Edinburgh does cold, clear, sunny days better than anywhere I remember being. It really is just a stunning day today – the kind which makes me wonder about bunking off this afternoon, getting a coffee and going for a stroll up the Water of Leith.  Anyone?

Did anyone order the Whitehaus Family Record I reviewed a while back?  I did, and it just arrrived, including a double vinyl album, a 7″, two tapes and about a dozen CD-Rs.  Bar-gain!  That’s my weekend’s aural pleasure taken care of, then.

This weekend we shall be doing… not very much actually.  If it keeps up being this sunny and nice then I reckon we might venture out into the garden and finish the rather slapdash job of cutting everything back ready for Spring, which we made a bit of a half-arsed job of in November.  I think the best part of having a garden is the really early stuff – watching the first shoots emerge after all the dark and the cold.  It’s actually, dare I say it without seeming like a right stuffy old fucker, kind of exciting.  We threw in a heap of new bulbs in the Autumn and I am really looking forward to seeing which ones come up.

Oh, and yes, I do own a pair of slippers, and you can stop making that face and fuck off.

So, here’s the usual opportunity to talk pish and waste time on the internet on a Friday afternoon.  And well done to Andy Murray, by the way.  Not that I really care about tennis, but for some reason it seems nice when he wins.  It cheers the Scots up anyway.

1. Level of interest in professional tennis, as a percentage.
2. Most old-fogey thing you really enjoy.
3. Suggestion for wasting a sunny afternoon.
4. Suggest an old record from your childhood for sunny Sunday afternoon listening.
5. What do you have with your cuppa?

These five songs are from the year I spent in a swanky flat with the Wrong Girlfriend just after I moved to London in about 2001 or so.

Interpol – PDA

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Chris Coco w. Nick Cave – Sunday Morning

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Bob Mould – Semper Fi

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Sondre Lerche – Dead Passengers

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Brendan Benson – Folk Singer

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Hoarse.  Horse.  Hoarse.  Horse.  Geddit geddit, see what I did there?  Yes, another tedious pun, but I know you know to expect no better from me these days.  Anyway, it’s only called the Hoarsecast because I have a bit of a phlegmy flu which, whilst not fun, is hardly very debilitating so there is no need for me to moan really.  Not that this usually stops me, but anyhewww…

It’s a funny old mix, this playlist.  I rearranged the songs time and again, swapped a few in and out here and there and just couldn’t find a way to make them click together for some reason, so for all I like everything that’s on here it is still a little bitty, as a single coherent mix.

Mind you, with me talking pish between all the songs, there’s fuck all chance of these things really flowing in the first place.

Direct download: Toadcast #142 – The Hoarsecast

01. Wilco – I Can’t Stand It (00.17)
02. Hooray for the Riff-raff – Slow Walk (08.32)
03. Interpol – Evil (15.49)
04. Jose Delhart – Broken Hearted Chant (22.17)
05. Flower Orgy – Boneyard (25.12)
06. Willie Nelson – Good-hearted Woman (31.59)
07. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Notes From the Waiting Room (38.07)
08. Dumbo Gets Mad – Eclectic Prawn (40.33)
09. Sexual Objects – Here Come the Rubber Cops (47.56)
10. Grinderman – Star Charmer (57.53)

Before you break out into a cold sweat about having to sit through another list of the best albums of the decade, don’t worry, this is not one of those.  Although most of these songs would be there or thereabouts if I were actually compiling a favourite songs of the decade list, that’s not why they’re here.

Basically, rather than try and rank anything against anything else, all this is is a meander through the last ten years and me chattering about how my relationship with music has changed and what sort of stuff I was into at what times of my life.

Basically, this is the soundtrack to a perfectly normal, albeit enthusiastic, music fan’s descent into full-on deranged internet mania.

Toadcast #99 – The Decade

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01. Eels – A Daisy Through Concrete (04.09)
02. Goldfrapp – Pilots (10.04)
03. Grandaddy – The Crystal Lake (14.17)
04. Lift to Experience – To Guard and to Guide You (23.13)
05. Interpol – NYC (30.46)
06. Tom Waits – Kommienezuspadt (34.57)
07. The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle (40.41)
08. The Walkmen – The Rat (44.06)
09. The Mountain Goats – Dilaudid (51.20)
10. Broken Records – Lies (Demo Version) (57.07)
11. The Savings and Loan – Christmastime in the Mountains (64.11)

It’s Fresh Air time again, and once again Ruth and I have a splendid live session.  We might even have Ruth’s voice back, just to make matters even more special.

This week The Pineapple Chunks are going to play live in session for us.  And instead of being sensible and doing it acoustically we are going to end up having the full band in the studio and are going to just have to try and find some way of arranging the mics so that we pick it all up.  Basically, I think we are going to just have to have two room mics and ‘mix’ the sound by having people move closer or further away from them, much like the way everything was recorded in the olden days!

So, for too-many-people-in-a-tiny-little-studio mayhem, tune in from seven and see how we get on.  You can always point and laugh if it goes horribly wrong.

On air 7pm-8.30pm gmt – listen live here.

Here is this week’s tracklisting, which will be updated live as we go along.  Feel free to heckle in the comments section.

1. The Strokes – The Modern Age
2. Interpol – PDA
3. The Pineapple Chunks – Gyroscope + Look Back in Horror (Live in Session)
4. Deerhoof – Snoopy Waves
5. Stephen Malkmus – Walk Into the Mirror
6. Erik Gundel – Lake On My Roof
7. The Pineapple Chunks – The Diagonal (Live in Session)
8. Khaya – Duet (Single Version)
9. Sparrow & the Workshop – Into the Wild
10. The Maxwell Cult – Sound is a Place
11. Trips and Falls – How Do You Do
12. The Pineapple Chunks – Man Love (Live in Session)
13. Huey Lewis & the News – Trouble in Paradise (Live)
14. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (Live in Session)

Last week’s session was with the occasionally mental, occasionally hilarious and occasionally joyous Japanese War Effort.  Interview podcast, downloadable session tracks and videos are all after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone who reads this blog knows that I am usually pretty shallow when it comes to my reactions to music – I make snap judgements, I am borderline fetishistic about certain production styles, I find it almost impossible not to completely dismiss anyone too dapper, too attractive or too immaculately groomed, and once bands get too famous or ubiquitous I find it hard not to completely unreasonably lose interest.

Well, here’s another one to add to the hall of shame: I only gave this album as much chance as I did because someone told me that Julian Plenti happened to be that chap out of Interpol (Paul Banks, as his mother knows him).  Until that point this was another release where I had half-listened to an mp3 which hadn’t grabbed me in the first twenty or thirty seconds, after which my attention span had drifted and I had lost interest.  Sadly, this kind of thing happens to me a lot these days – it’s almost inevitable due to the lack of time I have to try and digest all the music I get sent.  I don’t like it, but I don’t think it can be avoided.

Plenti’s press release is worded in a way which I admire, however.  In fact, his Interpol past isn’t mentioned at all, so they have clearly decided that they want this music to stand or fall on its own merits, as an independent piece of work.  Given the instant audience they could rope in by flogging the Interpol angle, I have a lot of respect for their decision not to.  I have to confess, though, that once I had discovered that fact I listened with renewed interest.
Again, it may be superficial, but I thought two things as I finally took time to sit and listen to the whole album: firstly, that I had better give this a proper listen this time, as I knew I had been too hasty the first time; and secondly, that I was genuinely curious to see what that guy from Interpol had in him other than Interpol.

And the answer, it seems, is rather a lot.  This album came together, according to the press release, on Plenti’s embracing of modern music software.  Software which allows you to sound like a band, to build a big, layered sound, without actually having to have a band.  Closer to home, think of the Meursault album: a deep, big, textured sound gradually built up on a laptop from recordings made in someone’s living room.

In a sense, I suppose, it can be a double-edged sword.  Yes, it allows you to build a sound at your own pace which is exactly what you want, but at the same time it can cut you off from the creative stimulus of sparking ideas off other people.  In this case, maybe because I had grown a little bored of the ‘Interpol sound’ – particularly from their last album, where that sound was about all that was left of a once-great band – it is the the least Interpolly songs which I like the best.  Skyscraper is great, Madrid Song is lovely, No Chance Survival and Fun That We Have as well, and they all have an experimental, textured shimmer to them which I really do like.

Conversely, it’s when Plenti goes uptempo that thoughts of ‘ah that chap from Interpol’ can raise their head, and the album loses a bit of its sparkle.  Games For Days doesn’t cut it at all, for me personally, sounding just like what made the last Interpol album so lifeless.  It’s not all that common though – as Unwind demonstrates, with a downright jaunty trumpet riff bringing something altogether unexpected to the table.

So, I’ve mentioned bloody Interpol in virtually every paragraph in this review, and I accept the fact that Plenti and his band will probably hate me for it.  And I have to say that they are right because it is only when this record sounds anything like Interpol that I don’t like it.  Ninety-five percent of it is really good, genuinely new, and a real treat.  It didn’t grab me immediately, but with every listen I am enjoying this more and more.

Julian Plenti – Skyscraper

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Julian Plenti – Unwind

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

This is called the Slowcast because there are so many songs and, more commonly, whole albums out there which I took ages and ages to get into, and for no really obvious reason.

There are several reasons, I guess: how familiar a sound is, your emotional state at the time, what your mates are listening to, how popular something is and stuff like that.  I know I’ve admitted plenty of times in the past that I have a habit of refusing to like things if they get too popular.  That sounds ludicrous, but it’s not exactly a conscious decision, more an instinctive recoiling.  I never have liked much popular stuff, although I do certainly go through phases.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons that, with the label, I am not looking to sign or work with the modern equivalent of a Top 40 band – I have never much liked Top 40 music.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of the podcast.  This is dedicated to those albums which for some reason you have to hear about a million times before you eventually, out of nowhere, realise that you love them.

Toadcast #72 – The Slowcast

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01. Billy Bragg – Honey I’m a Big Boy Now (04.36)
02. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (08.37)
03. Radiohead – My Iron Lung (14.14)
04. The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels (23.42)
05. Mancino – Definition of an Accident (32.26)
06. The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest (36.09)
07. Interpol – Obstacle #1 (43.31)
08. My Latest Novel – Wolves (49.30)
09. The Wedding Present – 2, 3, Go! (55.29)
10. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (59.56)

What a weird, weird gig this was. Interpol were absolutely, note-perfectly, beat-for-beat immaculate. Honestly, it was barely possible to notice a single difference between what they played last night and the final, mastered, recorded versions you hear on their albums. This is some feat of technical accomplishment, I’d guess. And bloody impressive as it was, it makes for a really pointless gig.

Honestly, it was all so amazingly well-executed that you might just as well stay at home and watch their music videos on a really big telly. What the fuck is the point of shelling out to go to a gig if the band isn’t going to say anything, nor going to reinterpret their songs, nor even cut loose and play with a bit more venom? We got nothing from them all night. Not a thing. Nada. Zip.

To make matters worse, the sound system in the Corn Exchange was embarrassingly bad. I could have turned it up louder on my bloody stereo at home if need be, and a combination of this and the icy indifference of the band robbed the music of its life. Only the guitarist actually looked like he was enjoying playing the songs at all – the rest of them just stood there looking cool. And cool they really are. Honestly, if there are five cooler, trendier, more strikingly dapper gentlemen playing in a cooler band, making cooler music in a really incredibly cool way on the planet today then I will eat my immaculately tailored black Armani suit. They were so cool it was awe-inspiring, – it just emanated from their every pore and pose.

The problem is, for me their music is best played really, really fucking loud. The snarling guitars on Evil, the dysfunctional lament of NYC, the battering rhythms of Stella Was a Diver.. it all sounds best when turned up so fucking loud it makes your ears bleed and your neighbours think twice about calling the police because it might just actually be the apocalypse. So between the shitty sound system, turned down to sensible, and the lack of any real spirit in the performance the whole thing seemed rather tame, and more than a little pointless.

What it did do though was remind me that Interpol have written some of my favourite songs this decade. They didn’t play many of them, but Stella, which can easily be forgotten at the tail end of an album that includes masterpieces such as NYC, PDA, the Obstacles and Untitled, drove itself forcefully back into my brain. What brilliant music they can write when they really get going. I will go home and listen to them on the stereo, turned up as loud as it can manage, and never go to one of their gigs ever again.

Interpol – Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down
Interpol – Evil
Interpol – Pioneer to the Falls

After last weekend’s heavily gin-related podcasting fiasco I am a little wary of entirely surrendering to the tender ministrations of my Juniperous Mistress this evening.  I don’t know if any of you listened to the bonus podcast I posted this week, but it is a scary example of car-crash TV er, podcastery at its most excruciating.

Either way, I am busting for a nice straight pint glass three-quarters full of ice, half a juiced lime bunged in and filled to within an inch of the top with Tanqueray.

Oh yes, and the tonic, sorry.

Anyhow, let’s get cheerful shall we people – it’s the ferkin weekend: time for festivities, frotting, fumbling and fornication. Go forth, get plastered, shag someone you really shouldn’t, make a total arse of yourself – you know you secretly want to! Dignity is overrated anyway, loosen up some and don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself.  And how about some tunes to get in the mood…

A certain willenvelope left a message on my Thunderegg post earlier this week about further investigating The Mutton Birds.  Well, they’re not always this guitary, but it’s one of my favourite of their songs – from their first album, Nature. The Mutton Birds – The Heater
Levellers – Dog Train The Levellers are pretty enormously unfashionable these days, but this song is made for upbeaty happiness.
Morrissey – Certain People I Know No, not a moany one.
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Here Comes the Snake Remember what I said about shagging someone you shouldn’t?  Well this appears to be a song about it![audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/CherryPoppinDaddies-HereComesTheSnake.mp3]
And just  to remind us all why we were all so looking forward to the new Interpol album, and at the same time, why it is such a disappointment: Interpol – NYC

I barely need to write this review at all, given Mike at Manic Pop Thrills has already hit the nail squarely on the head with his own thoughts on the subject.  He sums it all up perfectly in this one sentence: “Interpol are only on their third LP yet they sound like they’ve said all they have to say.”

It’s not that it’s a bad album or that Interpol suddenly sound crap, not by any means.  Basically, it’s just that they seemed to have distilled Turn on the Bright Lights into a more accessible version of itself when they wrote Antics.  And now they’ve done, well, er, pretty much the same again really.  Antics was not a step forward in itself in particular, although it was interesting to see them morph into a slightly catchier, more radio-friendly version of themselves.  This album could easily have been culled from the Antics sessions.

Basically it’s still enjoyable to listen to and there are some cracking new songs, but in the sheer lack of progress or ambition or sign of them challenging themselves in the slightest, it still manages to seem rather disappointing.  Interpol sounded briefly like they could have conquered the universe, but it turns out they’re just another decent indie-pop act.  This would never seem half as bad as it does had they not threatened to be as good as they did.  They suffer, simply, from having written a debut album it appears they just can’t live up to.

Maybe the best thing to do is stick a few of these songs on a playlist by themselves here and there.  It will probably make them seem a bit less like the same old thing.

Interpol – Pioneer to the Falls
Interpol – Mammoth

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