Song, by Toad

Today rocks.  It’s freezing cold, even Edinburgh has a little snow, and the Water of Leith has completely frozen over outside our office.  Basically, this is a proper Winter and, as you might have guessed from my last post, I am loving it.

My hair froze on the way into work this morning, which is something I haven’t experienced since I was about seventeen.  I went skiing for a day with my Dad this Christmas which, rather sadly, is something we haven’t done for nearly ten years.  Christ it was perilous on the first few runs down!

So yes, basically I am loving it, it’s like regressing to childhood again, at least as nostalgic as the Elton John song I put in your Friday selection.  Yes.  Yes I did.  Elton John.  Suck it up, bitches (as he presumably must have said to Wham at one stage).

This weekend I will be sorting out video and audio from the New Year’s House Gig, making a start on the eagleowl Toad Session, getting a couple of our new releases sorted out and generally being an efficient little weasel.  I think I work harder in my free time at the moment than I do at my actual job – I’m certainly far more organised, there’s no doubt about that.

I was mocked yesterday for constantly carrying about a a big (and very pretty and colourful) chart of the Song, by Toad Records release schedule for the year.  Fair point and all, but between the timeline and the actual cost figures I have in there, it’s a pretty important chart to have. Yay admin!  Whoever thought it could be so sexy.

1. Name one plan/resolution/Very Important Decision you have made for the new year.
2. Have you done any Extremely Fun Snow Stuff yet?  And if not, WHY NOT?
3. Favourite snowy bit in a film (NOT Hoth-related because that’s too easy).
4. Coldest you’ve ever experienced.
5. Favourite warming up beverage for freezing cold days.

Trips and Falls – It’s the Snowpocalypse

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow

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Elton John – Cold as Christmas

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iLiKETRAiNS – Terra Nova

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Tacks, the Boy Disaste – Frozen Feet

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I used to love taking the train down to London.  When GNER had the East Coast mainline Mrs. Toad and used to travel pretty regularly, in the days when I lived in London and we only saw one another every couple of weeks.  As often as we could we would go and sit in the dining car and slowly get drunk all the way to the end of the line.  Those were really rather romantic days.

Anyway, when GNER’s parent company got into trouble they were forced to sell off the East Coast mainline under some obscure rule of Capitalism which requires failing companies to get rid of the only bits of them which work – in other words the only parts of the company which might actually help them work through their problems and get back on their feet.  Obviously if this doesn’t make perfect sense to you then you must be some sort of Communist, but it strikes me as some sort of ludicrous rule dreamt up by the vultures rather than the victims, but hey ho.  If nationwide healthcare is too Communisty for you then what chance do sensible rules of business have?

Anyhow, that line went to National Express who have made an unspeakable balls up of the whole operation.  Apart from running a previously healthy line into near-bankruptcy they have taken away the fucking dining cars, which now only operate on a fraction of the trains.  So yes, making a service notably more shit and that service therefore becoming markedly less favourable with customers, who’d have thought those two were connected.  Gosh the world can be a strange place sometimes.

So, this being Friday, please take the opportunity to de-lurk and fill in your Friday Five:

1. Favourite mode of long-distance transport.
2. Weirdest place you’ve had a surprisingly civillised meal.
3. Thing that just isn’t what it used to be.
4. Most boring everyday thing which actually turned out to be quite romantic.
5. Most annoying train habit.

Beck – Broken Train

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Eels – Railroad Man

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Billy Bragg – Train Train

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iLiKETRAiNS – The Beeching Report

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Phil Ochs – Automation Song

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Sorry, I know this is going up late, but I have been working on the promotional material for the Jesus H. Foxx EP release.  There’s a fair bit still to be done, but for the time being I am cautiously optimistic that it is going to look fucking brilliant.  There will be a lot of painting to be done though, so putting the final touches on the thing is going to take bloody ages, but I think it is going to be easily worth it.

In other news, this week’s podcast is a prolonged chat with Euan (of Kays Lavelle, Trampoline, Steinberg Principle and Woodenbox fame) as a way of rounding up the excellent fortnight he spent feeding and changing Song, by Toad whilst Mrs. Toad and I were off gallivanting.  So, rather than make his usual grouchy, joyless comments on posts I thought I might invite him to make his grouchy joyless comments on a podcast.  So he came round and complained and complained and generally sulked his way through the whole thing, which was nice.

Oh alright, of course he didn’t. But it just wouldn’t be fun for me if I didn’t make fun of Euan for being grouchy long past the time anyone else has ceased to find it funny.

Oh stop sulking.  You’re turning into him.  All of you.  Shame on you, people, shame on you.  Cheer the fuck up for God’s sake.

Toadcast #77 – The Grouchcast

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01. Wilco – Bull Black Nova (06.39)
02. The Kays Lavelle – Scars From the City (15.14)
03. There Will Be Fireworks – We Sleep Through the Bombs (27.37)
04. Beerjacket – Father (31.46)
05. iLiKETRAiNS – Terra Nova (39.36)
06. Andrew Bird – The Giant of Illinois (50.10)
07. Finn – The Fourth the Fifth (61.47)
08. Fleet Foxes – Oliver James (65.29)
09. Tom Waits – Temptation (74.12)

Christ I am turning into a dickhead.  Euan and Bart, who you may all know from their frequent contributions to the comments section here at Song, by Toad, are both friends of mine and have both been treated shamefully by my good (good – ha!) self in recent weeks.  I have forgotten to mention both of their recent gigs.  First it was Bart’s Gentle Invasion show with The Second Hand Marching Band, and this week it was Euan’s turn, when I entirely neglected to mention the fact that The Kays Lavelle are playing at Henry’s tomorrow (Thursday 15th May).

Please go along and clap furiously, because I am feeling really shitty about this.  People like them, apart from being good pals, make an enormous contribution to sites like this by commenting frequently and for most part vaguely sensibly, because it makes the place look populated and enjoyable and keeps the “Yo man this rokz” or “U R teh SuXORZZ!!!1!” crowd very much at arm’s length.  So the least I can do is try and make a contribution to their stuff in return.  And recently I haven’t done this, and I do not like it.

So please go to the Kays show and, erm, help me make up for being a dick.  And buy Euan a pint while you’re at it, and you can trade the cost off against the reams and reams of brilliant music I introduce you to every single day of the fucking year. Oh, er, oops.  Contrition of course, I was meant to be showing contrition.

Sorry lads, seriously.

The Kays Lavelle – First Light
And just for fun:
iLiKETRAiNS – A Rook House For Bobby
iLiKETRAiNS – I Am Murdered

When I spoke to iLiKETRAiNS it was in advance of the launch of their debut album Elegies to Lessons Learnt at the end of September last year. They built up their reputation in parts, with a couple of excellent singles, their 2006 EP Progress Reform and an entirely deserved reputation for phenomenal live shows. Elegies, however, is their first full album.

Guy Bannister, who plays guitar for the band, described it thus: “It’s almost like exam results. You spend all this time working on something, night and day putting your body and soul into it and then there’s this massive gap where you finish, you hand it off and it goes to manufacture, and then it’s just waiting for reviews to come in and reaction from people. And people might hate it and that’s it, your career’s over, or people might love it and it might open more doors.”

There weren’t actually all that many reviews for Progress Reform, but those there were were very positive, and generally the word built very slowly until, as the new album approached, it turned out that an awful lot of people were looking forward to it a great deal. So despite the barely noticed growth in their popularity they had clearly built quite a substantial and quite a devoted following.

Once again, acclaim for the album was quiet but by and large consistently positive. Scottish webzine Is This Music? named the album in their top ten for the year. It is, as you would expect from these lads, a slow-building affair that seeps in incrementally over a number of listens. In fact, a fan in Aberdeen recently came up to them after a show and told them that he’d booked two days off work for when it was released, just to sit and listen and absorb it all.

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Greetings all.  Just to let you know that I am featured on the latest Blogfresh Radio, talking about iLiKETRAiNS.  Bill did a remarkable job of editing it all down to something short enough for the format, because I didn’t half go on a bit.

Click here to listen.

What a lovely, lovely podcast this is.  No Mrs. Toad this week (yeah, yeah, I know, fuck off the lot of you) partly because she is away in the States being important and businesslike and so forth and partly because you are all a bunch of cunts for liking her best, you shower of ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, needless alienation of one’s audience aside, I am a little tired of doing themed podcasts.  Nothing particularly pressing leapt to mind this month so I thought I’d just throw on a pile of stuff I was really enjoying and sod having a coherent theme – that’s for the professionals anyway.  So it’s just a big old mish-mash of stuff I’m enjoying at the moment, but I think it’s quite a good playlist for all that.

There are actually a couple of songs chosen for other women in my life!  Oh shock horror! One is our reception lady here at work who revealed a surprisingly excellent vinyl collection when a few of us went round to her place after a staff night out recently, including Pavement and The Pixies.  Who would have thought it!  The other lady song is from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, after I was entirely charmed by the niece of our next door neighbour who apparently used to go out with their keyboard player.  She is trying to move to New York at the moment actually, where there are plans to play fiddle and harp on the new Au Revoir Simone album, which is splendid news.  Apparently this one is to be more folky than the last, which bodes very well indeed.  So go Ruth!  I can’t wait to hear it.

Better stop talking about ze laydees now of course, before I get skelped by my lovely lady.  Not one of of ‘em a patch on the sparkling gem that is the delectable Mrs. Toad of course, not even close!  *ahem*

Toadcast #14 – Total Self-Indulgence

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01. The White Stripes – 300mph Torrential Outpour Blues (03.04)
02. Rachel Unthank & the Winterset – Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk (12.34)
03. Jonquil – Lions (18.58)
04. Misophone – The Sea Has Spoken (20.46)
05. The Pixies – Where is My Mind (29.25)
06. The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning (36.09)
07. The Monochrome Set – Tomorrow Will Be Too Long (39.37)
08. iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist (44.10)
09. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Over and Over Again (Lost & Found) (50.23)
10. Ringo Deathstarr – Starrsha (55.00)
11. Babyshambles – UnBiloTitled (57.02)
12. New Pornographers – Adventures in Solitude (64.29)
13. Phil Ochs – Here’s to the State of Mississippi (75.18)
14. The Mabuses – Bonus Track (82.46)
15. The Real Tuesday Weld – Waltz For One (86.49)
16. Kenneth Williams – When the Toad Came Home (88.40)

This album really, really is bloody good. iLiKETRAiNS specialise in a kind of doom-laden post-rock which makes them sound like some godawful Gothic emo college ruff-ruff-ruff rock group, which they most certainly are not. What they are is basically an indie guitar band with a particular talent for building from a low menace to a thunderous wall of noise in pretty much every song.

In fact, for a group whose template barely changes at all from one track to the next, I find it quite perplexing that I don’t find their songs samey, but I don’t. Maybe it’s like The Wedding Present where the sound, particularly early on, was so distinctive, that initially that was all you heard. If you take the signature TRAiNS sound out of the equation then there’s a lot more tune there than you realise, albeit on a very, very slow burn.

I’ve read a lot of reviewers who don’t quite know how to approach the extra elements of the iLiKETRAiNS project, specifically the animations and the historical basis of the songs. So firstly, I’d like to look at the music in isolation as if they were just any other rock band. Basically, the songs tend to start off with a sort of smouldering malevolence which will either build slowly into a battering crescendo, or will continue to simmer, glaring menacingly at you for the duration of the song without ever quite becoming more than a shadowy threat. Songs like the gorgeous Come Over bring strings and ghostly choral vocals to the mix as well, with plenty more of the trademark cornet. All the songs generate a sort of wellspring of emotion that gradually bursts over you as the story comes to a head, flooding you with the pathos of the narrative and the swell of the music.

There is a lot more of course. Each song is a story: an often obscure historical story that informs the music and is conveyed in part by the song and in part by the phenomenal stop-motion animated videos that Ashley, the cornet player, makes for each. Live these images play across the backdrop of the stage too, and the album comes with an essay booklet explaining the basic story around which each song has been woven.

Remember the old days, before downloading, when you used to sit and pore over the lyrics booklet as you listened to a new album for the first time? Well here you’ll want to have Google handy because learning about each and every one of these often-lost historical moments as you absorb the music makes listening to Elegies to Lessons Learnt one of the richest and most satisfying experiences of the year.

iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist
iLiKETRAiNS – Come Over

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This was quite simply one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a very, very long time. Christ almighty this lot batter it out when they get going. I had the extremely good fortune to be able to interview them before the gig – something I’ll be writing up shortly – and the bizarre sight of these five thoughtful, rather intellectual and unfailingly polite and friendly young lads stepping up to the stage and going absolutely fucking mental was something to behold. They, in the no-nonsense words of Mrs. Toad, know how to rock out.

Their music is a brooding brand of post-rock (I think that’s the term, don’t hold me to that) that starts out with a sort of dark menace to it, and which builds and builds until quite frequently all five of them are going rabidly berserk and producing the sort of blistering wall of sound that most people can only dream of creating.

Live, they are also accompanied by Ashley Dean’s wonderful animations, which are designed to illuminate the often slightly obscure historical stories that comprise the narrative of virtually all their songs. It’s a weird twin spectacle, but when you’ve had a few beers the touching and untold stories they tell are driven home so much harder by the swirling malevolence of the music. Seeing iLiKETRAiNS is basically an emotional experience – the poignancy of the animations and the power of the music are something you have to simply immerse yourself in and let wash over and through you.

Ultimately, you go to a gig to get something out of the music you can’t get from a studio album, and this you do. Whether it be the emotional impact of the storytelling being so much stronger for the background animations or whether it be the visceral joy of one of the best nights of howling, raging guitar battering you’ll hear. Terra Nova was just fantastic. Building and building until there was simply no more noise to be wrung from their instruments, it was a phenomenal blast, and symbolised the whole night for me: it was powerful and emotional and left you just slightly giddy when it was over.

iLiKETRAiNS – Victress
iLiKETRAiNS – Terra Nova

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