This podcast was recorded – not a word of a lie – on a deserted mountaintop in Corsica in the shadow of a ruined castle.  Not an especially enormous ruined castle, I’ll grant you, but the shadow of a ruined castle nevertheless.

I will try and show you this as clearly as possible when I choose the picture for the mp3 tag and all that stuff, but I honestly doubt it will be all that easy.  Vast panoramas of rocky mountains don’t really come across all that well in photos, particularly when the only device you have with you with which to take them is an iPhone.

Anyhow, having recorded this, the challenge is going to be to find somewhere to upload the fucker.  Bank machines and shops which let you pay by card are pretty scarce commodities in the interior of the island, never mind a decent internet connection.

Direct download: Toadcast #180 – The Corsicast

01. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Come a Long Way (00.09)
02. Yusuf Azak – Lay Me Down (05.36)
03. The Black Tambourines – Better Off Dead (09.54)
04. Fog – 10th Avenue Freakout (18.42)
05. Six Organs of Admittance – Saint Cloud (23.19)
06. Adam Stafford – Fire & Theft (33.20)
07. Neil Young – Old Man (Live at Massey Hall 1971) (38.45)
08. Girls Names – I Lose (46.53)
09. Mavis the Dog – End of Our Day (50.55)
10. Jenny Reeve & Jill O’Sullivan – Tooth & Claw (56.59)

I am learning to despise hotel internet.  Whether I book myself and end up staying in a fucking Travelodge or Mrs. Toad books and we end up staying on one of the larger guest suites at Buckingham fucking Palace, absolutely all of them have such risibly bad internet connections that recording a podcast leaves me tearing my fucking hair out.

I couldn’t even get the online image editor to load properly, so the image is that rather pathetic, borderline clipart stinker you see in the top right hand corner.  Dreadful.  My art teachers would be justifiably disappointed.

Anyhow, this is called the Plancast for one simple and far from compelling reason: the fact that Mrs. Toad and I are down in London and have had to be clinically heartless in who we do and don’t see.  We don’t exactly have lots of friends down South, but still far too many to see in one weekend and at times in the past we have tried to do too much and ended up being inadvertently rude to everyone.

Direct download: Toadcast #174 – The Plancast

01. Love Inks – Blackeye (00.06)
02. Dubstar – The Day I See You Again (04.57)
03. Rev I.B. Ware with Wife and Son – I Wouldn’t Mind Dying (But I Gotta Go By Myself (12.01)
04. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Airline to Heaven (18.30)
05. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – Hard Time in a Terrible Land (23.12)
06. I Break Horses – Hearts (29.39)
07. Tusk Tusk – Out of Tune and Out of Time (37.22)
08. Sandy Denny – By the Time it Gets Dark (41.01)
09. Girls Names – Nothing More to Say (46.02)
10. Thomas Tantrum – Hot Hot Summer (51.33)
11. Jarad Miles – Darjeeling (56.04)

I really am running out of stupid names for these fucking things.  I’m sure I’m going to end up just numbering them in future, but for now you’re going to have to put up with the bloody silly names I’m afraid.

In my effort to squeeze eleven songs into an hour I actually don’t ramble very much on this one, only to find out that the podcast ends up being much less than the usual hour and a bit, for a change.  Do I really talk so fucking much the rest of the time?

Anyhow, this is a fucking ace podcast of new music.  I don’t generally pay too much attention to how cool (or otherwise) these things might be, but I reckon any haircut merchants out there might rather enjoy this one.  For the rest of you, those without Haircuts with a capital haitch, well, just get on as best you can.  Let’s face it, if I love it all, it can’t really be all that cutting edge, can it.

Direct download: Toadcast #164 – The Roadcast

01. FOUND – Machine Age Dancing (00.25)
02. Girls Names – Seánce on a Wet Afternoon (07.00)
03. Sonny & the Sandwitches – A. Grassley – Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die (12.19)
04. The Honorable Worm – Wouldn’t Mind Dying (14.46)
05. Li’l Daggers – Ya Tu Sabe (22.54)
06. The Louche FC – Back Bedroom Casualty (29.27)
07. Milk Maid – Such Fun (33.24)
08. Brown Brogues – Treet U Beta (35.56)
09. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog (41.07)
10. Zed Penguin – This Town (46.49)
11. Manners – Knives (56.44)

After enjoying the Vinylcast I recorded a couple of weeks ago, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to resist the temptation to come bacl to my record collection for this week’s podcast as well.  In fact, I think I can safely say that this is now something which is going to become a regular feature of Song, by Toad podcasts because… er, well just because it’s fun I suppose.

This week I went to the Shelter charity shop on our street and bought about half a dozen records: some Bessie Smith, Shirley Bassey, Ella Fitzgerald, Kid Thomas and his Algiers Stompers, and a couple of old Dylan records.

If I end up ever developing a taste for jazz I am pretty sure I will be able to trace it directly to a sense of misplaced nostalgia, and the charity shops of Scotland.  I am a long way from being a jazz fan, but there’s something so fitting about the crackle of vinyl on an old jazz record.  I never used to listen to this stuff as a kid, but for some reason I get a nostalgic feeling from listening to it now.

Direct download: Toadcast #159 – The Vinylcast 2

01. The Meteors – Wrecking Crew (00.22)
02. Kurt Vile – I Wanted Everything (07.16)
03. The Ad Libs – He Ain’t No Angel (15.01)
04. Tom Waits & Crystal Gale – Little Boy Blue (17.39)
05. The Velvet Underground – Stephanie Says (24.07)
06. U2 – Twilight (29.00)
07. Girls Names – Graveyard (33.19)
08. Rene – Destination: Mars (40.00)
09. Ambitious Tugboat – Age Rings (43.07)
10. Manners – My Will (48.27)
11. Otis Redding – Pain in My Heart (56.36)

Not quite as reputation-threatening as that Glasgow band Sexy Kids, nor as frustratingly difficult as Girls, but I still had something of a raised eyebrow when I typed this one into Google – unwarranted as it may have proved to be.

Girls Names describe themselves simply and accurately as making ‘disposable noise pop songs’.  More literally this means they make songs which are incredibly infectious, loud, messy and hugely enjoyable.  No fluff to be found here whatsoever.

This is a bit of an introductory post, because the release I have been listening to is the one pictured, which has long since sold out, having only been released in May on Tough Love Records.  Tough Love are one of the sharpest sniffers of new music around and having their seal of approval is quite an accolade – I’d probably compare it to Moshi Moshi in that respect.

Their next release is on Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks who are sufficiently fashionable to be releasing Beets and Wild Nothing.  Most of what they release is heavily, heavily retro-influenced but while it may not be musically all that innovative, there is an unmistakeable verve to most of it – a sort of offhand, reckless energy that it is impossible to meet with much cynicism.

Girls Names play a scuzzy mixture of sunshine pop and a heavily punk-infused indie music (particularly the vocals).  It all sounds very much like it was played in a tumble drier in someone’s basement and recorded from the house next door, and this, as you all know, is a style I very much like.

If I were to compare it to anything, I might be tempted to suggest a little of Phil and the Osophers in places, but in general this is more of a piece with the rasping interpretations of sunshine pop we’ve seen around recently from the likes of The Love Language and Harlem and bands like that.  I remember after Britpop faded there was a brief stutter before a rejuvenated version of punky garage blues exploded out of Detroit, and after the somewhat over-elaborate excesses of the likes of the Decemberists (who I love at times, don’t get me wrong) this direct, simple racket is fucking great to hear.

Girls Names – Running Scared

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Girls Names – Blood River

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This is a not entirely accurately-titled podcast, in that the whoring only takes place over a couple of songs at the tail end and does not at all influence any of the rest of the playlist.

What am I talking about, you ask?  Well when I played a few trendy songs a few months back the listership of the podcast doubled over the course of a few weeks.  I noticed this back when I was a bit more rigorous about the blog in the early days: if I reviewed high-profile new releases in the week of release it generated a large spike in readership.

So I’ve dropped a couple of very hype-friendly songs into the end of this podcast to see if that actually has any influence on anything at all.  I found nice ones – ones I actually like, I mean – so don’t worry, your normally glittering listening experience will not be tarnished one bit.  But bear in mind that this week we are all the guineau pigs in a silly internet hit-whoring experiment.  Sorry.

Toadcast #125 – The Whorecast

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01. Burnt Ones – Sunset Hill (03.46)
02. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat (09.34)
03. Girls Names – You Should Know by Now (18.32)
04. Pagan Wanderer Lu – Banish Negative Thoughts (20.26)
05. The Cure – Pictures of You (28.01)
06. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (35.37)
07. Taken by Trees – Watch the Waves (42.12)
08. Wild Nothing – Summer Holiday (49.21)
09. The Beets – What Did I Do (53.20)
10. Silver Columns – Warm Welcome (56.17)
11. Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs (62.41)