sorry) fuzzy guitars very much in evidence on its sister track Orpheus Descending.

Horsecollar have a Kickstarter project to make a 7″ from the two songs on their Bandcamp page.  I am really only encouraging you to contribute to this because I personally want one.  The jauntiness of Christopher in particular deserves to be immortalised in this manner, so get on with it – you can contribute here.

There is a Lau vs Adem EP approaching, and it looks extremely interesting.  Around the time Silver Columns first emerged I had the chance to interview Adem (and Johnny of course) and he came across as a really nice, really thoughtful guy, so I am really looking forward to hearing more from this.

As it is I have a brief promotional video and a completely fucking different remix (see this week’s podcast) to share with you.  I’ll confess to knowing very little about Lau, unfortunately, but then again, this is why this kind of collaboration is so interesting, because it takes you from one artist you know to exploring another you might not.

Finally, I have a couple more gigs to announce. Fatcat Records’ recent signing Milk Maid have agreed to play a show on Monday 13th June, supported by two of Scotland’s most promising new bands: Glasgow’s PAWS and Plastic Animals from Edinburgh (tickets here). In July these two bands will be joined by the awesome Scottish Enlightenment in a sort of Toad Rapture lineup to celebrate the release of Plastic Animals’ debut EP.  I am really looking forward to both of these gigs.

Milk Maid – Such Fun

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PAWS – Ariel

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Plastic Animals – Test

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Mrs. Toad's Lettuce

The above picture shows how our veggie patch is doing, for those of you who give a flying fuck, which admittedly might not be many of you.  Sunday was spent lying about in the garden reading books, which was nice and relaxing after getting pished late into the night with Monster Island, These Single Spies and Kid Canaveral after the Henry’s gig on Saturday night.

This Saturday we will be collecting for the RNLI in Stockbridge, so if you want to help out please do get in touch as we will need all the people we can get our hands on.  We promise to feed you and ply you with booze, and it’s generally a really enjoyable day.

Tuesday 26th April 2011: Golden Grrrls, The Oates Field & Fuzzy Star at the Wee Red Bar.

Fuzzy pop reigns this week at The Gentle Invasion’s latest gig, with The Oates Field performing alongside two relatively longstanding Scottish bands I have to confess, rather shame-facedly, to never having heard of.  A bit of an internet poke-around later and it sounds like the whole lineup should be right up my street.  And, hopefully, yours.
WrldPeace by Golden Grrrls

Wednesday 27th April 2011: Pensioner, PAWS & Pinky Suavo at Sneaky Pete’s.

This is likely to be quite similar, in a sense, to the Gentle Invasion gig the night before, with the emphasis on rock rather than pop, but nevertheless blanketed in a haze of guitars.  It is also the Pensioner album launch – they have a new album out on Olive Grove Records.

PAWS – Miss American Bookworm

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Thursday 28th April 2011: Nan Turner & Enfant Bastard at the Collective Gallery.

WH666 presents another rather interesting lineup.  Nan Turner sings and plays drums in New York anti-folkers Schwervon, but listening to her MySpace page that doesn’t give you much idea what to expect from her music.  Also, Enfant Bastard has started adding more to his chiptune stuff which, if I am being honest, pushes it back much closer to the kind of thing I personally am into.  Come along, it’ll be a good ‘un, this.

Friday 29th April – Sunday 1st May 2011: The Grassmarket Festival (Facebook event).

The Grassmarket Festival is a street festival involving all the traders with shops on and around the Grassmarket, and will involved vintage clothing, tat stalls, book and records as well as lots of live music.
The lineup looks roughly like this:
Friday 29th: 6pm, The Last Battle; 7pm, Ballboy.
Saturday 30th: 5pm, Star Wheel Press; 6pm, The Gillyflowers; 7pm, Burnt Island.
Sunday 1st: 3pm, A Right Royal Open Couch Session (in Red Dog Music); 5pm, Edinburgh School for the Deaf; 6pm, Second Hand Marching Band; 7pm, TV21.

Burnt Island – A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

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Edinburgh School for the Deaf – 11 Kinds of Loneliness

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The Second Hand Marching Band – Don’t!

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Anyone managed to avoid my relentless plugging of this weekend’s Ides of Toad gig?  No, thought not, there’s nowhere to hide when I start riding the spam train down the middle of the information superhighway.  Or er… something like that, anyway.

Anyhow, the Ides of Toad gigs are now booked up all the way through to the Summer, at which point they will take a break over the Edinburgh Festival as I get a bit more involved in the Festival this year.

So, given the people reading this blog are probably the people most likely to want to come along, I figured I would give you a handy preview list, so you know what’s in store for you over the next few months – all tickets can be bought either at Avalanche Records on the Grassmarket or online here.

Saturday 23rd April 2011: Kid Canaveral, Thee Single Spy & Monster Island at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I think you already know quite enough about this one so, er, let’s move on shall we.

Tuesday 10th May 2011: Francois & the Atlas Mountains, This is the Kit & Babe at the Bristo Hall.

The Bristo Hall is upstairs from the Forest Cafe, and this is part of the Roofraiser series of events being put on to help save the Forest.  It will also serve as something of a Homegame wind-down for those of us going, and for those who aren’t it is the chance to see Francois, This is the Kit and Babe, the last of which is Gerard from Findo Gask’s new project.

Saturday 21st May 2011: Jonnie Common, Kill the Captains & Enfant Bastard at the Wee Red Bar.

Jonnie is a pop genius hiding behind excessive modesty, Kill the Captains make a face-melting racket and Enfant Bastard is the only person we could think of to make sense of a bill this diverse!

Saturday 4th June 2011: Avital Raz house gig.

This has just been arranged as my friend Baz (who is putting on the excellent-looking Imploding Inevitable Festival to which you should all go) was looking for dates and I was really keen, but with all the gigs we have on at this time I was a bit scared to take on anything else.  So a house gig seemed like the ideal solution, not least because we haven’t had one for ages.

Friday 17th June 2011: Meursault & Inspector Tapehead at The Caves.

Umm, gosh The Caves is a big venue. So you fuckers better all come to this because I have never booked anywhere this size before!

Saturday 2nd July 2011: Edinburgh School for the Deaf, The Louche FC & Spook School at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This could, and hopefully will, get noisy.  Edinburgh School for the Deaf make a ferocious racket, and The Louche FC may have distinctly innocent-sounding vocals, but the guitar is nasty as hell.  And I know nothing about Spook School bar the song on their Bandcamp page above, but they sound really promising.

Saturday 16th July 2011: The Second Hand Marching Band at The Wee Red Bar.

Alright, this bill might not be entirely finished just yet but I promise it will be excellent when it is.

More Ides of Toad action this week, as Kid Canaveral, Thee Single Spy and Monster Island take to the stage at Henry’s.  I hadn’t been to Henry’s for so long before The Leg, Louis Barabbas and Zed Penguin show, and I’d rather forgotten that it is actually a cracking little grubby indie club.  One of those places whose drawbacks actually seem to add to its charm, so please come down this weekend, and come down early to make sure you catch Monster Island.

And there may be some excellent gigs happening in Edinburgh this week, but there are a couple of ongoing things which also need to be mentioned, so for those of you looking to get out and about, enjoy the sun and indulge in some afternoon pintage, there will be plenty of excuses.

Firstly, Avalanche Records have a few events this week, including an Aberfeldy in-store and a Glasvegas meet-and-greet on the weekend.

Secondly, and pretty much my personal highlight of 2011, there is a Muppets Festival at the Edinburgh Filmhouse. Anyone who knows anything about me at all will know that if I am unavailable this week or fail to respond to your emails as quickly as you think I should, then this is why.

Thursday 21st April 2011: That Fucking Tank, Shield Your Eyes, Battery Face & Mr. Peppermint at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This will be noisy.  Apparently That Fucking Tank don’t play Edinburgh all that often, so if you like your music to delivery you a good hard slap in the ears then this will be very much up your street I should imagine.

That Fucking Tank – Keanu Reef

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Saturday 23rd April 2011: Kid Canaveral, Thee Single Spy & Monster Island at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This is going to be boisterous fun.  Three different takes on indie music, with Kid Canveral’s boisterous pop contrasting with the laconic Americana-tinged Thee Single Spy and the ramshackle, yeah so what delivery of Monster Island.  I am really looking forward to this one.

Monster Island – The Green Room

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Saturday 23rd April 2011: Edinburgh School for the Deaf, Black Heart Generator & Verse Metrics at the Wee Red Bar.

I don’t actually know too much about the other two bands on this bill, but Edinburgh School for the Deaf are fuzzy, shoegazey and loud as balls.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Love is Terminal

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