I actually ended up buying John Grant a coke at SXSW this year, a little oddly.  At the last minute he filled in for a cancellation at the Bella Union/4AD showcase, and took the stage in front of a relatively unassuming-looking electric piano in standard SXSW beard and checked shirt.

I was expecting the music which tends to go with that particular uniform – harmonious alt-country, or something thereabouts – and yet suddenly this massive voice emerged, bursting forth from songs which, whilst they fit well with the dreamy, folky Bella Union back catalogue, have just a little bit of Broadway about them.

After that performance, which was really, really good, I suddenly found myself standing next to him at the bar.  I told him that I’d enjoyed the set, and he offered to buy me a beer with one of his artists’ tokens.  It turned out they didn’t work, so I bought the round, including a coke for Mr. Grant.  Not a particularly compelling little anecdote, but there you go.

To suggest slight similarities to a blend of Elton John, the Scissor Sisters and Rufus Wainright sounds painfully automatic when you realise that Grant is in fact gay, and that this fact has troubled him to the point of contemplating suicide by the time he finished this record.  It’s not though, and I promise I made those connections before reading anything about his background.  Equally, scenting a bit of Midlake in the mix was something I noticed before I discovered that Midlake are close personal friends of his, and that they loved his music so much that they were the ones who persuaded him to make the album in the first place, and indeed are the backing band you hear on the record.

That kind of slightly countrified, dreamy broadway pop is rarely my kind of thing, I have to confess, and as such I had kind of stopped paying attention to this record after the first couple of songs and started to concentrate more on whatever else it was I was doing.  Then came the line in Sigourney Weaver about “I feel just like Sigourney Weaver/ when she had to kill those aliens” and I honestly stopped dead.  It was a genuine double-take moment: ‘What the fuck did he just sing?  Noooo, surely not.’

Anyhow, given that my attention had been very definitely grabbed (albeit in a slightly surreal manner) I then began to listen more closely.  Lyrically, this album has a lot of depth and a lot of darkness and a very oddly undecorated way of expressing itself.  JC Hates Faggots is a really jarring yet jolly little song which, when you listen to it, is a truly brutal take on Grant’s own religious upbringing, yet plinks and plonks along in the most unassuming manner.  And this song is far from alone in wielding this kind of utterly unvarnished emotional punch.

I don’t think the music of this record is ever anything I will entirely warm to, I must confess.  It just isn’t my kind of thing.  But I am still going to listen to it again and again, just to hear the lyrics, so surreally shrouded in sugary sweet, swoonsome pop music, it gives the whole album a truly disturbing feel.

John Grant – JC Hates Faggots

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John Grant – Where Dreams Go to Die

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Having missed most of the first week of the Festival by being in Spain, I am now going to miss large parts of this week by pootling about in Anstruther at Haarfest (tickets can be found in the right hand column of this page).

Mrs. Toad will presumably hate me for this of course, as she has to stay behind in Edinburgh and do a proper job, whereas I can fuck off to Fife, get lashed, and call it work.  Mwaaah hah haaa…!

Given the fact that during the Festival the centre of Edinburgh becomes roughly as welcoming as the picture above I think I’ll appreciate a swift relocation for a few days, ready to come back to the last week of the Festival, go to a couple of shows and pretend I always knew it was going to be fun all along.

Anyhow, for those of you not Fifing themselves all to pieces this week I have some very fine recommendations indeed:

Lach’s Antihoot – from Wednesday at the Gilded Balloon.

I was at the first night, which was great, and apparently this week has been great fun, according to the man himself and according to Dylan’s drunken Facebook pictures of himself, Bart and Jamie and Rory from Broken Records who played there on Saturday.

Tuesday 17th August 2010: Withered Hand & The Last Battle at the Electric Circus.

Dan from Withered Hand is currently working on his second album, although I am not sure how far he’s actually got just yet.  Either way, I’m probably as excited to hear new stuff from Withered Hand as I am to hear new stuff from any band on Song, by Toad Records. Dan’s way with words is as good as anyone I know, and his knack of wrapping them up in simple but effective melodies makes his music both as pleasurable and as rewarding as anything else happening in Edinburgh at the moment.

Withered Hand – Religious Songs

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Tuesday 17th August 2010: John Grant & Rachel Sermanni at the Wee Red Bar.

John Grant used to be in a band called The Czars who had some truly brilliant moments.  I saw him at SXSW, and he stepped up to a piano in a checked shirt and sporting a very alt-country sort of beard and then instead of playing the sort of Bella Union alt country I expected (fairly obvious assumptions based on costume and venue) he played a series of sweet, melodic piano ballads, with just the faintest scent of theatricality about them.  I haven’t heard the album yet, but that was an intriguing show and I’d recommend checking his stuff out.

John Grant – Where Dreams Go to Die

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Tuesday 17th August 2010: The Besnard Lakes, Heart Beats & Penguins Kill Polar Bears at Sneaky Pete’s.

I haven’t seen the Besnard Lakes live, but their sound is really nicely complex and layered, and when their songs are good they are really really good.  If that translates to the live setting as well as I suspect it might then this could be an almighty wall of sound and completely brilliant.  That’s just a guess though, but I would like to think it’s true.  Let me know if you go and find out.

The Besnard Lakes – Chicago Train

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Thursday 19th August 2010: The Scottish Enlightenment, Debutant & Dan Lyth at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This is something of a stripped back gig for the Scottish Enlightenment, due to the absence of a guitarist, but nevertheless their slow, deliberate sound is a treat I would recommend to anyone.  There is an album due out shortly, which I am heartily looking forward to.

The Scottish Enlightenment – Riverbed

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Thursday 19th August 2010: Sleepy Sun at Sneaky Pete’s.

I’ll be honest with you, I know no more about this than the fact that I had a listen to their MySpace page and thought it sounded interesting.  Interesting it did sound however, so I reckon it might well be worth a chance if you’re looking for something to do on Thursday.

Well I am sure that any of you who really give a shit what’s happening at South by Southwest this week will have found out from one of the more dilligent blogs who have been writing daily updates.  Honestly though, I doubt anyone who regularly reads this site would have really expected me to be one of those blogs.

I got to Austin at about ten or eleven at night on Wednesday and stumbled into town to find Peej, who kindly offered to put me up, and Vic Galloway, who along with Peej is one of about four people I know in Austin this week, at the Scottish Showcase.

Due to not having bothered with either a badge or a wristband and the place being absolutely jam-packed, Peej had to sneak me in the back door, getting rid of a bouncer with a vague sort of ‘I’m in the band’ response which rather miraculously seemed to work.  Peej had a badge which he waved and that did the trick.

I saw the tail end of the Jetpacks show, which people went absolutely mental for.  I have never been a big fan of the band, honestly, but Peej loves them and they seem to be going down an absolute storm in the States.  They certainly do put on a good show too, so it’s hard not to warm to them.  After some quality MCing by Mr. Galloway, with an enormous super jumbo extra helping of cheese, Frightened Rabbit took to the stage and they really were good.

I gave their new album a bit of a savaging, and in the comments section there was a bit of discussion about how the songs would come across in a live setting, free of the smothering production.  I also said that a lot of the guitar sound on Winter of Mixed Drinks was really good, or at least what little of it you could hear, and live this really is what dominates the songs.  The new stuff fits in perfectly with the older songs, and when they are just played on guitar I enjoyed them miles more than on the record.

On Wednesday night I slept like a fucking corpse, and wandered into town at about three or four o’clock in the afternoon.  First port of call was the Hype Machine to meet Dev Sherlock, who has had the unenviable task of editing our hour longs chats down in to concise five minute soundbites for Hype Machine Radio.  It turns out that instead of simply being a nice bloke on the internet, he actually has a rather storied history as a music journalist and instead of going to a lot of music stuff we wandered off to the Ironworks to eat burned meat and pickles with a beer on the deck.  It was very, very civillised and finally meeting someone who’s been an internet friend for a couple of years now was a rather strange pleasure.

On the subject of internet friends, I finally met a certain Campfires and Battlefields on Thursday evening at the 4AD/Bella Union showcase.  I went in with the Broken Records lads to see them, Efterklang and Midlake, and ended up also catching an excellent set by John Grant, whose new album is out on Bella Union in a few weeks.  He used to be in a band called Czars, who I also rather liked, and he sounded really good.  When he sat down I expected something a bit like Bon Iver, but in fact it was probably closer to Rufus Wainright than anything else.  Very promising, in any case.

Efterklang weren’t bad, and I am not going to go on about Broken Records (great idea – travel all the way to Texas just to go and see bands from Edinburgh).  The real revelation of the night for me was just how good Midlake were, however.  I saw them at the End of the Road Festival a couple of years ago and they were no better than pretty good, and their new album was pretty much like that as well: really enjoyable, but didn’t exactly blow me away.  In the rather fantastic surroundings of Buffalo Billiards in Austin, however, they were pretty brilliant.  The harmonies were gorgeous, and I have no idea why they needed five bloody guitarists, but the sound they made was so nice that you can’t really question them on that count.

And of course, just before the Midlake set, Jamie Broken Records tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘I think there’s someone here you should meet – a certain Mr. Campfires and Battlefields…’