Song, by Toad

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I confidently sat down to write my Friday Fives this week and to introduce the Candy Claws‘ virtual tour video only to realise that I have managed to fuck things up.  I am a week late.  For some reason I had it absolutely fixed in my head that it was supposed to be this Friday, so all I can do is apologise profusely to the band and to Kev from Indiecater Records and hope that playing it this week will serve the purpose at least reasonably well.  Honestly lads, for some reason I was convinced it was supposed to be this week, I’m really sorry.

Your job, as readers, is to may up for my idiocy by taking extra time out of your day to listen to Candy Claws’ music and hence try and make my apologies for me.  And buy the album too, while you’re at it – the whole thing can be previewed here and it really is very good.

In other news did anyone see pictures of the Queen getting on a train this morning?  Christ she looks like a fucking bag lady.  I alternate between tolerance of and annoyance with the royal family.  They can be hugely entertaining, and of course they bring money into the country, but we pay for the cunts and frankly I think it’s time we started demanding a little more for our money.

Shortage of teachers or nurses?  Send in a minor royal for a few months to cover.  Traffic lights out in London town, get Phil the Greek to pop round and do the hand signals thing for a while.  Let’s face it, apart from buggering the servant and beating up foreigners he’s not going to be doing anything else with his time.

We could even save the NHS money by insisting that Charles follow his own guidance on alternative medicine.  Deny the stupid old fucker actual medical care and see if his sugar pills and anticlockwise kidney massages cure him of fucking cancer.  No? Good, now we can stop wasting money on them and he’ll be dead so we won’t have to keep repairing him in his dotage like we did the Queen Mum.  Actually, with her belligerence and monumental gin habit, she and Phil the Insulter are the only two I have any real affection for.

So, this is the last Friday Five before Christmas.  I promise to put one up on Boxing Day too, just for those of us who will need the internet to escape the gluttony.  Honestly, how many sherries with boring Uncle Brian can you really handle anyway – you know you’ll need your Five Fix!

1. What use could the Royals be best put to?
2. Favourite Royal (from any nation, past or present).
3. How much of your Christmas shopping remains to be done.
4. At what point does the self-loathing of gluttony kick in for you around Christmas time.
5. Fuck it, link to a silly picture on the internet just for shits and giggles (just paste the URL into your comment – Wordpress will do the rest).

Here is my one and only concession to the world of Christmas.  I tend to avoid Christmas songs, except for Phil Ochs (miserable) and Tom Lehrer (caustic) but for the last Friday Five before the day itself I thought fuck it, why not.  So happy fucking Christmas you fuckers, that’s all you’re getting.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Traveling Salesman’s Young Wife Home Alone on Christmas in Montpelier, VT

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The Felice Brothers – Christmas Song

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Saint Etienne – I Was Born on Christmas Day

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Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol

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Phil Ochs – No Christmas in Kentucky

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There is a truly atrocious back-story to the creation of this album and the split of Simone Felice from the Felice Brothers, but it is horrible and personal and I am not going to go into it. It is partly because of that back-story, however, and partly because of how much I like the Felice Brothers themselves, that I really wanted to like this album.  I don’t, however, and there’s no escaping it, so there you go.

Why don’t I like it?  Well it’s just soft and rather wet Americana-pop I suppose.  The summery harmonies and the laid back rhythms just don’t grab me at all, and in fact seem really lifeless and lacking in backbone.  There’s even something of a soft rock balladry about some of it, like the atrocious Summer Morning Rain, which really is not something I enjoy at all.

Lyrically it’s actually a rather heart-wrenching album, but for some reason the music used to convey the sentiments themselves just doesn’t quite have the right impact with me. I guess I just find the sound to be smooth and slightly sugary, which is really not my aesthetic to begin with, so given that none of the tunes really stick in my head and make me want to hum them I think the sooner me and this record part ways the better, sorry.

The Duke & the King – If You Ever Get Famous

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The Duke & the King – Summer Morning Rain

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I didn’t think I liked this all that much, stopped listening to it for a few weeks, and then started again in preparation for writing this review and found myself thinking that actually, perhaps I did really like it.  Mind you, their first album was a bit like that, now that I think back.

There may be nothing here to quite capture the sparkle of Frankie’s Gun or the magic of Wonderful Life, but then it’s largely impossible to recapture the excitement of falling in love with a great band for the first time.  Maybe that coloured my first few listens, but having taken the break I was able to clear those particular sinuses and listen almost with fresh ears.

The result?  Well, this is really an excellent record.  I’ve been talking to Campfires & Battlefields, one of my most long-term readers, about it and he likened the feel of it to Tom Waits’ Bloody Money or Alice.  Personally, I’d go for Alice – there’s certainly a gorgeously intimate spell in the middle of this album which has a similarly cossetting atmosphere to that record.

When they get upbeat it changes somewhat, though.  Run Chicken Run, Penn Station and (the not particularly brilliant) Memphis Flu are more rooted in stomping Americana than most Tom Waits material – in fact the latter couple are almost dance music, after a fashion.  I love this record, but wouldn’t say that they’ve pushed their sound all that much though, so whilst if you liked the last one I’d recommend it, if you didn’t then I doubt this will be the one to change your mind.

The Felice Brothers – Penn Station

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The Felice Brothers – Ambulance Man

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Spring makes a fucking colossal difference, doesn’t it.  People have been tripping around Edinburgh with a spring in their step for the last week, when the sun has come out and the air, whilst it may still be a little chilly, is notably warmer.  It’s gentler, I suppose, is the main difference.  There’s something of a release about Spring, as if all the uncomfortable restraint of Winter no longer has to be acknowledged.  Does anyone remember that episode of Northern Exposure when the ice melted?  Everyone went nuts, and the relieved exhalation we all express on the coming of the sunshine does remind me in many ways of a tame version of the exact same mania depicted in that episode of, erm, a serialised drama from the, er, mid ah nineties…  anyone still reading?  Never mind.

In any case, this is a purposeless but musically excellent podcast which is something of a lazy one, if I’m honest.  Frankly though, I think I deserve it after the effort put into the Pictish Session, so fuck you if you have an issue with that.  Tee hee.  There’s a lot of new release stuff on here, a couple of bands reviewed recently on the site, and a couple who are going to be reviewed later this week.  Next week I’ll think of a theme. Promise.

Toadcast #63 – Sprrring is Here!

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01. The Soft Pack – Right & Wrong (01.33)
02. Maxwell Panther – A Shade Away (08.24)
03. Phil & the Osophers – They Threw a Shoe at You (11.16)
04. The Felice Brothers – The Big Surprise (15.34)
05. The Empty Set – Alice & Bob (Forlorn Photo Love) (24.01)
06. The Van Allen Belt – The Revolution Will be Merchandised (27.24)
07. Meursault (no, not that Meursault) – Blindfolds (33.31)
08. Outlaw Con Bandana – Rainy Season (37.16)
09. Dame Satan – Ghost Dance (39.25)
10. Peter Doherty – 1939 Returning (49.30)

1. Meursault – Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues

I know I can’t be objective with regards to this album, but believe me I am being honest when I tell you that it is the best thing I’ve heard all year.  Whether it’s the obvious hits, the peculiar interludes, the perfect blend of pop songs and experimental electronica, or the trajectory and integrity of the album as a whole, I don’t think I’ve heard better than this for years.
Meursault – Salt Pt.1

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2. The Felice Brothers – The Felice Brothers

A warmer, more immediately emotional album I couldn’t really imagine.  The voice and the slow pace are so rich and arresting that you find yourself overcome by sadness almost immediately, and that hold on your emotions is never once loosed for forty minutes.
Felice Brothers – Greatest Show on Earth

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3. Langhorne Slim – Langhorne Slim

Of this top five, all but the Felice Brothers have firmly enhanced their reputations with me with superb live performances.  With Langhorne Slim it wasn’t the emotive power of bands like Meursault, Shearwater or the Low Lows, it was sheer charm.  Sean Scolnick delivered his songs with such easy charisma that you just couldn’t help but warm to him.  Like Barton Carroll, this is an album whose style is far from revolutionary – more a familiar mish-mash of  what I would vaguely describe as Americana.  That familiarity is something which turns out to be a bonus in the end though, as the album worms its way under your skin like few others.
Langhorne Slim – Diamonds & Gold

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4. Shearwater – Rook

Occasionally beautiful, but often thunderous, this album was an immediate success with me, building up to all sorts of crescendos oozing a ferocity you rarely expect.  I still don’t know if it’s the loveliest or the angriest album of the year.
Shearwater – Leviathan, Bound

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5. The Low Lows – Shining Violence

This is another album I didn’t necessarily expect to find this high on the list when I first heard it, but for some reason it’s just grown and grown on me this year, while more highly anticipated records have kind of dropped away.  It broods and snarls, growling it’s tunes at you from behind a wall of reverb.
The Low Lows – This Modern Romance

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Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

Now, I know I played nicey-nicey with the previous parts of this list, and it is certainly true to say that there is barely any real difference between places fourteen and twenty-eight, but at the business end I think that some of it is a bit more definite.  Certainly, having thought it over, I think that Now You Are Pregnant is my favourite song of the year.  How or why it edges out the superb Wonderful Life I couldn’t quite tell you, but I know it would feel wrong to have put them the other way round.

The other rather obvious point that needs to be made is that, of course, I have no objectivity left whatsoever as regards the Meursault album or any of the songs on it.  I didn’t have anything to do with making the thing, of course, but I’ve worked so closely with that album over the course of the last six months or so, since it became a part of Song, by Toad Records, that my relationship with it is totally different to anything else I’ve been listening to.  So I am being honest when I feature Meursault stuff so highly, I’m not lying to you of course, but there’s no way I could be objective anymore.

So here’s the final installment of the Toad Festive Fifty.  DC will be posting his Christmas extravaganza tomorrow, and that will be the last you hear of Toad for a few days.  In between Christmas and New Year I will be going through my album of the year countdown and trying to move Toad over the self-hosting in order to avoid the horrors of DMCA harrassment.  This way I can host the fucking thing in China if need be, and they can all just fuck off.  So Happy Christmas all, and we’ll try and get things up and running as normally as possible right after the changeover. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Patt 4: 37-50

And so we stumble on to the penultimate post in the countdown to the Toad’s favourite song of the year.  At this point the idea of some sort of hierarchy of love is becoming rather ridiculous.  Do I genuinely prefer Make Another Tree to Frankie’s Gun?  No, of course I don’t.  Do I really get more goose bumps or feel more lightheaded with glee when Out on the Water comes on the stereo, compared to, say, Restless?  No, not in the slightest so what am I going on, here?  Well I don’t know, it’s just a gut reaction I suppose, largely dependent on my mood at the time at which I finally turned a ‘bunch of songs’ into some sort of list.

So don’t take it too seriously, just enjoy that fact that there have been this many brilliant songs released this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh thank fuck it’s Christmas. Or, any holiday really. I am so fucking incredibly tired I could pitch face first on the tarmac and sleep for six months without so much as coming up for air.

I have been reading, with some amusement, the bickering over the religious nature of Christmas which seems to take place in the American press with monotonous regularity. Apparently the Christians are adamant that we remember the religious nature of a pagan festival, which seems a little odd considering that the Christianisation of Christmas itself was basically the Christian colonists’ acceptance that they could never defeat local pagan religions. So basically they adopted Yuletide and tried to wedge their amusing Biblical myths into a story that their conquered people would never give up, and then waited a few years for it to degrade into some sort of carnival of aquisitiveness which they could have a tantrum about.

So it’s a pagan festival which has turned into an unbridled celebration of Western consumerist greed… erm, which part of this came up in the Bible again?

Personally, as an atheist, I love Christmas. It’s got nothing to do with that Jeebus character, it’s closer akin to the the pagan celebration of light and life in the middle of the darkest part of the year. As a family we have always come together and spent peaceful time together at this time of year. We play music, we read books, we cook together, but above all we rest. We get together and enjoy one another’s company. Mrs. Toad and I will, this year, be doing nothing more than snuggling up on the couch and wasting time. And that time wasting together is oddly one of the most important things you can do to forge a strong relationship. Just taking time to be together and enjoy one another’s company is, after the year we’ve had, going to be a rare treat, and one which I intend to enjoy immensely.

Toadcast #51 – The Yulecast

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01. Yo La Tengo – On Our Way to Fall (03.12)
02. Tom Waits – Soldier’s Things (07.21)
03. Pale Young Gentlemen – We Will Meet (15.23)
04. The Felice Brothers – Greatest Show on Earth (19.15)
05. Eels – Beautiful Freak (27.27)
06. Clem Snide – The Dairy Queen (35.25)
07. Bob Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue (43.13)
08. A.A. Bondy – Black Rain, Black Rain (48.45)
09. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Brompton Oratory (54.19)
10. Sufjan Stevens – Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother (60.06)

[Campfires & Battlefields has been such a constant support to this website, what with his sarcastic sniping and everything, and and I never thanked him properly for filling in so kindly while I was away. So thanks, pal, it really is much appreciated. And here, seeing as he introduced me to the Felice Brothers and I missed them playing in Glasgow a month or so ago, is a live review of their show in Annapolis last week, courtesy once more of the excellent C&B. ]

The Felice Brothers have been to the D.C. area a few times in the last 6 months or so, but for one reason or another events kept conspiring against my going, so when I saw in late April that they were scheduled to swing through again in early June I committed myself early by buying up a non-refundable ticket. That did the trick. Actually the gig I ultimately went to see wasn’t in D.C. at all, but at the Ram’s Head Tavern in Annapolis, Maryland, which is about an hour or so outside Washington. I really don’t think I’ve ever been to such a “civilized” venue, and I’m not sure I really like places like this. It was all tables and seats, with waitresses bringing beer and snacks and shit like that during the show. Kind of distracting if you ask me. To my astonishment the tables actually had little signs on them demanding that people be quiet and refrain from getting up and dancing, although to be fair the place typically caters to a somewhat different crowd, with great but “mature” artists like Guy Clark and John Prine walking the boards.

Well, as it turns out I needn’t have worried because the Felice Brothers pretty quickly subverted the whole staid tone of the place. The watchword was “messy.” Messy hair, messy clothes, messy bus, and yes … messy playing. Positively ramshackle. And completely engrossing. It was one blistering murder ballad and drunkard’s hymn after another, with this new guy Farley–who joined the band pretty recently–playing a mean scratchy old fiddle and attacking a metal and pine washboard with a heavy file that literally sent sparks and sawdust flying all over the stage. The hirsute, larger-than-life James Felice assaulted his accordion with his typical zest, looming over the slight, nicotine-stained frame of brother Ian Felice, who played a messy guitar and “sang a song in a shaky voice that was real as the day was long.” Simone Felice, who plays the drums, stepped out from behind the kit to sing lead on a few tunes, and he was a true showman in his short pants, motorcycle boots and sleeveless tee shirt with a picture of Idaho on it. Christmas, the bass player, is “they shy one,” hanging out in the back and plugging away at the backbeat just to keep the rest of those drunken louts from spinning completely out of control. People got up out of their seats and danced in the aisles, shouting at the band in appreciation and ultimately giving the Ram’s Head a bit of a roadhouse feel at long last. Great. Fucking. Show.

After the last tune of their encore they jumped out into the audience, slapping backs and sharing a word or two, and then hit the street outside, where they opened the door of their shitty old Winnebago and produced boxes full of new CDs, including an updated, expanded copy of their “real” debut, called “Tonight At The Arizona,” as well as their own “bootleg” CD of a gig they played in Omaha, Nebraska, in late March (on my birthday, coincidentally). The tracks below are from that CD, and they give you a pretty good sense of what went down at the Ram’s Head. The problem apparently was that they were selling and happily signing these CDs on the street for almost nothing, thereby completely undercutting the merch shop inside the venue, where the same CDs were selling (or rather, not selling) for two or three times as much. So this lady from inside marched right out into the crowd on the street, got up in Simone Felice’s face and (I’m not making this up) started yelling at the top of her voice that the Felice Brothers would never play the Ram’s Head again if they didn’t stop selling their own CDs. Simone Felice looked her right in the eye, wrapped his arms around her, explained very calmly that they were going to do whatever they wanted and that they weren’t worried about being banned. Farley then started walking around waving cheap CDs over his head, shouting “The Ram’s Head says no, but we say yes!” The lady just sort of shook her head at that point and walked away. Once I got my CDs signed, I did the same.

The Felice Brothers – Hey, Hey Revolver
The Felice Brothers – Helen Fry

I’m from New York originally.  Not the City.  The State.  I don’t live there anymore, but I grew up near the Catskill Mountains, which are a sort of junior varsity Adirondacks.  Very bucolic and of human scale, but rarely what you’d call majestic.  Anyway, when I was younger I wanted nothing to do with the place. Boring. Conservative. Cold as the grave in winter.  Profoundly Caucasian.  Now I’m thinking I might want to move back there someday.

The Felice Brothers come from the same place, more or less.  Three of them are in fact brothers surnamed Felice (Ian, Simone, and James), and they make glorious clattering music, bathe rarely, drink freely and by all accounts vomit copiously.  The bass player’s name is Christmas, like that badass from Faulkner’s Light in August.  They’re Italian kids from Palenville, New York, population approximately 1100, nestled in the Catskill foothills, 20 miles or so from Woodstock. But they made their name and honed their skills 100 miles to the south, busking on the New York City subway and cruising from gig to gig in their “short bus.”

When I listen to them, I am Home, whether I like it or not.  Sometimes I am swimming in a deep cold lake or driving at night on one of the pitch-dark backroads of Upstate New York.  All peaceful.  But then I blink and I can see the greasy-haired kids growing up in post-industrial towns, dirtbags with skinny arms protruding from sleeveless Iron Maiden tee-shirts, spray-painting Jim Morrison’s “poetry” on the walls of the National Guard Armory and drinking cheap whiskey mixed with Mountain Dew out of two-litre bottles.

People seem to compare The Felice Brothers to Dylan and The Band, and there’s certainly something to that.  Ian and Simone Felice sing with an honesty and fragility (and humor) that I can hear in Dylan and Danko and Helm, while the playing has a loose, ramshackle quality that wouldn’t sound out of place on The Basement Tapes.  I also hear echoes of Grant Lee Phillips at his very best, especially on “Murder by Mistletoe.”  Can you tell that I like this?  Actually, I fucking love it.  And I’m going to see them play on April 10.  I’m giddy.  They have a new, eponymous record out on Team Love Records and it’s just tremendous.  Buy it or I’ll sue you.

The Felice Brothers – Frankie’s Gun
The Felice Brothers – Murder by Mistletoe

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