Song, by Toad

Posts tagged king creosote

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Live in Edinburgh This Week – 12th July 2010

Well this week I shall mostly be entertaining my parents, who are taking the opportunity to inspect Toad Hall as a suitable place for the raising of yet-to-be-considered grandchildren.

There may yet be some opportunity for a spot of truancy however, as I am DJing at the Charity Baw on Saturday.  I wish I actually had the right accent to say that properly, but with my accent saying things like “baws”, or the far better “yer maw’s got baws and yer da’ likes it” just sounds stupid unfortunately.  It’s the biggest chore of living in a foreign country: you pick up the slang, but not the accent, and end up making a tit of yourself all the bloody time.

The only consolation is that it has happened to my brother as well, and he now uses American slang whilst sounding like he works for the BBC, which is hilarious!

Saturday 17th July 2010: Charity Baw at the Roxy, with King Creosote, Ballboy, FOUND, Three Blind Wolves and more…

The lineup’s great, but I know for a fact that at least one of the people DJing at this event is an idiot, but Kenny from King Creosote and Gav from OnTheFly will probably play some good tunes at least.  I haven’t actually seen King Creosote for ages now, and the upstairs room at the Roxy is about as atmospheric a place as I can imagine to break that duck.

King Creosote – Twin Tub Twin

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Sunday 18th July 2010: Endor, Gdansk & Lady North at Sneaky Pete’s.

Endor have a new album in the works, and Gdansk have always been good, so I recommend this.  This should be a night of good, old-fashioned guitary indie music

Gdansk – Kicking a Television

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Toadcast #104 – The Bleepcast

This is all about my beepy-bloopy tendencies and how I got into the stuff in the first place.

I better point out, right at the beginning, that I don’t see there being any difference between indie and electronica exactly.  Or at least, the dividing line is so blurred and there is so much crossover that the distinction is completely pointless, really.

I think the only reason I really make a distinction myself is because I became a music obsessive by listening to the likes of Dylan and Tom Waits and so on, and then moved onto the like of The Pogues and the Waterboys – not a beep in sight, basically.

Consequently, when I heard bands like Saint Etienne for the first time, although I loved lots of it, I didn’t explore much further because I just wasn’t used to electronic noises.  In actual fact, by the end of the podcast I think I come to the conclusion that it was actually an electronic beat which I really wasn’t used to, mostly, but in any case, I found it quite hard to get into anything vaguely electro for ages.  Given that I could barely make a distinction between the two these days, that seems kind of odd, too.

Toadcast #104 – The Bleepcast

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01. The Pet Shop Boys – Rent (03.46)
02. Stereolab – The Light That Will Cease to Fail (12.09)
03. Dubstar – St. Swithin’s Day (15.25)
04. U2 – Lemon (23.05)
05. Jason Lytle – On a Piece of Wood I Go (30.49)
06. The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist (35.57)
07. LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum (40.42)
08. Money Can’t Buy Music – We Are All Asphyxiate (48.59)
09. Magic Arm – Daft Punk is Playing at My House (52.41)
10. Parts & Labour – Fractured Skies (57.49)
11. Jon Hopkins – Circle My Demise (King Creosote) (65.13)

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Toad Top Twenty 2009 – 6-10

6.Elvis Perkins in Dearland
This album is greatly helped by kicking off with the best song I’ve heard for bloody ages, and actually that threw me off for a little, as did the subtle shift in emphasis since his brilliant debut Ash Wednesday.  Once songs like Hours Last Stand and Dresden settle into your head though you won’t hear an album with more intricately interwoven senses of both sadness and optimism for quite some time.

Elvis Perkins in Dearland – Hours Last Stand

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7.Wild BeastsTwo Dancers
I am perpetually surprised by just how much I like so many songs on this record.  I keep thinking of Wild Beasts as a band I alternately love and then really don’t like at all, but you’ll wait to the last couple of songs of this to find a track I’m even lukewarm on.  It’s all chiming guitars and yearning vocals and there’s just enough purpose to the rhythm to suggest that you could be dancing to it, and just enough woe to make you think, well, maybe not.

Wild Beasts – We Still Got the Taste Dancing on Our Tongues

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8.King CreosoteFlick the Vs
There is a sense in which Kenny Anderson can pretty  much write what he likes, because he wields one of my favourite singing voices of all time.  After the bombast of Bombshell and the sidestep of They Flock Like Vulcans, he seems to have combined a little pop from the former and a fair bit of bleeping from the latter and mixed them together to deliver another classic King Creosote record.  It has a really distinctive character, coupling his touching songwriting with just the right amount of weirdness.

King Creosote – No-one Had it Better

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9.Dame SatanBeaches & Bridges
This is a bit of an out of the blue sort of placing really, given how little I know about the band and given that they are hardly well-known in general, but as I tired of other records or failed to find the excitement in them that some of my peers managed, this one simply sat there pretty much near the top of the pile and remained confidently there for the duration of the year.  It doesn’t slap you across the face with brilliance in the way that some do, just builds a steady, consistent relationship with your need for succour as the day ends.

Dame Satan – Ghost Dance

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10.Animal CollectiveMerriweather Post Pavillion
I still find this an infuriatingly inconsistent album.  There are at least three songs in the second half I really find completely needless, but a combination of how much I love the rest of them and the sheer ubiquity of this album still make this one of my favourite this year.  For a change, people playing it all over the place hasn’t put me off, because those places were places like The Bowery and friends’ houses and stuff like that, so somehow it’s ended up being a good thing for a change.

Animal Collective – Also Frightened

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Toadcast #89 – The Latecast

latecast post
This podcast is unconscionably late once more and again I am going to plead that there is a perfectly good reason for this.  Today has been taken up with constant recording here at Toad Hall, and I myself have been finishing the video for the Honeytrap Toad Session which finally, finally will be making an appearance this time next week.  My job is virtually finished, and it’s messy, but it will be a corker.

This podcast has no real theme, but I did let Neil choose most of the songs, so that gives the podcast something of a character of its own.  I did make him be on a podcast with a Noah & the Whale song on it though.  Ha haaa!  That’ll teach the trendy little bastard!

Toadcast #89 – The Latecast

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01. Sunset Rubdown – I’ll Believe in Anything You’ll Believe in Anything (02.09)
02. King Creosote – Homeboy (09.14)
03. Rob St. John – Domino (Live) (18.13)
04. Noah & the Whale – The First Days of Spring (23.05)
05. Melanie – What Have They Done to My Song, Ma (31.35)
06. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Stop! (39.42)
(Interlude music: The Divine Comedy – Theme From Casanova)
07. The Notwist – The Devil, You & Me (45.53)
08. Mum – Green Grass of Tunnel (49.26)
09. Sol Seppy – Hafiz, a Mime (60.18)

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Live in Edinburgh This Week: 20th September 2009

distillery
I feel really weird this morning.  Partly I am whizzed off my tits on painkillers, which at least makes the back pain manageable, and partly I took the advice from this thread a little too seriously last night.  Ouch.  Pills, Caol Ila and Ardbeg: not a winning combination by the time the morning after comes around.

So there’s no chat this week, you’ll be pleased to know.  Here are some gigs.  Go to them.  But good luck picking what to do on Wednesday, because I’ve no fucking idea myself.

Wednesday 23rd September 2009: David Thomas Broughton and several other chaps at Sneaky Pete’s.

Actually David Thomas Broughton is being supported by Debutant, Twi the Humble Feather and Ross Clark, I just liked the phrasing of that little place marker, so I left it in.  ‘Several other chaps’ – spendid.  See, I told you the pills were working.  Anyhow, David Thomas Broughton is mental and brilliant.  He has a black belt in the use of loop pedals, a gorgeous voice and a strange knack for peculiar physical theatre to accompany his musical performances.  He’s sufficiently eccentric, actually, that he is a good one for sorting the men from the boys because a lot of people really don’t like David Thomas Broughton.  These people are wrong, it is as simple as that.

Wednesday 23rd September 2009: Withered Hand Album Launch at the Leith Dockers’ Club, with special guests.

You know I like this album, don’t you?  You also know I have an awful lot of time for Dan, don’t you.  And I’ve not read a bad review for the record anywhere – not even a merely lukewarm one.  So expect a big old hairy metal-hippie love-in at one of Edinburgh’s more idiosyncratic venue choices.  I would tell you who the Very Special Guest is, but I am not allowed.  You’ll just have to keep your Ear Against the Wireless.

Withered Hand – Cornflake (Demo)

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Wednesday 23rd September 2009 (or Thursday): Jesus H. Foxx & the Pineapple Chunks at the Wee Red Bar.

The Wee Red website seems to think this is on Thursday 24th, whereas I am pretty sure the bands think it’s on the 23rd.  I don’t know – personally I would go along on Wednesday if I were you because the venue is there all week and it’s probably best to turn up when the bands are actually intending to play.  Besides, at least if you go on Wednesday and you’re wrong, there’s time to put it right.  There will be lots of guitars and drums at this gig,

Friday 25th September 2009: Julie Doiron, Construction & Destruction and Former Utopia at the Bowery.

Julie Doiron is folky, quiet, French Canadian and stuff like that.

Saturday 26th September 2009: Occasional Flickers, French Wives & Cancel the Astronauts at Sneaky Pete’s.

The Occasional Flickers are probably best and most lazily described as pleasant twee-pop.  Which is nice.  My head hurts too much to write anything more about this.

The Occasional Flickers – A Medal Won in ’84

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Saturday 26th September 2009: The Low Miffs & Malcolm Ross at Cabaret Voltaire.

The Low Miffs are a fucking great live band, and their album is excellent.  It’s art rock, to a degree, old school indie to a degree and camp as tits in some senses.  I’ll be here with bells on, depending on certain potential Manchester-based excusions.

The Low Miffs & Malcolm Ross – Cressida

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Sunday 27th September 2009: Strike the Colours & Zoey Van Goey at Electric Circus.

Zoey Van Goey are another band I have inexplicably yet to see, for no really obvious reason.  They have an album out and an increasing national profile, so I really should get my shit together and check them out.  Strike the Colours is the vehicle for Malcolm Middleton’s fiddle player, and a band I kind of like, but perhaps no more than that.

Strike the Colours – Strangernight

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Withered Hand – You Are Not Alone

Withered Hand

I think it’s fair to say that 2009 has been Dan Willson’s year, in a musical sense.  He’s gone from being one of Edinburgh’s most respected songwriters to the leader of a band on the verge of genuinely widespread and richly deserved recognition.

I am likely to repeat this analysis come the time of his album release in September of this year, but I find myself smiling sometimes at just how little actual innovation seems to take place with the actual music and arrangement of Withered Hand’s music.  It’s all quite basic and straightforward, with his acoustic guitar supplemented here by bits of piano, percussion and accordion and some backing vocals from King Creosote, who recorded and produced this little gem.

Basically though, Withered Hand are a great band because Dan is a truly special, special songwriter.  His fundamental knack for a melody is uncanny, and his lyrics are superb.  His songs of self-doubt and insecurity are just a shade too humorous and clever to actually be self-pitying.  And yet they’re always too heartfelt and believably real to be anything other than genuinely affecting.

No Cigarettes is a boody masterpiece, frankly, and Oldsmobile Car is the latest incarnation of a brilliant song written with Dan’s Bear Scotland pals Cammy Watt and Neil Pennycook, which has previously seen the light of day as the demo Shooby Shooby and also as Red Candle Bulb on the recent Meursault EP.  It’s nice to see the main songwriter himself give us his own interpretation, and the quavering backing vocals of Mr. Anderson are perfectly suited to the deer-in-headlights nature of the words.

Big Ten Four sounds uncannily like Neil Young, funnily enough, but in preceding the lovely Are You Courageous, perhaps slows things down a little too much for my taste it almost puts the brakes on two blocks before the corner, but that’s about the only criticism I have to offer: a minor quibble about sequencing.  Otherwise, this is fucking brilliant.

Withered Hand – No Cigarettes

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Live in Edinburgh This Week – 17th May 2009

Edinburgh

Well, after a bit of a lull last week there’s all sorts of crap going on in and around Edinburgh this week, so choose wisely because trying to attend everything could just be the end of you.  As well as the usual recommendations there are a couple of half-recommendations this week; gigs I feel I should want to go to, but am actually not that fussed about.  Crystal Antlers (I mean, come on, they have Crystal in their name, they have to be good, almost as guaranteed as having Fuck in your name last year, or Bear the year before that, or Wolf… well, never mind) are playing at Sneaky Pete’s with Times New Viking and Dupec.  These are all bands I feel I should like more than I do, for some reason.

The same applies to all of Glenn Tilbrook, Kristin Hersh and Alastair Roberts who are playing Cabaret Voltaire on Tuesday 19th, Wednesday 20th and Friday 22nd respectively.  I should be excited about them (well, maybe not Mr. Tilbrook in particular, no offence) but for all it is good that these guys are playing Edinburgh I find myself no more than vaguely interested in their gigs.  The splendid Rob St. John is supporting Alastair Roberts though, so that one is definitely the most appealing of the lot.

In terms of gigs I am likely to be attending, well let’s go, shall we.  And, er, just check Saturday out.  The Edinburgh gig going public might well be spread very thinly indeed this Saturday:

Thursday 21st May 2009: White Heath, Yusuf Azak & Colourmusic play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

Well all know I think Yusuf Azak is bloody brilliant, but White Heath were also excellent at Trampoline last Saturday.  Their sound is very crowded, and their lead singer sounds a little like a muezzin who has rather badly lost his way, but they sound really, really promising to me.  Trombone and mental fiddle solos? Count me in!  And they even play the bongos without sounding shite, which is an achievement in itself.  They’re going to be working on some new recordings with Alex from Fentek Audio in the near future, and Alex appears to be carving out a reputation as one of Edinburgh’s most trusted sound guys, so this is very good news.  I’ll definitely be at this one.
Colourmusic – Spring Song

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Thursday 21st May:Benni Hemm Hemm and Withered Hand at the Bowery.

Glacial Icelandicism is no surprise these days, but this is more of a style we might associate with the rest of Scandinavia, with an almost januty instrumental pop style never far from the surface.  Benni will be at the Bowery on Thursday with the brilliant Withered Hand.

Friday 22nd May 2009: The Mannequins, The Pineapple Chunks and quite a few others at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

In amongst a lot of bigger names this week, I reckon this looks like the pick of the bunch when it comes to more under the radar slots.  I’ve been slack at checking the Henry’s listings recently because they’ve been rather quiet since the new year, but I hear that that is about to be taken firmly in hand and they will be making a bit of a push in the coming months.  The Mannequins have some pretty decent pop songs from the sound of it, and The Pineapple Chunks have done well at Limbo in the past, so I think this is gig to go to if you’re looking for something a little off the beaten track.
The Mannequins – Little Black Book

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Saturday 23rd May 2009: Cats in Paris & Mitchell Museum at Cabaret Voltaire.

I should really be at the Stag & Dagger Festival in Glasgow watching Meursault on Saturday, but they asked me to sign release forms so that Meursault’s set could be both filmed and recorded and then denied me permission to film at the festival myself, so they can go and fuck themselves with a bag full of scorpions, frankly.  Instead, I will be at Cabaret Voltaire watching the very fashionable Cats in Paris and the very excellent Mitchell Museum.  The last time I saw Mitchell Museum was in a rather large venue, so somewhere more intimate and a little sweatier should be great fun.
Mitchell Museum – Arthur Loves the Shadows

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Saturday 23rd May 2009: Found, Player Piano, The Pictish Trail & King Creosote at the GRV.

I just don’t go the GRV, not really on purpose, more because they so rarely have my kind of music on the bill there that I get a little lazy about checking the listings.  This one is pretty bloody obvious though: a kind of Fence Collective Allstars get together, with all the charismatic alt-folk you could wish for.  Player Piano is more of a lush pop band though, and Found aren’t really folky at all, so I don’t think this would be the Fence Collective of hushed and lovely balladry which you might expect if you were coming along on the basis of a hundred-word newspaper clipping.
Player Piano – Anything At All

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Saturday 23rd May 2009: Anathallo, Samamidon, The Stormy Seas & Your Boy Blair at Sneaky Pete’s.

Anathallo, although I know very little about them, sound rather lovely from a quick skim of their MySpace page.  Also on the bill is the truly gorgeous Samamidon, and anyone who missed either of his Bowery gigs this Winter really should not miss this.  He has the loveliest voice and the most amazing way with a banjo you are likely to hear anywhere, ever.
Anathallo – The River

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Saturday 23rd May 2009: Lach at the Bowery.

Lach pretty much started what is generally thought of as the modern anti-folk movement in New York, and he certainly coined the phrase itself.  It’s hardly a new thing of course – Bob Dylan rubbed the folkies all up the wrong way when he first turned up as well, but they couldn’t really ignore him for all that long.  Getting a legendary figure like Lach to the Bowery is something of a coup as far as I’m concerned so, er, what the fuck am I going to do on Saturday with all these bands to see.  I can’t miss this one.
Lach – A Quiet Distance

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Sunday 24th May: Defiance Ohio, Madeline, Withered Hand, Torn Strings & Billy Liar at the Bowery.

Madeline is a big favourite of my pal Rich who writes the Georgia (no, the one in the States) blog Cable & Tweed, so I really think I should go to this.  After all, without Rich we would have no Porlolo, no Builders & the Butchers, no Loch Lomond, no Sleepy Horses and no 63 Crayons.
Madeline – White Flag

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Toadcast #69 – The Fifecast

Toadcast

My Homegame review is pretty brief, but it is here, and there is a wee video thingy as well for you to enjoy.  This is of course the accompanying podcast, with songs either from the bands I saw there, or from EPs and bits and pieces I acquired at the merch table up in Fife.

I should really have included some interviews and shit in this podcast, shouldn’t I, but then I wasn’t actually as well prepared or as organised as I should have been, really.  Inasmuch as I kind of think I would prefer my video to have turned out a bit more like Milo’s, I would also have preferred my podcast to turn out a little more like DC’s Homegame show over at the Waiting Room.  I’m not saying that I dislike the stuff that I’ve done this year, just that to my eyes it lacks a little bit of fizz and personality, unfortunately.  Oh well, it’s all a learning process, and by the time Wickerman comes around I reckon I should be able to produce something a lot better.

Toadcast #69 – The Fifecast

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01. The Phantom Band – Island (03.00)
02. The Hand – Happa Yori (15.02)
03. King Creosote – Nothing Rings True (19.52)
04. James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grieviance (25.42)
05. Jake Flowers – One For the Ditch (30.07)
06. Love.Stop.Repeat – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (33.25)
07. Viking Moses – Clown School (39.03)
08. Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Banjo (46.14)
09. Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves (51.26)
10. Jonnie Common – Taken Out (57.16)

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Fence Collective Homegame Festival, April 17th-19th 2009

I love Homegame.  Have I mentioned that before?

For the uninitiated, the Fence Collective‘s Homegame Festival is held once a year in the small fishing village of Anstruther in Fife (well, it used to be a fishing village but it seems to be largely touristy now – neighbour Pittenweem seems to be more of a working harbour).  A huge pile of Fence Records acts, bolstered by friends and neighbours, get together and play lots of gigs in the town halls, school halls and beer halls of the town, and about six hundred or so lucky punters get to go along.

There are a few things I love about this festival, so here are a couple, put as briefly as possible:
- Anstruther is small, so the festival itself has to be small, or the town wouldn’t be able to cope.
- Fence Collective music is fucking brilliant.  There will be no sets by the View, not even acoustic ones.
- It’s actually in a town, so if it pisses down you can just stay in the pub and not get wet.
- The bands themselves are all relaxed, friendly and as interested in seeing good music and getting plastered as the rest of us, which makes for a really nice, communal atmosphere.
- It’s in a seaside town so if you ever get all musicked out, you can pick up a paper, sit on the promenade and read for a bit.
- Did I mention the relaxed atmosphere?  It’s the nicest festival in the world to be at.

This year Mrs. Toad and I rented a couple of cottages in Pittenweem – we were too slow to get Anstruther – which ended up being absolutely full of bodies at the end of every gin-sodden night of debauchery.  And when I say full I mean full; every inch of floor and ever sofa or cushion covered with some passed out drunkard or other.  Fuck me it was fun. Read the rest of this entry »

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King Creosote – Flick the Vs

Flick the Vs

Well it’s taken me a while to come to this conclusion, as you can tell by the monumental lateness of this review, but this really is a bloody gorgeous album.  It seems that the King’s brief excursion back to Fence Records last year has informed a lot of this.  Last year he released the excellent They Flock Like Vulcans… which was shot through with fuzzy, lost techno beats and crackling low-fi electronica.  It was a meandering record of half-finished ideas, some great and some a little obscure, but it seems to have set the scene for Flick the Vs, in a sense.

There’s no doubt about it, though, this is a tight album.  Rarely is it as playful as previous work has been, but the loose experimentation of Vulcans has been reigned in to produce a short, sharp record of coherent songs with not an inch of flab on them anywhere.

I am not in love with all of it, however.  Songs like Coast on By seem to be a hangover from the pop excursion of Bombshell and, whilst I liked Bombshell, that approach seems slightly at odds with the rest of this particular album.  Then again, had he not included it I might well have been complaining about the pace not being varied enough, and you can’t have it both ways.  This particular song, simply, doesn’t really appeal to me.  Camels Swapped For Wives, on the other hand, could also be a Bombshell song, but it’s one which works really nicely in the context of this record.

For the most part, however, this is the wry, melancholy King Creosote we all know and love.  In amongst the whispers of distorted electronics are simple acoustic ballads, giving the record a really nice balance of textures.  Most importantly, however, this album contains an obvious handful of King Creosote classics.  No-one Had it Better is an outstanding opener, Nothing Rings True is aching, Rims is bizarre, but brilliant, No Way She Exists… it goes on.  Not bad for an old timer.  I’m not sure why it took me a while to get used to though, but it definitely did.  I got there in the end, though.

King Creosote – No One Had it Better

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King Creosote – Nothing Rings True

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Domino Records

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