I managed to miss last week’s Fresh Air show because… well I somehow failed to realise that the bloody station was back on the air, which is spectacularly dumb. This week I present Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show With Toad and a Little Bit Less Ruth Than Usual, or indeed any Ruth at all because the lovely herself can’t make it tonight, so you will be treated to the wonderful pleasure of listening to me burble on to myself about tunes and stuff and stuff and some tunes and then probably some more stuff just to cap it off.

Live on Air 8.30pm-10pm – Listen live here.

01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You, But Goodbye
02. Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us Now
03. The Left Banke – Evening Gown
04. Bettye Swann – Don’t Look Back
05. Lee Dorsey – My Old Car
06. The Scottish Enlightenment – All Homemade Things
07. Super Adventure Club – Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle
08. Sam Amidon – Fiddle Mayhem (Toad Session)
09. The Shaggs – What Are Parents
10. Nico Muhly – The Only Tune
11. Phil & the Osophers – Uses of a Man
12. David Tattersall – The Old Family
13. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge
14. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden
15. Songdog – Obediah’s Waltz

Next week we have the splendid Loch Lomond live in session, and to tide you over until then the videos from Mammoeth’s session on the show are below the jump.  The tracklisting for tonight’s show will appear below live as we go along, and feel free to heckle in the comments.

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Weird. This band is long gone, it’s barely possible to get hold of any of their stuff, and apart from enthusiastic music fans barely anyone has heard of them.

And yet and yet and yet… Remember The Turtles? No, me neither, but they are clearly well loved amongst the actual makers of music because people keep covering them, and it seems The Left Banke are similar. Most people reading this will know Walk Away Renee, either because The Four Tops covered it or because, after a fashion, so did Billy Bragg. Or indeed because it was a pretty big hit in its own right. What I didn’t realise – yes, I know, you probably knew this all along – was that the splendid Pretty Ballerina, which I thought was a new Eels track from the Eels With Strings album, was also a cover of a Left Banke song. And it truly is brilliant.

Anyhow, I have finally managed to acquire a copy of their first release “Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina” and am really enjoying it. It’s a sort of chamber pop with heavy use of orchestration, topped off with a sort of wonderfully dreamy, quite high pitched vocal. They had a bit of classical training between them and you can really hear it in the music, and the songs below are absolutely phenomenally good. A surprise lost gem, for me anyways.

The Left Banke – Evening Gown
The Left Banke – I’ve Got Something On My Mind
And those covers:
The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee
The Four Tops – Walk Away Renee
Billy Bragg – Walk Away Renee
The Left Banke – Pretty Ballerina It’s the off-key piano that makes this, isn’t it. Genius.
Eels – Pretty Ballerina