Yes, I know, I know, I am the only person who had never listened to any Jeffrey Lewis until a fortnight or so ago. You can all stop laughing now. Sometimes, as with Neutral Milk Hotel, you hear a name again and again and just never quite make the time to investigate any further.

What can I say? Fucking brilliant. Far from the sensitive singer-songwriter I was vaguely expecting, there is a deranged fire-and-brimstone fervour to his hurricane of verbiage, which is delivered as little more than a barely-controlled stream of consciousness.  For something that sounds so close to being out of control, it’s really amazingly well put together.  The words roll around and wander off but they periodically return to whence they started, just to remind us all that actually little of this is accidental.

I think it’s fair to say that there’s a bit of an edge to everything Lewis does.  Raw emotion seems to be simmering below the surface of all of it.  On some songs it’s pretty obvious, as the electric guitar is frenetically bashed and he launches one polemic after another into the microphone.  On the quieter, sadder stuff this kind of barely suppressed well of feeling is a little less strident, but still seems to be on the verge of breaking its chains and screaming at you.

Mrs. Toad and I were listening to the superb 12 Crass Songs on the way home from End of the Road, and she remarked that it must be hard work being so angry all the time.  Although those are actually Crass lyrics, the biting cynicism of much of Lewis’ work does seem like it might just burn a person out after a while.  There are songs, actually, where a weariness of this sort of nature does seem to be in evidence, but the fact that he feels so many things strongly enough to tire himself out is what makes his music so brilliant.

So, another very, very late discovery, but I am hugely pleased I finally get it!

Jeffrey Lewis – Back When I Was 4
Jeffrey Lewis – End Result
Jeffrey Lewis – If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul
Jeffrey Lewis – Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror

Website | More mp3s | Buy stuff from Jeff Lewis | Buy albums on Amazon

I really have made you wait for this haven’t I. Ah well, no matter. So, another year, another End of the Road Festival. We drove down again, specifically renting a hippy VW camper for the journey, and Christ almighty what a fucking death-trap that thing was. As I wrote in the intro to the podcast about this festival, the thing steered like a bathtub full of water. Honestly, if you ever needed to react to anything unexpected turning the steering wheel was like trying haul a bucket of water out of a well. Throw in the rubbish high beams and the teeny-tiny windscreen wipers and we can count ourselves lucky we got there at all.

But get there we did, to be welcomed by pissing rain. Splendid. I’ve led a charmed life so far, as far as festivals are concerned, having encountered no more that the slightest of sprinkles in the five or six I’ve attended so far. Spoiled, you might say. Well no such luck here. I had the interview lined up with Micah P. Hinson and it was pissing down and they wouldn’t even let us into the photography pit at the front, as had been promised beforehand. I was struggling just a little to stay cheerful. Anyhow, Micah’s set was outstanding – his recorded music may be quite beautiful at times, but when he plays live he puts some real snarl into it.

The lineup is pretty basic – Micah on guitar supported by Nick on drums who plays occasional banjo, and Ashley, his wife, on keyboards – but they manage to dredge some racket out of it when they want to. During the set the sun finally broke through, and the rain stopped falling, and suddenly everything was good. Hinson’s slower songs get a bare and lovely outing with just a guitar, and his sightly abrasive on-stage manner never seems to strike a dubious chord with the audience. The interview went well, and will be posted here shortly, but safe to say that this gig seemed to be the turning point of the End of the Road Festival as far as I am concerned. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, another podcast dedicated entirely to the End of the Road Festival. I did the very same last year because I do rather love this festival, and the sheer quality of the lineup easily merits a podcast to itself.

Unlike last year, Mrs. Toad actually came with me this time around. We drove this stupid old 1960s VW camper van down there, and Christ knows how we didn’t die in the process. The fucking thing steered like a bathtub full of water, there were no brakes at all and the only crumple zone was us. The other disconcerting thing is the fact that VW campers are something of a community, so everyone who passed us in one would flash their lights and wave with the sort of sincere enthusiasm that made us mortally ashamed to be mere renters – mere passengers in a club full of such obviously devoted members, Christ we felt like charlatans.

Anyway, ignore our guilt and enjoy the podcast. There’s some fucking great music on this one. And why is it called the Deathcast? Because that blasted camper van we drove down in was an absolute death trap. Honestly, want to die in a nasty accident? Try driving a 60s VW camper van around the English countryside in the middle of the night in the pissing rain.

Toadcast #38 – The Deathcast

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01. Micah P. Hinson – Patience (03.17)
02. Nick Cave & the Dirty Three – Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum (09.41)
03. The Young Republic – Shiloh (20.19)
04. Over the Wall – Thurso (23.22)
05. British Sea Power – Carrion (29.40)
06. The Pictish Trail – All I Own (36.50)
07. Shearwater – Levithan, Bound (41.31)
08. Jeffrey Lewis – Do They Owe (45.50)
09. The Wave Pictures – Leave That Scene Behind (50.39)
10. Richard Hawley – Coming Home (53.21)
11. Calexico – Minas de Cobre (For Better Metal) (59.55)