Song, by Toad

I am back on Fresh Air Radio this evening, although unfortunately not accompanied by the lovely Ruth, as she’s not feeling well. However, to keep the loveliness quota nice and high, the extremely lovely Diana de Carrabus from Candythief will be playing live in session for us this evening.

She may be named like a dastardly Bond villainess, but Diana’s music is theatrical pop joy.  A somewhat stripped-down set is required in the tight confines of the Fresh Air studio, however, so it will be just herself and an acoustic guitar, accompanied by violin.

On air 7pm-8.30pm GMT – listen here.

The tracklisting will be updated live below, so feel free to add your comments in as we go along.

1. Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree
2. Elbow – Station Approach
3. Candythief – Bargains (Live in Session)
4. Son Volt – Sultana
5. Alex Ward – Sounds Like Someone We Know
6. Timber Timbre – Magic Arrow
7. Candythief – Pass It On (Live in Session)
8. Betty Harris – Mean Man
9. Seasick Steve – The Letter
10. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (I)
11. Candythief – Amnesty (Live in Session)
12. King Charles – Beating Heart
13. REM – Disturbance at the Heron House
14. Felix Lighter – The Rational Pedestrian
15. Candythief – Junk (Live in Session)

And here, for those who missed it, is last week’s session with Thomas Western.  The sound is rather scratchy unfortunately, but I am still getting used to the desk.  To those who care, I think it’s his guitar mic which was clipping, not the vocal one, because the two were very close together:

Thomas Western – Fresh Air Session and Interview

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Thomas Western – The Worm Forgives the Plough (Live on Fresh Air)

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Thomas Western – Your Front Door (Live on Fresh Air)

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And the accompanying videos:

This podcast is a little bit random, I have to say.  There are songs which follow on from the like folk/hate covers posts which have appeared over the course of the last week or so on the site, a couple are related to the fact that Mrs. Toad is once more away in God Bless America shooting illegal aliens, chewing gum, whistling Dixie, or whatever the fuck it is they do over there, while most of the first half is related to the fact that my friend Andrew is coming to visit this weekend.

They do sort of relate to one another, the songs, at least.  Or there’s a bit of overlap anyway.  I never keep much track of it, but this is at least the second version of Blues Run the Game we’ve had on the podcasts, and I have no idea if I’ve ever actually repeated a song on these things.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, because I’m bloody disorganised when it comes to this kind of thing.

Anyhow, no scary metal bastards making your ears bleed this week, just a lot of lovely folky stuff and a couple of scratchy indie bands.  Oh, and Jack White.  I’d say that he was an egomaniacal dick, but he’s massive and would probably kick my arse, so I won’t.  Recent stuttering aside, though, he’s produced some cracking tunes, whatever you think of the guy.

Toadcast #92 – The Pantscast

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01. Soul Asylum – New World (04.17)
02. The Tragically Hip – Pigeon Camera (10.29)
03. Beck – Guess I’m Doing Fine (14.47)
04. The White Stripes – I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself (24.46)
05. Elbow – Fugitive Motel (29.57)
06. Billy Bragg – Wishing the Days Away (Alternative Version) (34.53)
07. Tortoise & Bonnie Prince Billy – Thunder Road (43.15)
08. Christopher Bell – Pretty Thing (53.53)
09. Nick Drake – Blues Run the Game (55.33)
10. Fairport Convention – Crazy Man Michael (60.52)

16. Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

This is far from Elbow’s best album, in my opinion, but it’s bloody good nevertheless.  There’s a definite confidence about Elbow these days – a swagger almost – that is pretty much the defining characteristic of this record.
Elbow – Starlings

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17. Devotchka – A Mad & Faithful Telling

It’s slightly amazing to think that these guys started off as a novelty cabaret band, considering that they’ve now released two bloody great albums of their own.  It’s more indie rock and a bit less world music, and I think I’d say it was the better for it actually.
Devotchka – Transliterator

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18. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – A Larum

I am not sure why this album finds itself so far down my list.  Maybe by the time it was released I was already so familiar with most of the songs that it failed to register quite the impact it might have made had I been hearing it all for the first time.
Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Brown Trout Blues

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19. Honeytrap – Follies in Great Cities

I’ve been waiting some time for this, and it didn’t disappoint.  I don’t know if it’s the tortured wail of the vocals or the demented screech of the fiddle that does it for me, but they’re both amazing.  It’s got a sightly old-fashioned sound about it as well – something of the early nineties that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Honeytrap – Eleven

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20. Ghostkeeper – Ghostkeeper and the Keepers of the Great Northern Muskeg

It’s plain-jane indie rock, this stuff, but for some reason this album really grabbed me.  It’s not earth-shattering, just really really enjoyable from beginning to end.
Ghostkeeper – Cruisin’ the Chev

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Ah, mates.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.  Mrs. Toad’s best friend from her reckless yoof is visiting us here in Edinburgh with her gentleman friend, and consequently I got to thinking about my own old friends, and all the people who, over the years, have introduced me to so much brilliant music.  So I started to patch together a playlist of all the important friends who have added a lot of music to my life.  The problem is that it became way too long for my one hour restriction, so for this week I cast that aside, and allowed myself an extra ten minutes.

Honestly though, old friends are so important, this could have gone on for two hours, easily.  Every one of the people I mention here has a whole story of their own, and it was quite difficult to resist telling all of them in proper detail.  It seems such a shame, actually, to reduce all of these people to a two-minute link.  I could almost do a whole podcast for any one of these scenarios really, and maybe I’ll do that in future.  For now, though, you’ll have to make do with this.  It may be shabby, but it really could have been so much worse.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Toad is fucking plastered.  Oh good.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #50 – The Friendcast

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01. Pink Floyd – On the Turning Away (02.27)
02. Pearl Jam – Black (11.23)
03. The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings (18.30)
04. Gene – Her Fifteen Years (25.23)
05. Radiohead – Black Star (28.04)
06. Verve – Lucky Man (34.41)
07. Weeping Willows – Eternal Flames (39.19)
08. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (45.41)
09. Bob Dylan – Po’ Boy (49.42)
10. Elbow – Newborn (55.46)
11. Blanche – Do You Trust Me? (63.19)
12. Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure (69.07)

My brother and his missus were over here this week, and we all stayed up late to watch the American elections on Tuesday. It was interesting to see how nervous they were, how happy they eventually were, and the general fervour with which everyone embraced the whole thing.

I have said before that I don’t think Obama is quite the messiah he is being treated as. He is financially quite conservative, and just as prone to politically expedient u-turns as any other politician, as evidenced by his about-face on FISA. People seems to expect a lot more than he is going to deliver. His acceptance speech was, after the first few minutes, embarrassingly hyperbolic and downright ludicrous, and anyone that smooth just has to be full of shit somewhere under the surface. Remember the lesson of Tony Blair: how charismatic he was, how sweet the victory, how hard we partied and ultimately how slippery the little weasel turned out to be.

Having said that, from an outsider’s perspective, I don’t think this election had as much to do with the parties themselves, or even the candidates, as it had to do with the identity of the country. America seems only recently to have gained any awareness of how the rest of the world views it, and that seems to have been a pretty shocking epiphany. ‘Christ, we invade countries for no reason, we actually are not some amazing haven of domestic peace and freedom, we are not something to which the rest of the world aspires, we do not give everyone a fair trial and we abduct, torture and bully’ . It was almost as if the Bush administration was so caricatured that the nation was forced to remove it’s parochial, rose-tinted, lazily patriotic spectacles and realise that the people in the world who do not like America might actually have some very good reasons to for feeling the way they do.

Then, especially once Palin came on board, it became obvious that the Republican campaign represented pretty much all of that ugly side of the country: inward facing, thuggish, willfully ignorant, parochial, narrow-minded, blindly dogmatic, hypocritical and mean. It was as if Americans could look at them and finally understand ‘When people say they hate us it is because this is what they see‘. Suddenly it became much more emotive because it was about national identity as much as it was about taxes or healthcare or the usual things – it seemed to be about the fact that America was turning into the kind of country that a lot of Americans actually disliked. For me, irrespective of Obama’s obvious flaws, this election seems to say something quite reassuring about the kind of nation America actually wants to be.

Congratulations on getting your country back, people.

Elbow – Leaders of the Free World
Billy Bragg – Some Days I See the Point
Billy Bragg – The Few

Firstly, well done to Elbow for winning the Mercury Prize. I tend to slag off the Mercury Prize a little bit, largely due to the appearance of tokenism (one for black people, one for intellectuals, one obscure one to make us look clever) but also because I often just don’t like many of the bands very much. The accusation of tokenism is neatly refuted by one of the judges in this nice little article in the Guardian, and an award dominated by my narrow taste would be dull as shit for everyone, so I suppose I should back off a little. At least it’s not the frothing, corporate nonsense of the NME awards or the joyless fogeyism of Q.

Anyway, whilst I acknowledge that it is somewhat hypocritical to crticise an award and then profess yourself pleased for the winners, I feel I really have to congratulate Elbow. If you listen to Guy Garvey on 6Music or go to any of the Elbow shows they really do seem to come across as a really nice bunch of lads, so it’s extremely good news in that respect. From a musical point of view it’s nice too. They were supposed to be the Next Big Thing when they released Asleep in the Back, but that hasn’t quite happened. They slipped a little, in my view, with Cast of Thousands, but between those two, Leaders of the Free World and the album for which they won the award, Seldom Seen Kid, they have put together a pretty consistently impressive collection of records.

A great band, and a bloody good result. Pimm’s all round.

Elbow – The Fix (Nice ironic choice, this one)
Elbow – Mexican Standoff

Secondly, Tennents Mutual have announced an amazing series of gigs throughout Scotland, all coming up over the next few months. They’ve done it by some slightly weird voting system which has had a couple of really notable results. Firstly, the venues are spread far and wide which is – although I am not all that delighted, living in Edinburgh – a great thing for Scotland and Scottish music as a whole. If you live in Dumfries, for example, when do you ever get to see a decent gig? The other thing that is brilliant is the pairing of established acts like King Creosote and Malcolm Middleton with up and comers Withered Hand and Rob St. John.

Here’s a sample lineup: Fort William, BA Club: King Creosote, The Pictish Trail, Chris ‘Beans’ Geddes (Belle & Sebastian).
Or how about this one: Ayr, Town Hall: Glasvegas, Laura Marling, Malcolm Middleton. Ayr fucking Town Hall? Blimey!
And congratulations to some friends of Toad for landing these slots:
Inverness, Ironworks: Teenage Fanclub, King Creosote, Rob St John.
Stirling, Tolbooth: Malcolm Middleton, Withered Hand.
Fat Sams, Dundee: Malcolm Middleton, Los Campesinos, Eagleowl.
Glasgow, CCA: James Murphy, Findo Gask, Kid Canaveral, Chris ‘Beans’ Geddes (Belle & Sebastian), David Barbarossa.

I have to confess I lost interest a little in Tennents Mutual due to the fact that from the outside very little seemed to be happening, and I saw too many uninspiring bands at the very top of the list – Muse, eck! Mob rule doesn’t always produce the best results. The fact that a lot of the very top bands weren’t up for it has resulted in a much better festival though, as far as I am concerned, and I love the lineups and the fact that they are in slightly less-travelled places.

Tennents interest me actually. They have sponsored some amazing things in Scotland – the Versacoustic gigs, the previously excellent T on the Fringe and the much-missed Triptych – but this year’s Edge Festival lineup was woefully thin, despite a few last minute gambits that did up the quality right at the death. I don’t know how much Tennents themselves have to do with the nature of the things they end up being involved with but all of the aforementioned stuff is bloody excellent. Triptych and Versacoustic were particularly interesting because it required genuine musical enthusiasm and knowledge to put together those kind of shows, and it’s rarer than purple fucking snow that corporate sponsorship embraces something so esoteric, eschewing the NME dross in favour of really making the effort to bring new and interesting things to people. Those shows actually took real risks in the name of helping people to broaden their horizons, and it’s a real shame they’re gone. Here’s hoping The Edge Festival can get its act together in future and that the excellent work of Triptych isn’t gone forever.

Malcolm Middleton – Superhero Songwriter
King Creosote – A Month of Firsts
Withered Hand – I Am Nothing

Mrs. Toad is home, everyone! She’s been off in God Bless America all week and as much as she’s a moaning, high-maintenance, half-arsed, troublesome, bad-tempered pain in the backside, I really hate it when she’s away.

It seems like a good idea in principle, I get some time with no hassle, I get to play Championship Manager, edit video, eat pickles out of the jar and all the good things in life. But the thing is, hanging around with my midget companion is the greatest fucking joy in my life. She’s stroppy, she’s rude, she’s annoying, and she’s mine.  I am never so happy as when we are pottering around together – everyday banality was never so magical.

You just know when everything is right, and ever since we met I have been completely certain that this was as good as it was ever going to get, and I was right. For such a half-arsed, undomesticated lass she is oddly protective of me, and when she is gone – which she frequently is for work reasons – I’ll be honest with you, life is shit.

There’s just something drab and boring about the world when my midget companion isn’t here. She doesn’t do much, but she makes me happy, and every time she goes away I am just waiting for her to return. I am not me without her. So I sit around, I work, I faff, I wait. And then she’s home and suddenly everything’s fine again. She’s my girl, and I miss her like hell, and when she comes back it is a massive relief. Things are right again. My girl is home. That is all.

Billy Bragg – Wishing the Days Away (Alternate Version)
Elbow – Fugitive Motel

The missus and I got pished and did a podcast! Huzzah! It was a lovely Summery day on Wednesday and we sat out and had a meal in the back garden and then when it got chilly we came inside and did a podcast.

There’s not much of a theme this week because I can get a little bored of them, and from time to time it’s nice to just throw some tracks together that you like. And then get hammered and ramble on about them at interminable length. Sorry about that.

Toadcast #29 – The Summercast

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01. Lemonjelly – Nice Weather For Ducks (01.47)
02. Elbow – Station Approach (10.47)
03. The Eighteenth Day of May – Cold Early Morning (19.07)
04. Aberfeldy – Tom Weir (25.56)
05. Tiny Tim – Tiptoe Through the Tulips (27.47)
06. Uncle Moon – Pepper (34.41)
07. Lo-Fidelity Allstars – On the Pier (41.32)
08. The Boo Radleys – Find the Answer Within (48.17)
09. The Libertines – The Good Old Days (56.41)
10. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks (65.51)
11. The Von Bondies – C’Mon C’Mon (68.11)
12. The Builders & the Butchers – Spanish Death Song (76.41)
13. The Walkmen – The Rat (82.59)
14. Calexico – Corona (93.33)
15. Lloyd Cole – You’re a Big Girl Now (106.46)

Fuck me, I’m glad that’s over with. Did you find that as dull as I did? Four consecutive posts about major bands on major labels that you could all just as easily have read about in Q Magazine. I even liked the Elbow and REM albums, but I still felt slightly dirty writing about them, although I don’t know why.

This blog is supposed to be a record of my thoughts on music, and I was genuinely interested to hear the new Supergrass and REM, and really excited to hear The Raconteurs and Elbow so why do I feel so flat after writing about them? Why has it suddenly become so unsatisfying to write about bands of that stature?

I don’t think the answer lies in snobbery, per se. I have no shame in enjoying the really big and famous bands that I like, nor do I think anyone else should apologise for liking famous music – or fluffy, superficial pop for that matter. Music is there to be enjoyed, and really doesn’t need to be dissected much more than that*.

Maybe it’s the club-ism; the exclusivity. We share something that They don’t have their hands on yet so it feels more special, like a secret or something. There’s also the issue of making a contribution, I suppose. Me bigging up the new REM album is utterly irrelevant to the band whereas when I write about really small groups I might just double their sales if a few of you go and buy something. And they are much more delighted to see a positive review of their music of course, and that always makes this a more satisfying thing to do.

Ultimately, I think it’s about ownership, really. Pop culture is not something most of us get to participate in in any meaningful way whatsoever, so by writing about smaller bands it almost forces REM and Supergrass to become Pop Culture, whereas the little unsigned acts become Our Pop Culture – more personal, more involved and, crucially I think, a smaller community to be a part of. One which may be global in reach but is not global in numbers. It’s a more comprehensible size, something you can actually feel a part of, something you feel you can come to terms with and something which gives a little back when you go and say Hi at the end of a gig. The global audience for REM is just too big for that. The global audience for Bambi Get Over It is not.

So I guess it’s no real surprise that it just feels so much better to have a tiny unsigned band to write about, or to get some friends in and post their live performances on YouTube. They are people we know, people we can be a bit more emotionally invested in, people whose fans could conceivably all get together for a big piss up in the same place. I think a lot of what is perceived as indie snobbery is not quite as much to do with snobbery and perhaps more to do with feeling part of a community whose edges are still close enough to touch, and where you actually feel like an important member rather than a single album sale amongst millions.

So I’m not going to stop writing about big famous bands, because I am genuinely interested in them, but I am finding myself more and more drawn to the grassroots of the music world – small projects where people are having a go and I feel like I really can help bring their work to a wider audience. It just feels nicer.

Bambi Get Over It – That Girl
Darla Farmer – History
Hotpipes – Born in a Bomb
It’s a Buffalo – Outlines

* I could pretty much delete this whole blog on the basis of that one comment alone!

I’ve already confessed that it is rare, if not unheard of, for me to instantly take to an Elbow album.  I couldn’t tell you why but they seem to take months, if not years sometimes, to gently slide into my subconscious.

This one has been helped on its way by a brilliant live performance in Glasgow a week or so ago which is likely to have a massive influence on this review, let’s be honest.  I’m listening to this album, not in the usual vacuum, but flushed with smiles from one of my favourite live performances in ages so some of that warmth inevitably spreads into the mood in which I approached this record.

If you think that was a good start for my relationship with Seldom Seen Kid, then imagine the grin that spread across my face as the brilliant opener Starlings introduced itself.  The occasional burst of horns punctuates one of Garvey’s lighter – not light, per se, just somehow sprightlier.  The Bones of You and Mirrorball are more typically lovely Elbow moments, before Grounds For Divorce breaks out the riffs and reminds you that these guys can make a real fucking noise when they want to.

There’s something Big about Elbow – something grand maybe.  Epic, perhaps.  It doesn’t come across as grandiosity though, just an honest lack of self-consciousness about their music.  They don’t hide in irony like many bands nowadays.

I’m still working my way into the end of the album.  I’m loving about as far as The Loneliness of the Tower Crane Driver and the brilliant The Fix, but I’m still to get to the last few songs.  As with most Elbow records I am guessing that this will come with time.  A gift that keeps on giving.  Buy it, it’s beautiful.

Elbow – Starling
Elbow – The Fix

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