Song, by Toad

Christ, people are getting this shit up and running early this year.

I am not much of one for festivals, frankly.  All the tents and mud and rock ‘n’ roll rather fails to float my boat most of the time, and the sheer numbers of people really do put me off.  I never did like people all that much.

But there are a couple which I quite like, and they have both made unprecedentedly well-organised announcements this afternoon, so I thought I should pass them on.

Fence Homegame. The Homegame Festival is undoubtedly my favourite festival, taking place in the comforting surroundings of Anstruther, where you can find beds, clean sheets and comfortable showers.  Anyhow, the Fencey chaps have just let us know that next year it will be taking place on the weekend of the 12th-14th March, and that tickets will go on sale at noon on Tuesday 1st December only from the Fence website.  This means an almight digital free for all, of the kind which melted their server a couple of years ago, but if you don’t manage to get your hands on one then you might be able to find a few as they become available on the Beef Board as the time draws closer.

End of the Road Festival. Mrs. Toad had the mother of all sulks with the EotR folks when they failed to add Meursault to the bill for last year’s festival.  We’ll be trying to put that one right this year, but in the meantime they have announced a handful of bands already: Wilco, The Mountain Goats, The Low Anthem, A.A. Bondy, Diane Cluck with Anders Griffen and The Wilderness of Manitoba.  All good bands, although only the last one is new to me.  5000 people is right about my tolerance limit for groups of people, so I may have to consult with my midget companion on this one.

In any case, there you go, some fucking news for ya.  While it’s still fresh enough to actually be news.  Now that doesn’t happen every day around these parts.

Slow Club’s performance at the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival last month really shouldn’t have surprised me, but for some reason it did.  I’ve seen them before, at another Fence event in Edinburgh’s Caves a couple of years ago, and I really like their Moshi Moshi singles, but for some reason I’d allowed them to drift somewhat from my consciousness; I really don’t know why.

When they played at the Anstruther Town Hall, however, I was reminded pretty sharpish.  They were sharp, energetic and bags of fun to watch.  It all just seemed incredibly natural, watching them perform, as if playing their songs was simply something they found as normal and everyday as brushing their teeth.  Where other bands had laboured, for instance, under the appaling sound conditions, running the full gamut from quietly disconcerted to openly irritated, Charles and Rebecca just laughed it off, played through it and generally made it seem like it was the most insignificant thing in the world.

This attitude breezes through their music as well.  Even their less lyrically perky songs are infected with a relaxed, bouncy enjoyment and they rattled through their set at a fair clip.

The band are from Sheffield, but where up until only very recently there was a fairly thriving alternative music scene, loosely based around entities like the Sheffield Phonographic Corporation label, now there is apparently something of a wasteland.  Consequently, Slow Club seem to have been adopted by a number of other groups, whilst not necessarily being an obvious part of any of them.  Their label, Moshi Moshi, brings something of a scene with them, and they also seem to have been somewhat co-opted by the posh-folk crowd which includes the likes of Johnny Flynn, Noah & the Whale and Laura Marling.  Then there’s their relationship with Fence, which now stands at two Homegame Festivals and a Fence Club.

Their music also doesn’t seem to quite belong in any such easy niche, though.  It thumps along, with plenty of rockabilly and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, but they seem to get lumped in with alt-folkies which, apart perhaps from some of the company they keep, makes no sense at all.

Their album, Yeah So, is basically finished though, and will be out in July so maybe then they will get the chance to make an impact on the UK music scene more in keeping with who they themselves are, rather than being pigeonholed by either the city of their provenance or the other bands who like them.  After their superb performance at Homegame, I am really looking forward to this record, and so should you be.

***

The videos here are snippets from their Homegame set.  I actually recorded a whole interview with them while they were in Anstruther and, in the mother of all IT disasters, lost the fucking lot.  So my sincerest apologies to Charles and Rebecca, and to Debbie who set it up, but if you want to hear a proper interview with them then download DC’s podcast of his Waiting Room show for woxy.com, or alternatively go and check out Andy’s live Off the Beaten Tracks Session videos from the same day, as well as Dylan’s photos on Blueback Hotrod.  This must be a significant annoyance for professional music people actually, having to deal with an increasingly amateur music press, so I really am sorry.

Anyone who has bought Animal Magic Tricks lovely Soil album (available from her MySpace page) will know of Frances’ electronic low-fi scratching, which brings a mysteriously elusive atmosphere to her songs.  Anyone who hasn’t bought her album should.  Her voice sounds fragile, but when she opens the valves she actually has a pretty impressive set of pipes on her.  Her voice is gorgeous actually, and complements the roughness of the music beautifully. Recently she’s been playing with a cellist – Pete from the Leg, specifically, who also plays with Alex Cornish – and the combination is bloody lovely.

There’s something rich and comforting about cello sounds, which gives a lovely warmth to her songs.  It’s as if the alienation of the wavering keyboard sounds and the tremble in her voice are being offered the promise that it is all alright after all.  It’s like reading the saddest part of a book with a comfortable knowledge that there’s going to be a happy ending.  Frances has recorded three songs with Pete when she was in Edinburgh recently, and played with him both at Homegame this year and the warmup gig beforehand, so hopefully this is something that we’re going to see a little more of in her recorded material because I love the combination.

These are a couple of videos from her Homegame set, so you can see what I’m talking about.

My Homegame review is pretty brief, but it is here, and there is a wee video thingy as well for you to enjoy.  This is of course the accompanying podcast, with songs either from the bands I saw there, or from EPs and bits and pieces I acquired at the merch table up in Fife.

I should really have included some interviews and shit in this podcast, shouldn’t I, but then I wasn’t actually as well prepared or as organised as I should have been, really.  Inasmuch as I kind of think I would prefer my video to have turned out a bit more like Milo’s, I would also have preferred my podcast to turn out a little more like DC’s Homegame show over at the Waiting Room.  I’m not saying that I dislike the stuff that I’ve done this year, just that to my eyes it lacks a little bit of fizz and personality, unfortunately.  Oh well, it’s all a learning process, and by the time Wickerman comes around I reckon I should be able to produce something a lot better.

Toadcast #69 – The Fifecast

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01. The Phantom Band – Island (03.00)
02. The Hand – Happa Yori (15.02)
03. King Creosote – Nothing Rings True (19.52)
04. James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grieviance (25.42)
05. Jake Flowers – One For the Ditch (30.07)
06. Love.Stop.Repeat – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (33.25)
07. Viking Moses – Clown School (39.03)
08. Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Banjo (46.14)
09. Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves (51.26)
10. Jonnie Common – Taken Out (57.16)

I love Homegame.  Have I mentioned that before?

For the uninitiated, the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival is held once a year in the small fishing village of Anstruther in Fife (well, it used to be a fishing village but it seems to be largely touristy now – neighbour Pittenweem seems to be more of a working harbour).  A huge pile of Fence Records acts, bolstered by friends and neighbours, get together and play lots of gigs in the town halls, school halls and beer halls of the town, and about six hundred or so lucky punters get to go along.

There are a few things I love about this festival, so here are a couple, put as briefly as possible:
- Anstruther is small, so the festival itself has to be small, or the town wouldn’t be able to cope.
- Fence Collective music is fucking brilliant.  There will be no sets by the View, not even acoustic ones.
- It’s actually in a town, so if it pisses down you can just stay in the pub and not get wet.
- The bands themselves are all relaxed, friendly and as interested in seeing good music and getting plastered as the rest of us, which makes for a really nice, communal atmosphere.
- It’s in a seaside town so if you ever get all musicked out, you can pick up a paper, sit on the promenade and read for a bit.
- Did I mention the relaxed atmosphere?  It’s the nicest festival in the world to be at.

This year Mrs. Toad and I rented a couple of cottages in Pittenweem – we were too slow to get Anstruther – which ended up being absolutely full of bodies at the end of every gin-sodden night of debauchery.  And when I say full I mean full; every inch of floor and ever sofa or cushion covered with some passed out drunkard or other.  Fuck me it was fun. Read the rest of this entry »

At this year’s amazing Homegame Festival, run by our DIY pals at the Fence Collective (who have been incredibly helpful in the start up of Song, by Toad Records), I had the chance for a bit of an interview with Scottish indie hero Malcolm Middleton.

Neil from Meursault, who is a longstanding fan, conducted most of the interview itself, and we teamed up with Andy from the new Edinburgh live session showcase Off the Beaten Tracks, who shot a couple of session videos at the same time.  You’ll have to go to their site to see the session videos, but it’s well worth the visit as they have stuff from Team Turnip and Come On Gang already up, with Slow Club, Meursault, Randan Discotheque and, I think, Found all to be added in the coming weeks.

The interview itself was really nice, as can be seen in the video above.  Malcolm himself has a reputation for being a miserable bastard, and I have to confess that made me a little apprehensive about talking to him.  I’m still new to interviewing people and, whilst it’s piss-easy when things are going well, turning things around when they are going badly is something of a skill, and one which I am yet to come anything close to mastering. Read the rest of this entry »

Blimey James Yorkston has hit his stride. Not to imply that he was struggling to do so before of course, but in terms of having the confidence to experiment a little, whilst not being so frantic to reinvent himself that he throws the baby out with the bathwater, he has created an album with real presence.

It’s familiar, but something quite fundamental in the rhythm, particularly the rhythm of the vocal delivery, seems to have changed. It spills more, flows like an insistent stream, not strident, but purposeful. It is in fact very much like beat poetry (and not the kind you’re thinking of) at times. What I mean by that is that Yorkston seems to be increasingly disinclined to write choruses. I mean, he still does, but I find myself identifying songs more by the rise and roll of the rhythm, rather than by the lines in the chorus.

It seems somehow symphonic, too. I somehow think of symphonic as different from orchestral – more lilting, less bombastic – but I know I am not using the words in any way literally in so doing. It’s a little grander a sound than the rather too minimal Year of the Leopard, and less traditionally assembled than the glorious Just Beyond the River and Moving Up Country. Between that and the subtly adventurous arrangements, the aforementioned impression that he is really hitting his stride starts to emerge.

As writers of hush-folk go (although Yorkston, like Rob St. John, prefers to be referred to as a writer of pop songs) I am not sure there is anyone better around today. There’s a wonderful gentleness to his music, even when the song itself is about heartbreak, which envelops and comforts you like warm evening darkness. I love this record, and even if you splash out and buy the box set, this is money well worth spending.

James Yorkston – When the Haar Rolls In
James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Domino

This little bit of video genius/madness was made by on of our occasional commenters, the splendid Milo, so I thought it just had to be included.  And I thought I was excited!

Unboxing of James Yorkston ‘When The Haar Rolls In’ Boxset from Milo McLaughlin on Vimeo.

Well well, this is rather good. Johnny Lynch has spent so long slaving away at the Fence Records coalface that it seemed he might keep his own musical endeavours on the backburner forever. Well he’s pulled his finger out and spat something out at last, and the results are bloody excellent.

This record is quite Fencey in many respects, with a fairly familiar combination of acoustic balladry teased and perverted by electronic glitchery and atmospherics. The Earlies play on a few of the songs here too, as they did on labelmate King Creosote’s breakthrough KC Rules OK.

It’s a different animal though, Secret Soundz.  It leans more toward the bleepery of Found, and Johnny’s love of Hot Chip shows through immediately on the introductory instrumental Secret Sound #2.  As if to reassure us that he’s not going to do anything too weird he slips from that straight into the gorgeous All I Own, followed by the equally excellent I Don’t Know Where to Begin.  In fact, this record is forever slipping back and forth between these two places, such that it’s almost like a naughty schoolboy who occasionally catches himself gazing wistfully out across a misty harbour, and instantly resolves to do something mischievous immediately lest he be seen as going soft.

As with the latest/forthcoming King Creosote album, this particular gem is only going to be available at gigs until early September, when it is properly released.  KC and PT are touring together this Summer, and Johnny is playing some live shows with Bristolian Rozi Plain as well, so there’s plenty of opportunity to do yourselves a favour.

It’s been a while, but it’s definitely been worth the wait.  I may not warm to maybe one or two songs – Winter Home Disco never quite seems to hit stride, for example – but this is a really good album.

The Pictish Trail – I Don’t Know Where to Begin
The Pictish Trail – Words Fail Me Now

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Fence Records

Ah Kid Canveral, one of the very few successful purveyors of spiky indie pop in a city so devoted to its agit-folk that you’d think there was something in the water. Their last single Smash Hits is a slice of bouncy indie pop so perfect it could more or less define the genre.

I fact, that’s kind of what Kid Canaveral do. They are pretty much a perfect incarnation of indie pop – you don’t need to use any more words to describe them. They are supported at what is the launch party for their new single by a local band pretty much everyone I know has seen and they all seem to rate them very highly. This, however, is the first time that I have caught Come On Gang live.

It’s definitely a tentative thumbs up for the punk-poppy three-piece, I’d say. Sarah, the lead singer, suffered a little from having to play the drums at the same time, perhaps not quite having the puff to set about both tasks with the gusto to which her instincts compel her. It’s some set of lungs she has on her though, reminding me a little of Sonya Madan of the late Echobelly in some ways. As a friend of mine said, you can definitely hear the record in there, and their single release party is approaching, so that’ll definitely be one I stretch my pocket money to buy.

The main event didn’t disappoint either. They don’t do anything clever, Kid Canaveral, and there’s not much I need to say bar let you know that what they do, they do very well indeed. There’s nothing particularly ground-breaking about the music, but in every single song they manage to find that hook – the sticky bit that worms its way into your head and makes you hum a song for weeks afterwards. The self-same reason that, even from amongst a music collection thousands of songs deep like my own, every time a Kid Canaveral song come on, you always know it and you always know who sings it. No matter how rarely you’d heard the thing.

It’s brilliant fun watching them play, too – the fun in the music evident in the cheek of the lyrics. It’s so Scottish: they just can’t ever, ever be entirely, one hundred percent serious: an infectious, happy joy in a city full of dour miserablists. The single can be bought from Fence Records here, and so can the previous one, here. Don’t expect to be surprised, but I’d be downright amazed if you were at all disappointed.

Kid Canaveral – Smash Hits

MySpace | Buy from Fence Records

Oh the busyness just doesn’t subside, does it. And there’s nothing quite so life-affirming as being in the office on a Bank Holiday Monday. The way things work around here they just lump Bank Holidays into your overall holiday allowance, so you can take the days when you want. This makes a lot of sense for plenty of reasons, but it falls short in one crucial way: every once in a while it is nice to be forced to take some time off and just waste a day with your other half.

Mrs. Toad is at home by herself, no doubt drinking a cuppa in our south-facing, sun-drenched garden. Or proto-garden more like, as it was all planted from scratch last year and is only slowly growing into itself.
As much as I like where I work, I would dearly love to be at home with my silly missus and her preposterous cat, drinking tea in the sunshine and cursing my silliness at failing to dead-head the fennel before the bastard went to seed and caused an explosion of miniature fennel plants in the little bed in front of the shed. Or something like that. Rats.

So, coming down from Nick Cave in Glasgow last night with JC and Mrs. Villain, what can we find to try and fail to live up to that experience this week? And what the fuck is going on on Thursday for crying out loud?

Tuesday 6th May: Frightened Rabbit at The Hive.
I don’t know what the venue is like, but The Hive’s website is so monumentally shit and clunky to navigate that I sightly resent plugging their gigs. And actually, Frightened Rabbit’s new album isn’t exactly blowing my socks off either. Mind you, I’ll be busy doing radio things, so what do I care. Ross Clark is supporting, and he’s pretty handy.
Frightened Rabbit – The Modern Leper

Thursday 8th May: King Creosote & Slow Club at Fence Club, the Caves.
Another excellent Fence Club lineup, with good ol’ KC and the excellent Slow Club – another Moshi Moshi band, I have serious Label Envy! There’s also an exclusive vinyl treat (that sounds kinky) if you come along, so what more incentive could you want? These parties are brilliant fun.
Slow Club – Me & You

Thursday 8th May: Attic Lights at Cabaret Voltaire.
I keep hearing these lads mentioned as the Next Big Thing, and highly complimented by plenty of very reliable people. Honestly though, I have never heard anything that gets me all that excited. Still, I have yet to give the time necessary to qualify that kind of negativity, so I will make more effort before I shrug my shoulders once and for all.
Attic Lights – Never Get Sick of the Sea

Thursday 8th May: The Kays Lavelle & The Mannequins at Limbo, the Voodoo Rooms.
The Kays Lavelle will presumably be shit, once again*.
Anyway, once the humour subsides, expect some rather dark, generally piano-led indie-rock. The Mannequins are new to me, but a cursory listen to their MySpace sounds pretty promising. Sort of punk-croon, if you can imagine that.
The Mannequins – Little Black Book

Thursday 8th May: Dave Graney, The Low Miffs & the Bum-Clocks in the Speakeasy at the Voodoo Rooms.
This is a superb lineup. I don’t know much about the headliner, but the Low Miffs are fantastic, and as for the Bum-Clocks… well, can you imagine Robert Burns’ poetry performed against a backdrop of Malcolm Ross’ indie guitar riffs? This is really, really worth going to.
The Bum-Clocks – A Tale o’ Twa Dugs

Friday 9th May: MGMT at the Liquid Room.
I’ll admit I’m being a bit of a pop slut by going to this, but Time to Pretend is just brilliant and although the rest of it slides a little closer to the Scissor Sister than I might personally choose, I expect this to be a load of fun. Someone told me they were shit live, but I’ll withhold judgment on that until after Friday. I’m bloody well committed now anyway.
MGMT – The Youth

Friday 9th May: Rachel Unthank & the Winterset at the Voodoo Rooms.
If I’m being honest I would say that this is a little bit too folky for me, really. There’s a lot to like in the music though, and some of my readers may well love this, so it’s definitely worth considering. And her rendition of Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk is just brilliant.
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset – Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk

[Edit: an irate Bart, who couldn't even be arsed to list this gig himself, insists I mention the following gig. They're so good they don't feature on his own listings page, but hey, they're presumably good enough for me, eh? Fucksake.]

Saturday 10th May: The Second Hand Marching Band, Skeleton Bob & Woodenbox at the Wee Red Bar.
Apparently this lot are all very good. For more complete descriptions, complete with a girly ginger hissy-fit, see the comments below. Good grief.
The Second Hand Marching Band – Dance to Half Death

*Sorry, that’s an in-joke. Lead singer Euan is a regular reader of this site and so my first review of the band was a one-liner: The Kays Lavelle were shit. Side-splitting, eh? Yes, I know, sometimes I wonder how I do it.