Bloody hell.  Holidays are awesome things, but getting back from them to the terrifying number of neglected tasks which pile up in your absence is quite intimidating.

So far the best I have managed has been to stare in a startled way at my desk and adopt a facial expression which looks dangerously like Ctrl-Alt-Delete is called for.  I think I might wait for lunch and just go an lie in the sun in Inverleith Park instead, and accept the meltdown rather than fight it.

Anyhow, that clip at the top is from the BBC’s SXSW documentary, due to go out on BBC2 Scotland on Tuesday 5th July at 9pm. I mention this for several reasons.  Firstly, I was there this year, and seeing that all documented from someone else’s perspective is both very cool and a little strange.  Secondly, there is a significant amount in the programme about bands I (and presumably you too) happen to love, such as Withered Hand and Kid Canaveral.  This is a good thing.

And thirdly, really quite surprisingly, there is quite a lot of me in it as well, which is also both odd and splendid at the same time.  The Beeb have used a lot of the footage they shot of Vic, Peej, Stuart and myself recording our SXSW hangover podcast, and it may only be the last ten minutes or so, but given I am not a band that is pretty incredible really.

Anyhow, while I am scrabbling to get the post sorted out, in order to prevent outraged shoppers battering down our door due to the lateness of their orders, here are five stupid questions to which it would be nice to receive five stupid answers, and god knows whatever other bollocks is on your mind at the moment.

And I promise that after the disruption of the last couple of weeks, normal service, whatever that is, will be resumed henceforth. Phew!

1. What chore are you currently the furthest behind with?
2. Do you like tennis (in general) or Wimbledon (in particular).
3. Are you fond of strawberries?
4. Have you watched pals of yours on the telly before?
5. Anyone going to any gigs on the weekend?  I seem to have completely lost track of what the fuck is going on at the moment!

The Radiators – Television Screen

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Doc & Merle Watson – Bonaparte’s Retreat

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Marcy Playground – Sunday Mail

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George Pringle – Carte Postale

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Orange Juice – Holiday Hymn (Peel Session)

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Blah blah blah talky talky… as festival season starts to slowly warm to its task for the coming year, so too does that other staple: the industry chat-fest.

In many ways it is classic music industry wastage: money raised and spent on people talking about doing things instead of actually doing them; the classic overhead.  A bunch of people only tangentially involved in the making of music are always more able to raise money than those actually making it, not least because they are business people focussed on business, whereas bands are artists who should be focussed on making music.

I’ve been to quite a lot of these, and even begun participating in them recently, and the above paragraph is the cynical voice in the back of my head which will probably never be entirely silenced. I have seen a lot of people be extremely entertaining at these things, but actually useful?  That’s another question.

Then the other voice kicks in and starts to say things like ‘hang on, are you saying they’re a waste of time, then?’  And actually the answer is no.  So far from these chat-a-thons I have managed to ummm… well, find the lawyer who negotiated our distribution deal for us, meet the publishing guy who, as a favour, helped us get a wee chunk of cash for Meursault for having one of their songs in a documentary movie in the States, get me invited down to Manchester to Unconvention, where I found a load of great bands and met people who helped us book two of the dates on Yusuf Azak’s tour, threaten to punch the manager of a bar who was being a dick while one of our bands played (alright, maybe not that one), meet a couple of 6Music presenters who have subsequently played our music, as well as the guy who runs Hype Machine radio… and there will be many more, but those are the ones which pop to mind off the top of my head.

So I cringe at many elements of these events, and I am terrified of being, when invited to speak, one of those people who talks engagingly and entertainingly for an hour, but who only really succeeds in making themselves look witty and charming (yes, I know, not much danger of that, let me say it for you), without being any actual practical help.  But when I look back at what I’ve actually got from them, albeit over many many events, they are actually starting to look like a pretty bloody good use of my time.

I’m still nervous of making a tit of myself at them though!

And we are once again at de-lurking time of the week, so please step out of the shadows and say hello, and give your answer to five stupid questions and then… well, it’s Friday afternoon, this is the internet, you know what to do!

1. How sick are you of people mentioning SXSW by now, as a percentage?
2. Name an entertaining and affable but utterly useless person.
3. When are you most likely to completely clam up.
4. Last most incredibly boring thing you had to sit through.
5. You wrote it off, but it was quite good really.

The Just Joans – Please Don’t Talk to Me

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The Dead Kennedys – Your Emotions

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The Walkmen – Stop Talking

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George Pringle – Extremely Verbal After Midnight (Demo)

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The Pierces – Boring

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This record pretty much ended up being almost exactly what I expected: most of it I bloody love, some I find a little too much, but in general I am really enjoying it.  A lot of the songs have been loose in the wild for a while, so it’s no surprise that an album with them on it is one I like, but there’s easily enough new fun that any existing George Pringle fan will find plenty of exciting surprises.

I have seen this album reviewed as a spoken word record in a few places, where people discuss the crossover between poetry and lyric-writing, between pop music and spoken word performances and other things which I would be frankly more than a little out of my depth talking about in any but the most superficial sense.  Personally, I reckon balls to spoken word and poetry, this is a pop album.  The vocal may not be sung most of the time, but it does the exact same job as the vocal on any other pop record, so I don’t really see the point in treating them any differently.

George Pringle conjures a bizarre world.  In part she is a dissolute, literate Sloan Ranger surrounded by rich trust-fund babies wasting away and thinking themselves important as they piss away their parents’ money, masturbating their delusions of significance to the point of chafing.  Then there’s the part of it which moves in a world of wastrel art snobs, imagining and cultivating their dislocation and suffering to the point that their whole lives become vapid pieces of stylised performance art.

She conjures these images, not in the sense that she belongs in this world exactly, more that she inhabits it at a sort of uneasy distance.  In fact it’s the only thing that stops you wanting to slap her: the fact that despite the free-flowing confessional of the monologues, the most conspiratorial element in the whole thing is the fuzzy implication that both you and she find the worlds she paints both uncomfortable and in some sense repellent.  Imagine if your posh friend invited you to a party and you were surrounded by rich, vacuous, self-absorbed trustifarian cunts.  George Pringle manages to give you the impression that she would be the girl you spoke to briefly in the kitchen, who you found oddly fascinating and who, long after the revulsion of the party itself had worn off, somehow stuck in your mind, separate from and untarnished by all you hated about the rest of the evening.

That may be an awkward explanation of how the personality of this record comes across, and it also puts a lot of words in the mouth of Pringle herself which may well not be accurate, but it’s difficult to explain otherwise.

Musically this record is at its best when the scratchy, clicking electronic backing tracks slow to a disturbed melancholia and Pringle’s vocal becomes a lament, delivered in a voice which seems to have a distressed wail bursting to break out of it at any point.  Generally, I fucking love these ones.  The only times I am really not that keen on the actual music are on the two tracks in the middle of the album: the ten-minute Bonjour Tristesse which doesn’t really quite manage to fill its length properly in my opinion, and the manic Pop Hit, which strays just a little too far into mental disco pop for my personal taste.  That’s a pretty tiny complaint though, because all the rest of this record is bloody marvellous.

There’s just something incredibly engaging about both the style of the album and Pringle herself – or at least the persona she assumes on this record.  She somehow manages to make this record charming, despite flirting with an awful lot of characteristics I could easily find off-putting.  As it is though, I think Salon des Refuses has turned out almost exactly as well as I had hoped it would.

George Pringle – We Could Have Been Heroes

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George Pringle – Fellini for Prime Minister

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon mp3

Well this podcast has been recorded from my sick bed, given my current immobility.  Actually, recording the Toadcast from bed was quite pleasant, once I got over the slightly unusual surroundings.  Imagine me in my pants and scratching my balls whilst talking to you and you’ll pretty much have the ambience down pat.

I sort of intended this to be a selection of poppy little tunes from my inbox, because all the last podcasts have been so heavily themed, but instead it’s ended up a little bit on the experimental side, through no real intent of my own.  Nevertheless, if you’re happy to listen to the growl of Polvo, the monologues of George Pringle and the peculiar electro-experimentalism of Mark Linkous and Fennesz all in one podcast then, fuck it, you’re in the right place.

Toadcast #86 – The Paincast

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01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You But Goodbye (03.11)
02. Cast Spells – Glamorous Glowing (07.39)
03. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (13.02)
04. The Leg – A Rat’s Health (17.04)
05. Polvo – Fractured (Like Chandeliers) (22.40)
06. Vandaveer – A Might Leviathan of Old (29.22)
07. Sparklehorse & Fennesz – If My Heart (from In the Fishtank #13) (40.13)
08. George Pringle – SW10 (45.03)
09. X Lion Tamer – Tugboat (52.40)
10. Kurt Vile – Blackberry Song (59.54)

I can easily imagine someone reacting very negatively to George Pringle. The pleasure of another middle-class white girl archly proclaiming the unbearable pain of her trivial problems to the world in an over-stylised and self-consciously literate manner is one I can easily imagine not all people sharing. Look at her stuff through the worst lens and it is really a bit self-indulgent. Then again, look at anything we do, not least this blog, through that lens and you’d probably get much the same thing.

I do not see her work that way at all, however. In fact, I bloody love it – I think she’s brilliant. Sure, it’s highly stylised, but it’s humourous and entertaining, affecting most of the time, and an absolute pleasure to listen to. She calls herself a diseuse, which means in practise that she makes laptop sounds and talks over the top of them. Bluntly put, that’s almost all there is to it. Samples, loops, skittering beats, and on top of it all, constantly, her plaintive voice talking away to you – sometimes keen, sometimes wan, but somehow always rather fascinating.

A lot of her work, in some vague sense, reminds me of the slower moments of Tiger Bay-era Saint Etienne. I saw her perform at Cabaret Voltaire a year or more ago and she basically just played her iPod and talked, all the while looking like the slightest heckle or snigger and she might burst into tears. It was oddly compelling. In fact that might be how I’d describe her music in general: oddly compelling. She does employ some singing, and has a lovely voice when she does, but for the most part her songs are simply spoken word. The lyrics are something of a stream of consciousness, for the most part. Although she does occasionally employ poetic techniques, particularly in terms of generating rhythm through image and alliteration and the odd deliberately turned phrase, generally it sounds naturally conversational in terms of actual structure.

Her delivery is often quite deadpan, with hints of quiet desperation and the odd burst into slightly over-wrought emotion and yet for all it’s a very carefully assembled style, it does somehow manage to sound sincere, funnily enough. Actually, this may be why I like it: it’s arch, but it’s not distant. She has a self-released album on the verge of hitting the digital shelves (September 7th) and I am really interested to hear what it sounds like. I can’t imagine how she’d sustain anything that long without risking a certain uniformity of sound, but if it’s as good as it might be then it could be really rather brilliant.

George Pringle – Carte Postale

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George Pringle – Kill Her if You Can, Loverboy

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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)

There’s no real theme to this week’s podcast, but there’s plenty of splendid new music. Basically I felt so guilty about the crazy rant that the Pink Podcast descended into that I have tried to say as little as possible in this one.

I’m off to the End of the Road Festival this weekend, which is why I recorded an advance post, so you’ll be enjoying this while I’m away getting rained on. The lineup is just phenomenal actually, so it should be really quite a splendid weekend. Tim from the Daily Growl will be there, as will Jamie from the Runout Groove and I believe possibly Sweeping the Nation as well, so it may turn into quite a blog-in. Tragically, however, I will be without my Midget Companion. Mrs. Toad is away in Australia (jammy bitch) with work and doesn’t get back in time to come along, so I will be taking a book and enjoying the pleasure of my own company as best I can.

There was at least one inevitable balls-up though – when describing the Catherine Howe song I said ‘I can’t believe this is current – it sounds so old-fashioned!’ and I have since discovered that in fact it is a 2007 re-release of a 1971 record which may just explain that. In the process I also discovered that I am something of a fucking idiot.

So, End of the Road, and in the meantime, enjoy the podcast – Toad on his very best behaviour!

Toadcast #11 – Not Sure What This One’s About[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo11.mp3]

01. A.A. Bondy – Vice Rag (00.52)
02. White Rabbits – The Plot (03.39)
03. The Courteeners – Cavorting (08.19)
04. Alaska in Winter – Close Your Eyes/We Are Blind (11.46)
05. Beirut – Fork & Knife (La Fete) (18.32)
06. Band of Horses – Is There a Ghost (21.57)
07. Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs – We Go Down (26.52)
08. David Dondero – Rothko Chapel (30.34)
09. Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game (38.15)
10. Calexico – All the Pretty Horses (41.45)
11. Catherine Howe – In the Hot Summer (48.53)
12. Little Name – How to Swim & Live (53.31)
13. Emma Pollock – Adrenaline (56.36)
14. George Pringle – Fellini For Prime Minister (63.52)
15. Octoberman – By the Wayside (67.27)
16. The 1900s – When I Say Go (74.54)
17. (The Real) Tuesday Weld – Kix (79.44)

Well, not from hell exactly, just so short it’s terrifying.  I need to meet some mates tonight, which is already arranged, I need to be at work most of the weekend for a presentation next week, we have some friends of ours visiting from Canada and we have to pretty much move out of our house so that builders can take it over for the next two months.  Even if the weekend was four days long I’d still be bloody struggling.

Fucketty doo-dah.  Ah well, at least I have tonight to get well leathered and stagger around all over the place like a six year old who’s been slipped a roofie at a cub scout jamboree.

Oh, and my stats engine for the podcast has finally updated to include the latest one, which has been downloaded loads of times – thanks guys.  Even without the swearing, imagine that!

And don’t ask me what that picture is, I have no fucking idea.  I searched Google Images for ‘too busy’ and that’s what came up on the first page.  Too busy for what I don’t know, but the mind boggles at the thought.  So to show just how too busy I am, here are a pile of groups I have been investigating or will be investigating or just don’t know what to do with yet.  It’s the Harassed Toad Mix Tape, I suppose.  Have a good weekend Toadlings.

Two from bands who sent me demos or albums that I wasn’t that keen on, but definitely liked some of their stuff:
Amasser website | Amasser -  Green Like the Sky
LoveLikeFire website | LoveLikeFire – Unlighted Shadow
Two more Campfires & Battlefields recommendations:
The Prids website | The Prids -  Shadow & Shadow Another group from Portland, would you believe!
Nina Nastasia & Jim White website | Nina Nastasia & Jim White – I’ve Been Out Walking I’ll definitely be buying this one soon, so expect a review to turn up at some point in the near future.
From the ever-excellent Cable & Tweed:
Beat the Devil website | Beat the Devil – Shine in Exile What a voice – like a more menacing version of the Detroit Cobras.
Definitely one for the future:
George Pringle website | George Pringle – Fellini For Prime Minister Odd, but strangely compelling.
And a couple of stray songs I am enjoying and will be investigating further if I ever find the time:
The Amateurs website | The Amateurs – Cool By Me For more, check 17 Seconds.[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/TheAmateurs-CoolByMe.mp3]
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin website | Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Oregon Girl The coolest band name for ages and another reference to Oregon![audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/SomeoneStillLovesYouBorisYeltsin-OregonGirl.mp3]