You all know I’ve been doing a regular slot on DC’s radio show, The Waiting Room, of late, don’t you? Well this week’s slot saw me picking a track by Sky Larkin, as well as three wonderful songs from the splendid Happy Realease Records from darn sarf*. I may have been a little rude about their sound actually, but it was inadvertent. I was trying to head off the criticism from indie snobs – What? Who? None of those round here, surely? – about the fact that they are just plain enjoyable indie-pop for the most part, and ended up implying that I thought they were lightweight. The Genius of Tact strikes again. I should teach courses in this shit.

Anyway, swing by The Waiting Room to download this and past episodes, and Error FM to see what sort of crazy fools agree to put this sort of rubbish on the airwaves. The, er, internet airwaves. Interwav… oh never mind, you know what I mean.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 12th March 2008

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* Darn sarf, for my non-British readers, is the phonetic spelling for how a cockney might pronounce the words ‘down South’. Which is where they are from. Yes, I know, hilarious wasn’t it.

And here’s a sneaky little bonus podcast from myself:
Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

A week or so ago, I recorded a demo show for Fresh Air FM, the local student radio station, with a view to applying for a slot during next term, only the computer ate the bastard thing. Fucking technology. Anyhow, Sunday was Mrs. Toad’s birthday, and for some reason she was keen to get plastered and do a podcast with me, so we re-did it together. It wasn’t played quite as straight as I’d hoped, and by the time I’d had time to reflect on submitting it I was pretty certain Fresh Air would chase me out of the building with sticks. Fortunately for me, however, they didn’t hate it, didn’t seem to think I was a smart-arsed twat and didn’t dispatch me from the building with a boot print in my arse.

As this show is just a pre-record and will be going out randomly over the night when they stop broadcasting, I thought I’d pop it up here for you to have a listen. I won’t be doing this with any more Fresh Air things because, well, you need to go over there and listen for yourselves really, don’t you. But for this once I thought you might like it seeing as you shower of treacherous fuckers all seem to love Mrs. Toad so very bloody much. Be warned though, because it was made for a different audience, so there may be a bit of duplication from previous podcasts, and it’s rather long, as apparently there is a lot of time to fill overnight when there are no presenters in the building.

The Fresh Air plugs themselves were enough to see us kicked out.

Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

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01. Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave It (03.09)
02. The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing (06.41)
03. The Cave Singers – Thinking of Heaven (13.05)
04. Preston School of Industry – Straits of Magellan (17.23)
05. Adam Balbo – Talkin’ Bush (27.11)
06. Donnan Linkz feat. Baje One of Junk Science – The N Word (29.18)
07. Riff-Raff – Romford Girls (36.44)
08. The Pogues – Dirty Old Town (38.58)
09. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City (46.44)
10. Edith Piaf – Elle Frequentait la Rue Pigalle (50.11)
11. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (53.34)
12. AA Bondy – Vice Rag (59.12)
13. Relatively Clean Rivers – Hello Sunshine (68.09)
14. The Eighteenth Day of May – Lady Margaret (71.05)
15. Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar (81.27)
16. Nightjar – Poor Man’s Son (84.01)
17. Ravens & Chimes – General Lafayette, You Are Not Alone! (93.03)
18. Eels – Love of the Loveless (95.59)
19. Glasvegas – It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry (106.49)
20. Flashguns – St. George (111.01)
21. Elle S’Appelle – Little Flame (123.09)
22. Elk City – Cherries in the Snow (125.58)
23. The Low Miffs – Also Sprach Shareholder (130.41)

IT disasters in Toad Hall meant that this podcast was delayed so long that I ended up posting pretty much all of it on the blog before I got to record the thing and all the news was so outdated that I had to find some more news. Fortunately we have some pre-release splendidness from Elbow, Goldfrapp and Stephen Malkmus to make up for it.

There’s also some excellent unsigned music to be had as well, from Maxwell Panther and Meursault, as well as some splendid new singles from Elle S’Appelle and Operahouse. So it’s late, but some of this stuff is really quite excellent. And then there’s LCD Soundsystem who have taken me so long to get into that I am only starting to even enjoy the album now, some eight months or so after its release. What a fuckwit.

There’s a fairly detailed explanation of what is going to be happened with Song, by Toad Records in the new year as well, and how I am going to move these podcasts onwards and upwards. Unfortunately it takes the longest bloody link in recorded history to actual explain it all, but explain it I do. There’s always the track timings listed at the side of the songs if you want to skip it altogether though! Have fun, chaps.

Toadcast #20 – The Late, Late News

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1. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks – Gardenia (01.27)
2. Elle S’Appelle – Little Flame (06.49)
3. Operahouse – Born a Boy (09.40)
4. LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends (14.54)
5. The Hollies – The Air That I Breathe (24.50)
6. Goldfrapp – Little Bird (28.51)
7. Maxwell Panther – Too Many Magazines (35.47)
8. Meursault – The Furnace (39.37)
9. The 4Qs – Pieces of a Puzzle (48.03)
10. Kid Harpoon – Riverside (50.42)
11. Dubious Ranger – Slow Day (56.18)
12. Roger McGuinn & Calexico – One More Cup of Coffee (68.29)
13. The Heavy Circles – Henri (72.45)
14. The Brute Chorus (feat. Tiggs) – The Cuckoo & the Stolen Heart (80.15)
15. Elbow – Grounds For Divorce (88.13)
16. The Cave Singers – Seeds of Night (94.51)

Like the review of The Felt Tips, this is as much an introduction as a review.  Elle S’Appelle hail from Liverpool, which is a relief, in a sense.  For some reason, the Liverpool scene seems to me to be utterly moribund at the moment.  No matter how feted a band from those parts seems to be I can never develop much more than a sort of positive indifference.  The same sort of positive indifference that the world feels towards Coldplay, which leads to the fuckers being all over national radio.  The Coral threatened to break that mould, before turning into the new Gomez, and for all the excitement about The Wombats I just can’t seem to get all that worked up about them.  If there are better things happening in and around the Mersey I’d love to know about them, because surely it can’t be as bad as it seems.

It is entirely possible that Elle S’Appelle might rescue me from my rather embarrassing discord with the city however.  Their bright, energetic pop songs are an absolute joy, and superlative single Little Flame is a highly recommended little treat for a dismal January night.  Moshi Moshi (home to Toad favourites The Wave Pictures) released their single Little Flame last year, and it sold out pretty much immediately.  You can still get digital copies from the Moshi Moshi shop however, and I suggest you hop to it.

How does their bass/keys/drums sound translate to a live setting then?  Well it was bloody hard to tell, to be honest.  the Southern is a pub, not a venue and the sound was awful.  I doubt there was much anyone could have done about it – it’s a lovely bar, it’s just not designed to be a venue -  but it didn’t help the performance.  They certainly played well enough, and the energy in the music was in clear evidence in their live show, so I will most definitely be purchasing any upcoming releases.  Fortunately, having heard them on record I was able to interpret a little, and it sounds like their other material is pretty good, which is promising.

Their music is heavily dependent on the sprightly, choppy vocal interplay between Lucy and Andy (don’t know their surnames, so don’t ask) and you just couldn’t make out what they were singing.  They were nice people too and chatted back to a silent audience cheerfully enough between songs.  We weren’t ignoring you, guys, we just couldn’t understand what you were saying.  So I will wait for either a bigger gig or a new record to renew my acquaintance with Elle S’Appelle’s music.  But I will most certainly be there when they next make an appearance.

Elle S’Appelle – She Sells Sea Shells
Elle S’Appelle – Everybody Needs Good Neighbours