This one’s been out for a couple of months now, but despite how smitten I was with the rather gorgeous Hearts, which found its way onto Toadcast #174 way back in May, I’ve only recently started to really listen to it.

Put in the briefest (and, I accept, probably also the shallowest) possible terms, this is electronically driven shoegaze, with restrained use of guitars and drums, if they are actually real drums, which I have to confess I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you if they might be, sounding more processed than flesh and blood.

Shoegaze is generally a rather difficult territory, because building these washes of hazy noise, which can threaten or uplift so powerfully when executed with aplomb, seems to be considerably easier than judging, or even creating, the right amount of melody with which to pierce them.  In short, there are a lot of really rather boring shoegaze bands.

I Break Horses for the most part defy that sinkhole confidently.  I’ll confess, I don’t think they’ve bettered Hearts on this record, but then that is a fucking amazing song.  On the rest it is often the small details which make them special.  The guitar riff which introduces Wired, and subsequent descent into mess of the same track; the foggy instrumental of I Kill Your Love, Baby; and just a couple of neatly turned vocal inflections on Pulse.

The execution of this kind of detail pretty much defines this genre for me.  And while this lacks the intensity of some of its more aggressive, guitar-fuelled brethren, it doesn’t necessarily drift into a swamp of wispy twinkles as it might do, but is definitely the flirtations with the latter which make this album good, rather than very good.

I certainly would like to see it decide if it wants to be muscular or ethereal, because it never quite snags either emotion completely.  There is some great stuff here, but I am tempted to suggest that as a whole the project needs a little tabasco to sustain an entire album, despite moments of real inspiration.

I Break Horses – Hearts

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I Break Horses – I Kill Your Love, Baby!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Bella Union

 This is called the Barbecast because we finally went out and replaced our shitty old one this morning, and today we intend to christen the new one.  The previous one had actually rusted through, and the only way to hold the burning coals in place was a shonky combination of chicken wire and tin foil. Not ideal.

It’s funny though, the two nations who go about barbecueing things the most actually know nothing whatsoever about the barbecue.

Dear Aussies and Americans, if it is powered by gas rather than charcoal it IS NOT A BARBECUE.  It is simply a cooker you keep outside.  Cultural differences … blah blah … practicality … witter … special smoked wood chips … etc etc etc…. BOOOORING!  You’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s not a barbecue unless you have to light your own coals.  Full stop.  Non-negotiable, this is simply a fact of life: if it is gas-fired then it is a cooker, not a barbecue, irrespective of whether or not you use it out of doors, and you can stop calling it that and kidding yourself you actually barbecue, because you don’t.

And that is that.

Direct download: Toadcast #184 – The Barbecast

01. Grandaddy – AM 180 (00.22)
02. I Break Horses – Winter Beats (07.36)
03. Acid Glasses – My Pale Garden (16.53)
04. Tunabunny – (Song for My) Solar Sister (19.49)
05. Grandaddy – Chartsengraphs (24.55)
06. The Spectral Mirror – Distant Murmurs (27.46)
07. Loved Ones – Hi Pressure (35.24)
08. Paul Hawkins & the Awkward Silences – Johnny (40.35)
09. Fear of Men – Church Words (48.23)
10. Sealings – Stay Cold (52.11)
11. Grandaddy – Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World (57.33)

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)