Song, by Toad

None of this really makes up a coherent post, so I’m going to throw out some mp3s for your consideration. Tonight is a sort of Toad Sessions Live gig at the Voodoo Rooms, with both Meursault (this weekend’s session) and Sparrow & the Workshop (next month’s session) on the ever-splendid bill at Limbo.

I am nearly finished my ’staring at a computer screen in my underpants’ phase, thank goodness. The Meursault Session is finished. Two of the four interviews from Pickathon are done, and a third is virtually finished. So all that remains is to edit the last Samantha Crain video, post that interview, and then start work on some Broken Records video, the Builders & the Butchers Interview and the Sparrow Session. And then anything we record at End of the R… oh shit. I’m not going to be out of my underpants until fucking Christmas, am I. Ah well, at least it’ll keep me out of the pub.

Actually, Matt from Bladen County Records had an intern when we were out in Portland to visit him. Mrs. Toad reckons we should get one – some poor unfortunate from one of the numerous private schools around us, studying something like media or something equally pointless.  They could help me stuff envelopes for Song, by Toad Records promo stuff, massage my shoulders when I am editing, fetch tea and biscuits – you know, the usual highly educational vocational training.

Actually, in all seriousness, it wouldn’t be a bad assignment for someone. They’d get to go to gigs, take photos, deal with the avalanche of post, maybe write a weekly post or something like that. And they’d be my bitch, which would be a privilege for any youngster. I wouldn’t even insist on a nubile young cheerleader, because they’d be fucking useless, so it would be perfectly, erm, safe, if you.. ahem. I’ll just stop there.

Inspector Tapehead: I saw them recently at a Trampoline event, and I was really impressed. I liked their three-song album sampler that they gave out then, and I like the three songs Chris has since emailed me through. Their album should be coming together early next year, which sounds like excellent news.
Inspector Tapehead – Sugar on Your Sheets

Maxwell Panther: I bloody love Maxwell Panther. There’s something of a rough quality to his recordings, to say the very least, and he reminds me of that really old school indie era where people recorded singles on tape players and put them out on vinyl in hand sellotaped sleeves.
Maxwell Panther – Three Miles of Expectations

Adam & the Amethysts: Well this is an album I picked up in Vancouver while I was there, and although I haven’t fallen in love with all of it, there are some wonderful moments to be found. They’re a Montreal band, apparently, although what that counts for, I don’t know. As a pretend Canadian, though, it always warms my heart that little bit to find a Canadian band.
Adam & the Amethysts – Bumble Bee

Flashguns: The label gentleman I discussed this band with said to me that they would most likely be releasing a single with them ‘once they’ve finished their A-Levels’, and I sat down and patted my growing paunch, ran my hands woefully through my slightly greying hair and consoled myself with the thought that at least I probably eat pussy better than they do.
Flashguns – Panama (Demo)

Absentee: These guys are an odd one. They’re sort of on the verge of becoming quite well known, and have been for a while. Whether or not they finally crack it is yet to be seen, but I wasn’t all that fond of their latest album, bar this rather excellent tune.
Absentee – Bitchstealer

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)

Well you know how I said I wasn’t so convinced by Toadcast #17?  Well it proved somewhat prophetic, although that prophesy may have been somewhat self-fulfilling of course.  It’s one of my least downloaded podcasts for ages, but this one should sort that out.  There’s some genuinely excellent music on here, although most of it is pretty obscure.  There’s no Arcade Fire or anything to pull in the punters, bar a bit of The Magnetic Fields, but a really good selection of new and emerging music nevertheless.

And why the Homecast?  Well that’s obvious of course: we’re back in our house at long last and I recorded this from my massive old lab bench that doubles as a desk and music centre all at once.  It’s fucking brilliant – I really should take a picture and post it for you so you can see.  The bench is 2.75m long, so I have computer and stuff at one end, stereo equipment at the other and a couple of good sized speakers either side. A music anorak’s paradise!

Toadcast #18 – The Homecast

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01. Aidan John Moffat – Eureka Springs (Edit) (00.00)
02. 4 or 5 Magicians – Forever on the Edge (02.30)
03. Flashguns – St. George (07.53)
04. George Pringle – Carte Postale (13.52)
05. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (16.59)
06. Destroyer – Foam Hands (21.55)
07. Howlies – Aluminum Baseball Bat (28.44)
08. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Aspidestra (38.36)
09. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Leftovers (40.48)
10. Ruth Theodore – Overexpanding (49.22)
11. Akron/Family – Ed is a Portal (55.28)
12. Victor Borge – Phonetic Puncutation (63.22)
13. Josiah Wordsworth – Drive-by Media (70.23)
14. King of Prussia – Spain in the Summertime (74.44)
15. The Magnetic Fields – Threeway (83.07)
16. The Forms – Knowledge in Hand (87.44)
17. Howlies – Smoke (90.14)
18. The Beat – Mirror in the Bathroom (95.38)
19. Found – When You Fall (102.09)

Well the season of lists and summaries and the relentless posting of annoying novelty Christmas songs may be upon us, and the release of new records may have slowed to the slightest of trickles to avoid being swamped by the overflow of effluvial Christmas Best Ofs*, but musicians are still plying their trade, even in December.

I found out about the Flashguns on that toppest of top cutting edge British indie blogs Fucking Dance. They are from Brighton and only barely out of diapers: still, in fact, at boarding school. So apart from being yet another indication that music is increasingly becoming an activity for the posh, who can afford the idle time and the kit (sometimes, just sometimes, I have some sympathy for the Gallaghers), the key question is of course: are they any good?

The short answer is an only slightly qualified yes. If you pop over to their MySpace page you can preview five songs, a couple of which I’ve cheekily ripped for you at the bottom of this post (of the others, House of Flowers is also well worth a listen). In sonic terms they flirt dangerously with Joe Lean/Johnny Foreigner/Courteeners jelly-mould NME toss-fodder. In my opinion however, their Smiths, Cure and other 80s British indie influences do more than enough to lift them well above that level of banal mediocrity. The slightly pained yelp of Sam’s vocal is a genuine pleasure and their guitar riffs have an insistence that has me irritating the shit out of my colleagues here at Proper Job with incessant two-finger table drums.

Ultimately I think you’d be forgiven for writing these lads off as just another of ‘that lot’, and they certainly won’t surprise you particularly, but I definitely think they have a little something extra that marks them out as being well worth keeping a bit more of an eye on. They’re pretty straightforward, but I rate these guys, I really do.

The Flashguns – St. George
The Flashguns – Bells at Midnight

*Best of the Libertines. The fucking Libertines. What a flagrantly whorish hawking of a once-great band that is. In fact, it may be the most offensive Christmas Best Of of the lot for me, just because of the sheer disregard for the integrity of their legacy that it represents. One can only assume the marketing exec whose idea it was was being sucked off by his own grandmother as he pitched it to his amphibious colleagues.