Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr
Audio: zip download: right-click, save as

This session was recorded in Glasgow before Josh’s performance at Oran Mor on 22nd November last year.  The first attempt to record a session with him was at Stereo, but recording in a venue really didn’t work out, so this time we decided to take up the kind offer of Phil from PAWS to record it in his bedroom instead.

Again we were a little pressed for time, because Josh had a marathon day, recording a session with the BBC and conducting an interview before doing our session, and then having the gig to play afterwards.  So we only recorded three songs, and for simplicity’s sake we did the interview in one chunk and I have just chopped bits of it into the podcast where appropriate.

Given the incredibly punishing schedule he tends to have I really do appreciate Josh taking the time to re-record this session, as well as the infallibly good humour and cooperative nature showed by both himself and Peter and Tom, his management team.  It may have been tight to get done, but this is a really, really nice session if you ask me.

As usual, the videos can all be found on our Vimeo and YouTube pages and the photos, which were jointly taken by Stephanie Gibson and Dylan Matthews, are collected on our Flickr page.  The session mp3s can be downloaded below, or in a zip file here, the session podcast can be played or downloaded below too, and the tracklisting for the podcast can be found at the bottom of the page.

Direct download: Toadcast #211 – Josh T. Pearson Toad Session

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Josh T. Pearson – Woman When I’ve Raised Hell (Toad Session)

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Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb (Toad Session)

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Josh T. Pearson – Covers Medley (Toad Session)

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01. Josh T. Pearson – Woman When I’ve Raised Hell (Toad Session) (02.54)
02. Lift to Experience – To Guard and to Guide You (12.30)
03. Perfume Genius – All Waters (19.06)
04. Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb (Toad Session) (25.26)
05. The Dirty Three – Some Summers They Drop Like Flys (31.43)
06. Papa M – The Lass of Roch Royal (38.17)
07. Judy Collins – Wild Mountain Thyme (53.03)
08. Howe Gelb – Can’t Help Falling in Love (55.37)
09. Josh T. Pearson – Covers Medley (Toad Session) (61.54)

This weekend’s podcast will be the Josh T. Pearson Toad Session, so I thought I might offer up a wee teaser just um… well, I’m not really sure actually, it just seems to be the done thing these days.

This session was actually filmed through in Glasgow before Josh’s show at Oran Mor in November.  To avoid the pitfalls of trying to film the session in a venue where people are trying to do other jobs, we decided this time to record in Phil from PAWS‘ flat, which happened to be just down the road.

The full session, along with the usual ten minute mini-documentary, interview podcast, song videos, mp3 downloads and photo gallery, will all go up on Saturday, but in the meantime here’s the Toad Session version of Country Dumb, played sitting on Phil’s bed next to a distinctly disinterested Stephanie, who also took most of the pictures for the session.

01.Easter – Somethin’ American This might be the first time such an unknown song by such an unknown band has ever been given top spot on any of my end of year lists, but they were absolutely brilliant live when they played up here in September, and this song is just fantastic, as are the other two songs on their Soundcloud page.  It’s less lo-fi than a lot of the DIY stuff I’ve listened to this year, and the squalling solos which tease Easter’s songs to an end evoke loads of old school US indie music.  This gives quite tight pop songs a loose, expressive, emotive finale and when they get going live these bits really are amazing.

02.Crystal Swells – Patent Trolls This is another absolute peach of a song which went straight from a PR email to the very front of my brain for the entire year.  I had this on tape in the van for months, and I go back to it again and again.  This one is probably more menacing, compared to the reckless pace of the rest of the album, but that opening riff and the crescendo to which the song builds are just absolutely fucking blinding.

03.Ringo Deathstarr – Do It Every Time Alright, this is the highest-placed pure pop song on this list.  A simple guitar rhythm and a simple tune, delivered with plenty of pace and energy.  This is one to leap around to, pure and simple, and just about the best one of its kind this year.

04.The Low Anthem – Boeing 737 I played this on the podcast last week and struggled to introduce it then, as I probably will now. Firstly, I have hardly heard anyone sing anything about the twin towers attacks without sounding just a little bit forced and uncomfortable when doing so, but this manages it with some aplomb.  And then to have that kind of subject matter twinned with such and incredibly rousing song is an odd and absolutely brilliant juxtaposition.

05.Earth Girl Helen Brown – Hit After Hit This was one of those ‘what the fuck am I even listening to?’ moments, the first time I heard it. It’s old fashioned music, what I can only really describe in my cultural ignorance as soda-stream pop, and it’s not that unusual exactly, there’s just something weird about it.  It’s a bit unsettling, a bit out of focus somehow, and at the same time absolutely brilliant.

06.Josh T Pearson – Thou Art Loosed The solo album may not hark back to Lift to Experience all that much, but this song, the first on the album, seems to have just enough of that shimmering texture to link the two eras of Josh T. Pearson’s music together.  And that repeated “I’m off to save the world” seems to rather sadly presage the tales of personal failure which make this album so uncomfortably compelling.

08.Weird Era – Garage Honeymoon A muffled, growly mess, but it’s got such momentum and drive that I can’t stop listening to it.  It’s rough, muffled, growly shoegazey guitar stuff with a great riff.

07.Jonnie Common – Photosynth Alright, it’s possible I might have included this when it was a Down the Tiny Steps song, so including it again seems like a bit of a cheat.  Doesn’t matter though, this is pop brilliance.  And the video was shot in our back garden too!

09.Timber Timbre – Woman Is that seriously a sax on there?  Why yes, yes indeed it is, and it’s brilliant.  This is one of the biggest songs on the album and one of the most surprising too, given the relatively extravagant instrumentation.

10.Milk Maid – Back Of Your Knees I am absolutely delighted with the band’s Toad Session recordings, not least because I was so apprehensive about the actual recording process.  This might be my album highlight, as much for its more raucous live incarnation as this excellent version.

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1-10 | 11-30 | 31-50

11.David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got No Sole The first song we heard from DTB’s fantastic album, and perhaps the poppiest of the lot.  Catchy, unusual and immensely hummable.

12.Kurt Vile – Baby’s Arms Another album from which it is tricky to extricate just one song as a highlight, but for some reason I’m giving this the nod above Jesus Fever or Puppet to the Man. I think it’s the most late night and glass of red winey song on the album, but it’s close.

13.The Sandwitches – Lightfoot Are you still allowed to describe songs as joyous romps these days?  Because that’s what this feels like, an idiosyncratic, gleeful romp of a song.

14.Josh T Pearson – Country Dumb It’s hard to pick out just one song from this record, but this one seems to stand out for some reason.  Maybe it’s related to the number of times I’ve heard it and the circumstances, but there’s an unsettling fatalism to this which lifts it above the autobiographical confessional of the rest of the album.

15.John Knox Sex Club – Above Us the Waves This kind of sincere, epic grandiosity is really difficult to pull off without coming across as a bit po-faced or joyless, but this is just spell-binding.

16.Jonnie Common – Summer Is For Going Places There are so many incredible songs on this Jonnie Common album I could easily have picked four or five for the Festive Fifty, but I didn’t want the whole thing to be dominated by one or two artists.  Summer is For Going Places is as laid back and infectious as the rest of Master of None.

17.Crystal Swells – Mellow Californian Another masterpiece of feral, overloaded lo-fi brilliance.  And no matter how messy they make this stuff, Crystal Swells always make sure the pop song isn’t lost, so it may not sound like it, but I reckon they know exactly what they’re doing.

18.Yoofs – John Actor is Monkfish I love the chorus on this, the vocal refrain, how well-controlled the momentum of the song is – and once again we have an unknown DIY band with two songs in my Festive Fifty.  Keep an eye on Art is Hard Records in the new year.

19.Hookworms – Teen Dreams For unheard of DIY bands to produce stuff with this much oomph is unusual.  This is from a self-titled 12″ now out on Faux Discx, and it’s, well, epic, I suppose is the best way to describe it.

20.Easter – Damp Patch For a band with three songs on a Soundcloud page and nothing else, I am a bit wary of over-stating my own enthusiasm for this band.  They have a sort of slow-burn to them, but then that spills over into raucous endings, a bit proggy, a bit krauty and all messy.  This track isn’t their most aggressive, but it’s bloody great.

21.Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Of Scottish Blood And Sympathies Epic, post-rocky, shoegazey awesomeness from a band who threw their biggest beast of a track down right at the very beginning of their debut album.

22.Earth Girl Helen Brown – Girls of My Dreams The weird sense of otherworldly fuzz on this record made it absolutely compelling from the first listen.  It’s like listening to a lost gem from the sixties with a brain so addled you can barely make out the stereo.

23.Jarad Miles – Miles Away Rocketship is a lovely record, and there are some gorgeous, touching songs on it, but perhaps the quietest, most low-key one of the lot caught my attention the most – touching and full of pathos.

24.Pillars and Tongues – Thank you Oaky Grandiose and beautiful, rich and enveloping – if one song sums up why you should own and love this album then I reckon it might be this one.

25.The Sandwitches – Heaviest Head In The West As much as the jaunty, carefree pop songs on this album caught my attention, one of the best songs on the album is this one, which is both far darker and contains one of the most arresting, enigmatic squeals in pop history.

26.Elbow – Lippy Kids I am not all that into the new Elbow album, but this track is an absolute blinder.  It’s gorgeous, and contains some of Guy Garvey’s most poignant lyrics.

27.Crystal Stilts – Shake The Shackles It wasn’t all that consistent an album, but there are some cracking songs – sort of like the Ringo Deathstarr album in that sense – and this is the best of them.  The crooned delivery almost has a New Romantic edge to it, but the rest of the song is shoegazey, garagey goodness.

28.FOUND – Machine Age Dancing The wonky breakdown in this had me sending text messages to the band the first time I heard it.  Songs like Vincent Gallo and Anti-Climb Paint may have been well familiar to FOUND fans by the time Factorycraft came out, but they kept plenty of gems to themselves, and this is one of them.

29.Tom Waits – Hell Broke Luce This is far from a vintage album, but the deranged crashing about of this song is probably as close as Bad as Me gets to vintage Tom Waits.

30.Palms – Wolf Despite the really, really rough recording (those cymbal crescendoes actually quite hurt my ears) this is still clearly a brilliant song.  It’s a more brooding approach to garage rock (and I use that term, as with all genre terms, extremely loosely) than some of the more frantic stuff I’ve heard this year, and is a song I played something like ten times consecutively the first time I heard it.

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1-10 | 11-30 | 31-50

 So, ta-daaah, here we go, what all right-thinking people have been enjoying most this year.  And if you haven’t been enjoying these most this year, then dammit, what do you do when I tell you what opinions to have about music, ignore me?  Surely such a thing is inconceivable.

As those of you who listened to last week’s podcast, where I played two songs from the more forgotten albums on my first ever Albums of the Year list (2004), I am actually more fascinated by these lists in retrospect than at the time.

Looking back at this list in five or ten years, the interesting albums won’t be the ones I am still listening to, but the ones I am not.  I am sure practical details, like whether I have them on vinyl or tape or just digitally, will play a role, as will drifting fads and fashions.  But sometimes it really does just seem to be random – albums just drift out of favour for no really obvious reason.  Or, as has been the case with Kurt Vile this year, some albums seem to remain favourites for ages, despite not necessarily being the ones which grabbed you the first time.

So enjoy, this is what I have been mostly enjoying this year.  And a fine list it is too, I hope you will agree.

 10: The War on Drugs – Slave Ambient This is a very late entrant to this list, because for some reason I didn’t really listen to this album at all until the last month or two, but it’s bloody brilliant, managing to drift from ambient dreamers to Springsteen-like rockers to melancholy acoustica perfectly seamlessly. And the other joy of it is: another back catalogue to explore, too!

The War on Drugs – Your Love is Calling My Name

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 9: Pillars & Tongues – The Pass and Crossings This is a stunning album from what I think must be my favourite record label of the year: Empty Cellar.  They have released three albums in my top twenty this year, and worked with the artist who released another, and that’s before we get into the singles.  This album is grandiose, beautiful and all those words like sweeping and elegiac which journalists love to use so much.  Except in this case it actually is.

Pillars & Tongues – Palms to Tell

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 8: Milk Maid – Yucca This record is actually a collection of lo-fi home recordings, but somehow the end result has got real style. Not charmingly rough and ready style, although it has that too, but a real sense of swagger.  It’s not as frantic and noisy as a lot of its lo-fi brethren this year, either.  Recording Milk Maid’s Toad Session was probably one of my favourite things this year.

Milk Maid – Can’t You See

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 7: The Sandwitches – Mrs. Jones’ Cookies A little like Sonny & the Sunsets, this album doesn’t entirely click on every single song, but it does on most.  And beyond the pop tunes, there’s a wild, wailing quality to this which had me scrunching up my face in incomprehension for the first few listens.  ‘What the f…  did they just… are they…serious?‘ It didn’t take too long for it to click though, and I have since been foisting this record on visitors to our house all year.

The Sandwitches – Summer of Love

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 6: David Thomas Broughton – Outbreeding This is a disciplined and polished pop record from a man more commonly known for spending most of his gigs figuring out just how much he can antagonise his audience before they give up altogether.  A favourite of mine since I first saw him at the End of the Road Festival in something like 2008 or 2009, I couldn’t have been much more surprised by this album, but it’s fucking brilliant nevertheless.

David Thomas Broughton – Nature

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  5: Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for my Halo I am getting into ‘every damn list on the internet has this album on it’ territory here, but balls to it, I still love this record.  I actually struggle to explain why though, because it’s not gripping, weird, striking or anything.  It is, in fact, an entirely straightforward collection of songs crooned over fairly minimal guitar, bass and drums, at a relatively middle of the road pace.  But for some reason I find the whole album one I have gone back to again and again and again all year.

Kurt Vile – Puppet to the Man

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 4: Crystal Swells – Goethe Head Soup This is one of the mostly ferociously-recorded things I’ve heard all year, with barely the slightest quarter given to the listener’s more delicate aural sensibilities.  But underneath all the buzzing, distorted racket, and despite the headache-inducing nine-minute kick in the ears that is the title track, this mini-album holds a half dozen of the finest pop songs I’ve heard all year.

Crystal Swells – Waco, Wasilla, Waikiki

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  3: Jonnie Common – Master of None Pure genius, this one.  This album has charm to spare, but it’s not as straightforward as it seems.  The actual sounds Jonnie uses in assembling his songs are really quite unusual, but the results are pure, joyous pop.  He seems to have pulled off the trick of being an experimental musician, but keeping that fact completely undercover, and making us all think he’s created the pop record of the year.  Which of course he has.

Jonnie Common – Hand-Hand

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2: Timber Timbre – Creep on Creepin’ On I don’t know what it is about the ghostly voodoo stuff these guys do which I love so much.  Certainly with the increasingly deep arrangements there is a certain theatricality to this record, but then instrumentals like Obelisk and Swamp Magic could as easily be found in one of Tom Waits’ more flamboyant nightmares as they could on the stage, or indeed a contemporary pop record. Creep On Creepin’ On is never pompous or overblown though, and displays a remarkable deftness of touch, particularly with the more

Timber Timbre – Creep On Creepin’ On

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  1: Josh T. Pearson – Last of the Country Gentlemen I hesitated a long time before putting Last of the Country Gentlemen at the top of this list. Apart from the fact that at times the word enjoyable isn’t exactly the right one to apply, the whole album seems to belong in a slightly different category to everything else.  It’s just different to all the other albums, and it feels difficult to actually compare the emotional response to this to the emotional response I’ve had to everything else.  But in the end, between SXSW, Homegame, an aborted and a successful Toad Session, the number of times I’ve heard these songs and the effect they’ve had on me, there is little doubt that this, even if it isn’t my favourite album of the year per se, is still the album which dominated 2011 and is almost certainly the album by which I will remember it.

Josh T. Pearson – Thou Art Loosed

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11-20

 Well, after last year’s neck-and-neck battle between Meursault and The National, this year’s Song, by Toad Readers’ Top Five Albums was something of a stroll by comparison.

Although the field behind this album was congested, King Creosote & Jon Hopkins’ Diamond Mine was a comfortable winner in the end.  Whilst I doubt this quite makes up for missing out on the Mercury Prize to P.J. Harvey, it’s interesting to note that after a very strong initial showing, she didn’t even make the top five of this particular list.  And you can bet your arse she won’t be on mine.

A wee nod must also go to King Post Kitsch.  Home field advantage, whilst I assume it must have some effect, doesn’t seem to behave all that predictably when it comes to these votes, because other than Rob St. John, no-one else from the label has managed to force their way onto the podium. King Post Kitsch did really well on both the song and album of the year votes, however, missing out on a place in the top five by a single vote in each case, which is really impressive for an album released so early in the year by a band who haven’t played a single gig in 2011.

=4. FOUND – Factorycraft A little like King Post Kitsch, I thought this album might suffer a little from being released so early in the year, but it seems long memories and awesome live shows have kept this bloody brilliant record at the forefront of everyone’s minds.  It made a very late run to get into the top five, but I am delighted you lot decided to vote for this one.

FOUND – Machine Age Dancing

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=4. Josh T. Pearson – The Last of the Country Gentlemen This is a long, morose and emotionally rather heavy album, which makes the impression it has clearly had on people a little surprising, as far as I’m concerned.  I mean, I bloody love it, but I didn’t necessarily expect everyone else to.

Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb (Piano Version)

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=2. Rob St. John – Weald Well well well, once again, I’m not sure if I’m slightly embarrassed or highly gratified to have one of our own albums on here.  This whole thing was pretty much recorded in two days downstairs in our living room, and I knew that they were brewing something quite special.  Apart from the actual bits I heard, Tom, Neil and Rob were so giddy with excitement when they finished on the Friday night that you could tell something was definitely up – and up it most certainly proved to be!

Rob St. John – Sargasso Sea

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=2. Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Everything’s Getting Older It’s probably going to come across as a little hypocritical from someone who loved the Josh T. Pearson album, but I actually find a lot of the introspection here a bit suffocating, meaning I never really got into this record to the extent a lot of other people seemed to.  Still, it’s been bloody popular, so fair play to ‘em.

Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – The Copper Top

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1. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine I am not entirely surprised that this won, but I have to say that I considerably prefer That Might Be it, Darling, if we’re discussing King Creosote’s recent output. That album has the tension and awkwardness which I think makes KC’s music so great, contrasting as it does with his incredibly lovely voice.  This record I just find a little smooth, if I’m honest.  KC for Guardian readers, I suppose.  The songs are exceptional, so I still enjoy the album, but I am not sure I’d have picked it myself.

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Bubble

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Ha ha no P.J. Harvey.

 This, honestly, is a tricky review to write.  Mostly by coincidence, I’ve actually met Josh T. Pearson something like four times this year.  I wouldn’t for a second claim that means I know him all that well, as his demeanour is pretty impenetrable, but I do know that he wasn’t in the most amazing frame of mind before this performance.

It’s odd, but that knowledge makes it difficult to actually absorb a performance objectively. When we recorded our Toad Session with him earlier in the day he was as charming and accommodating as he has always been when I’ve dealt with him, but he was feeling ill, and after travelling up from Manchester had already recorded a BBC Radio Scotland session before our own, so he was pretty bloody tired as well.

Had I been entirely without this knowledge I would probably have just sat back and enjoyed the performance – a fantastic one, albeit perhaps a little less electrifying than his mesmerising turn at Homegame this year.

But with this knowledge it was strange to watch him play the intensely personal songs we all know from the awesome Last of the Country Gentlemen, all the while wondering if his mind was really on the material, or if he was just feeling absolutely fucked after a punishing year of touring, in which he has played hundreds of gigs, dozens of festivals and any number of internet sessions for even the most no-mark of bloggers (such as, for example, myself). His between-song chat, despite being as entertaining as ever, only reinforced this because he was clearly not all that happy with his own performance because of his illness.

I did ask him this at the Toad Session itself, and he did suggest that he feels it is time to move on and perhaps leave this material alone for a little.  Because it is beautiful, but it is dark and intense as well, and as such I suppose it must have a natural shelf life, if just for the performer himself, and his ability to engage with the songs in a spirit which will allow him to sing them with the depth, meaning and commitment they require.

Mind you, the other impression gleaned from one successful and one aborted attempt to interview the man is that the emotions confessed in these songs are never really that far from the surface, so no matter how shite he feels, it doesn’t seem that hard for him to drag it all back to the foreground and then out to the audience.

Certainly despite his protestations, this was another great show.  His command of silence exceeds almost anyone else I have ever seen, and the barest brush of the guitar strings is allowed to dissipate out into the air, making it almost impossible to not pay full attention.

Consequently as Woman When I’ve Raised Hell and Sweetheart, I Ain’t Your Christ fill the venue it is a rapt and silent Oran Mor which stares back up at him in silent awe.  Even with the flu his sheer personality fills the place, along with the silences he plays so well, and I suppose that’s how he can switch so swiftly from laughing and joking between songs, to suddenly dipping once more into the heartbreakingly serious music he makes, with the audience and the man himself seemingly oblivious of the tremendous emotional gear-change we’ve all just made.

He’s a curious fellow, that’s for sure.  And possibly Man of the Year for 2o11, in a musical sense.

Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb

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This is the post-Homegame, ‘dear Jesus please just let me sleep for a week, good god someone please fetch me a green vegetable’ podcast.

I can just about keep my head together enough to get through this, but then I have the Monday listings to write and the bloody Francois/This is the Kit/Babe gig to organise tonight as well.  Aargh!

I also have all sorts of other things to do this week, but after the sort of mind-boggling battering your mind and your liver get at Homegame I am not sure I can face any of it.  I am going back to sleep, wake me up in June.

Direct download: Toadcast #173 – The Brokencast

01. FOUND – I’ll Wake With a Seismic Head No More (00.34)
02. Randolph’s Leap – Counting Sheep (7:57)
03. Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb (Piano Version) (13.57)
04. The Singleman Affair – If I Only Fell in Love When I Was Young (21.16)
05. eagleowl – Into the Fold (Toad Session) (29.00)
06. The Last Battle – Ruins (35.07)
07. King Creosote & the Earlies – Bats in the Attic (Live on 6Music with Mark Riley) (40.23)
08. Sweet Baboo – Girl Under a Tree (45.37)
09. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got No Sole (54.57)

Reviewing this album is going to be a little tricky (yes, I know, I always say that).  Because Matt from Stay Loose, who are doing the UK PR for the album, knew I would like this he got a copy to me really quickly, so I first heard it before any of the swathes upon swathes of messianically-toned reviews were published.  This is a bloody good thing, because after all the fawning press, I think I might have found it hard not to be deliberately contrarian, had I not already known it was a stunning album.

It is not by any means, in my opinion at least, for everyone.  The critical world may be awash with love for Last of the Country Gentlemen, but I can imagine it turning a lot of people off.  I have a couple of reasons for that, and they are as follows:

Firstly, the album is intimidatingly intense from an emotional perspective.  It is so naked, so confessional, so tortured, that just being able to absorb the force of it takes some doing.  If you are not able or inclined to do so, then I can easily imagine it becoming a bit wearing, and you might just glaze over entirely.

Secondly, the actual arrangements are pretty minimal, and in songs which depend heavily on repeated, rolling refrains, and quarter of a hour’s worth of intense, confessional narrative, I can easily see people who are not captivated by this record finding it to be over-wrought and, ultimately, boring.  When you write an album this personal, though, I think this is the kind of risk you must know you are taking, as an artist.

For the rest of us, well I have to agree with what seems like ninety-nine percent of the British music press: this is fucking stunning.  Essentially it is a document of a particularly rough period of Pearson’s life – as he says, “I write what’s in front of me” – and is unflinchingly* uncensored to the point where you almost have to engage with it, or else you simply can’t share the same space.  The quietness of the music has a similar effect: you either hush up and listen intently to every vanishing syllable and every finger barely brushing a guitar string, or there is simply no point bothering.

Live, this effect is particularly noticeable.  I have never in my life heard such blanket silence at gigs as when I have seen Pearson play, first at the Muzzle of Bees Backyard Barbecue in Austin and then last week at Stereo in Glasgow.  It’s simply impossible to give this album anything other than your full attention.  The sparse beauty of the music demands it to begin with, but to treat such unguarded confessions with anything less would seem like the height of crassness.

There are few vestiges of Pearson’s previous band, the ten-years-dead Lift to Experience, here.  Surprisingly short opener, the three-and-a-bit minute I am Loosed, is possibly the closest you’ll get.  There is also a certain grandiosity in the idea of a fifteen minute acoustic lament, and these make up the bulk of this record, and in doing so perhaps hint at a similar underlying aesthetic to The Texas-Jersusalem Crossroads.  “Commerce versus art, commerce versus art”, as he might put it.

There is little else to say here, really.  This record is utterly brutal, and yet utterly beautiful.  The music itself is no more than quiet acoustic guitar, building from the barest touch to a brief swells of strumming as the song rises an falls.  Warren Ellis’s fiddle makes an appearance here and there, but it too is beautifully understated.  It is what it is, and a lot of people will simply find the barriers too great to really enjoy a record this burning with unhappiness, self-recrimination and heartbreak.

For everyone else, though, Last of the Country Gentlemen is one of the most special, affecting, horrible, beautiful albums you will hear for fucking years.

Josh T. Pearson – Thou Art Loosed

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Josh T. Pearson – Woman, When I’ve Raised Hell

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* I wonder how often the term ‘unflinching’ has been used in reviews of this record!

Apologies for the lateness of this week’s podcast, but inevitably the chaos of SXSW nudges schedules into the background a little.

Last year, several margaritas the worse for wear, we sat down with Ben from Instinctive Racoon, Stuart from Creative Scotland, Vic Galloway from BBC Radio Scotland and Peej from Dear Scotland, and recorded a ramshackle, lurching podcast about the fun of the week.

This year, perhaps goaded into something bordering on professionalism by the presence of the BBC camera crew who have been following Vic around all week, things were a little smoother.  Although this may also have been related to the fact that the margarita-hoovering didn’t actually start until afterwards this time. Ben wasn’t here this time, but we did have myself, Peej, Vic and Stuart sharing a beverage on Peej’s back porch and talking something approaching the usual gubbins.

Oh, and the Detour Scotland Big Walk video we mention in the podcast can be found here.

Direct download: Toadcast #166 – The Tequilacast

01. Admiral Fallow – Squealing Pigs (00.37)
02. Withered Hand – Religious Songs (10.40)
03. Menomena – Taos (23.02)
04. Clock Opera – A Piece of String (28.13)
05. Ringo Deathstarr – Imagine Hearts (35.32)
06. The Twilight Sad – Cold Days From the Birdhouse (48.50)
07. Josh T. Pearson – Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ (62.27)
08. Erland & the Carnival – My Name is Carnival (74.19)
09. King Creosote – Grace (Jeff Buckley cover) (82.49)