Song, by Toad

If anyone in Edinburgh is at a loose end tonight, this is where you should be.  At half eight in the Voodoo Rooms Limbo will be launching the first volume of a series of Limbo Live albums.  Basically, they’ve taken the recordings from their weekly live shows and compiled a Best Of as something of a showcase, both of their work, and of all the new Scottish bands they’ve given a chance to over the course of the last year or so.

Honestly, I have no idea how they do it.  Three bands a week, every week, for over a year: that should be impossible.  The work they put in is impressive, and the encouragement that gives the local scene can’t be underestimated.  I’ve seen a number of superb bands for the first time by going along to Limbo.  The beer is cheap, the lineups are varied, the sound is phenomenal and all in all it’s invariably a good night out.

Things like this really are the engine room of a music scene.  They sit there and chug over reliably week after week, providing a platform not only for bands themselves, but also for other venues.  The Bowery, Cabaret Voltaire and Sneaky Pete’s are doing amazing work in improving the live scene in this town, but something like Limbo, which means that even during lean spells there is something good on, makes sure that everything keeps moving, that the audiences remain engaged and excited, until bands get back on the road again and the scene around the city picks up once more.

Tonight’s gig is going to be a massive great mish mash of as many groups represented on Limbo Live Vol. 1 as they can manage to pull together.  Everyone sets up at once and there’ll be a short, sharp collection of performances, rather than the standard, support-support-headline setup.  This is another thing I like about Limbo, actually.  Was anyone at their collaborative night with Canongait Books?  It was superb.  Poetry, readings and music all together in one night, and not really like much I’ve been to before – they really do try and innovate with their nights.

So please pop along and support them tonight, or go and buy the CD.  Dave and Andy are a pair of total fuckwits, but they are lovely blokes, and really important to the music scene in Edinburgh, so it would be good for them to get some love in return.

Zoey Van Goey – City is Exploding

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Isosceles – Get Your Hands Off

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Limbo on MySpace | Buy the CD from limbolive.co.uk

Sping.  SPRING.  Hurry the FUCK UP for Christ’s sake before we all go fucking mental.  Good grief what a long drawn out wait it has been.  Some sunshine would be nice.  A cup of tea in the garden would be nice.  Actually, even the chance to go outside of a weekend and rescue the garden from the tangle of weeds and fallen leaves it has become over the winter would be nice.  Obviously there’d have to be coke and whores afterwards, just to keep up the rock ‘n’ roll pretensions, but for now a nice cuppa and a Rich Tea biscuit in the back garden, with dirty hands and earth under our fingernails, would be very welcome indeed.

For those of you craving a spot of news, apparently Bob Dylan’s new studio album is being released in mid-April, which is rather jolly, I have to say.  I have no great expectations for it to be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, but so what.  It might be a bloody good listen anyway.

Secondly, here’s a wee video of Broken Records (who?) recording their debut album, which will be released, erm, quite soon.  June 1st, it seems.

Monday 16th March 2009: Finley Quaye at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

You know, I never knew that Finley Quaye was an Edinburgh artist.  I actually rather liked Maverick A Strike, although I must confess to having largely neglected his stuff since.  I am busy tonight but just out of curiosity this looks like a rather interesting gig, if just to find out what he’s been up to all this time.
Finley Quaye – Even After All

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Thursday 19th March 2009: Limbo & Canongate Books present Irregular, at the Voodoo Rooms.

To say that this is an ambitious project sounds a little condescending, but in a sense I suppose it is.  This is going to be a combination of music and spoken word, with readings from recent Canongate publications mixed with live music from the likes of Black Diamond Express.  I have no idea how they intend to put it together or whether or not they can pull it off, but it sounds fucking fascination, frankly, and I shall be there for sure.

Friday 20th March 2009: Sleepingdog, Esperi & The Kays Lavelle at the Wee Red Bar.

There will be no mosh pit at the Wee Red on Friday, but Sleepingdog generate a kind of hypnotic loveliness which should bring a fascination of its own.  Essentially, it seems, a vehicle for Belgian lassie Chantal Acda, they’ve just released an album called Polar Life, a rather appropriate name, given the music, which I assume will be available at the show and from the sounds of the MySpace page should be rather good.
Sleepingdog – The Prophets

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Saturday 21st March 2009: Ballboy at the Wee Red Bar.

Ballboy are the Edinburgh indie-pop stars who never quite hit the escape velocity needed to break out of the city into the wider music-listening consciousness.  This is a bit of a shame because they’ve got some really brilliant songs.  Now there’s a new album as well, called I Worked on the Ships, which I have yet to hear but if their previous stuff is anything to go by should be a really enjoyable listen.
Ballboy – I’ve Got Pictures of You in Your Underwear

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Saturday 21st March 2009: Tunng at the Picturehouse.

Me?  Publicising a gig at the Picturehouse?  I thought I was trying to be alternative.  Ah well, people have been trying to get me to properly listen to Tunng for ages, most notably Ruth from the Bowery, so I thought that a live performance would be a bloody good way to start.  I’m rather looking forward to this actually – a bit of bleepery, a bit of slightly arcane folk music – splendid!
Tunng – Tale From Black

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[Photo a bodged version of one of David Forcier's pics.]

You have to admire Limbo.  How the hell they manage to put on a three-band lineup every week is frankly beyond me, but to do it and still have so many great bills is a seriously commendable achievement.  And this week, once again, they’ve produced a corker.

Findo Gask only have a couple of singles to their name, but they are both absolutely superb, particularly the slightly enigmatic, insidiously catchy One Eight Zero.  There are a lot of bands making catchy pop songs with an epileptic casio edge to them, however, and that is not, for me, what sets Findo Gask apart tonight.  The difference is in the excellence of the drummer and the elusive sadness of some of the music.  It’s not just dancefloor electropop by any means, although that is superficially what it can sound like, there’s actually a sense of longing in their somewhere which gives the music a really captivating element of mystery.

Maybe it’s Gerard Black’s keening vocal; his voice sounds a lot like King Creosote’s, albeit with just a little more falsetto.  It carries the same innate sense of yearning for something never quite explained, and perhaps helps explain why they have that little bit extra about them as a band.  Black himself is pretty camp, and viewed through that lens, I suppose you could start to view the music as slightly camp as well.  However, that extra dimension to the vocal and, I’ll say it again, the excellent live drumming keep the music in a slightly different territory and, crucially, well clear of pigeonholes.

They only have two singles to their name, so it’s very much premature to go making judgements, but on the back of both those releases and their excellent Limbo show I reckon these guys have serious potential.  Now, anyone know where the fuck I can get hold of a copy of Va Va Va on vinyl, because the bastards appear to have sold out.

Findo Gask – One Eight Zero

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Findo Gask – Wrapped in Plastic (Live)

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Angular

These guys really were terrific.  Chris Croasdale plays a nylon-stringed guitar at a bloody good pace, the sound of it is fantastic, and the songs seem to build from a stumble to a furious gallop over the course of four or five minutes.  It’s not just the guitar though, this is just a very economically and well-assembled band.  Jonnie Common’s electronic trickery, and the raucous drumming of Roy Shearer all play crucial parts in the music, and all three of them sing.

They don’t seem to play all that often – I’ve only seen them twice in a year and there’s only one other gig listed on their MySpace – and the recording of the album is going rather slowly, but I have to confess that if this is all going to be as good as this then I will be looking forward to it a great deal.

Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Bozo

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Inspector Tapehead on MySpace

If there was some sort of prize for enjoying playing live more than any other band then it would be awarded to Over the Wall in a heartbeat, I would imagine.  They seem to be so genuinely delighted with every chance to get up and play that, irrespective of your opinion of their music, it is pretty much impossible not to be caught up in their infectious enthusiasm.

As to the music itself, I have to say I am positively inclined, although some ambivalence remains.  Some of it, like euphoric set-closer Thurso, is just superb.  At times it captures my imagination just a little less, simply drifting into the generic-but-decent pop category.  They’re definitely a band with potential though, and one I will happily see play again.

Over the Wall – A Grand Defeat

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Over the Wall on MySpace

An outstanding Limbo lineup was completed by Edinburgh bleep-hoppers Found (their term, not mine).  A couple of years ago, just after the release of the brilliant This Mess We Keep Reshaping, I saw Found play on a few occasions and absolutely loved them.  I saw them a while ago playing somewhere I don’t entirely remember and they seemed a little bit listless, as if the energy had evaporated somewhat.  This time around that appears to have been fixed, and all the old strut is back in their stride.

Found are another one of these bands who seem to get on really well together as a group and really enjoy playing live.  The mid-song pauses are greeted with extended waits, and general mischievous sniggering all round as they dare one another to be the first to break the silence.  And for all there’s folk in some of it, pop in most of it, and samplelicious bleepery all over the place, the one word that won’t leave my head is ‘funky’.  They are just a damned funky band when they’re on their game, as they were on this particular evening, and an absolute joy to behold.

To help them pay for their trip to SXSW, please don’t forget to buy their promotional album.  And don’t be fucking cheap, either, you’re not all students.  At least two or three pints’ worth.

Found – When You Fall

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Found on MySpace

When you see a lot of bands who are unsigned, promising, vaguely decent, whatever you want to call it, then when you see a band who genuinely are the business it becomes really quite obvious. When you see two in one night, then you know you’re on to something good.

Basically, these two bands need to have much higher high points than being on these rather low-profile pages, and I am confident that they both will. Both bands are taking rather different approaches – Meursault had their fingers somewhat singed by the music industry quite early on and have decided to plough a distinctly DIY furrow ever since. They’ve done it with some success, and when their album is ‘officially’ released in the new year they should get the respect they deserve from the music press.

Sparrow & the Workshop, on the other hand, have had the world of music fly at them really rather quickly since they formed in January this year. Labels, promoters, managers, Toads, everyone’s been throwing themselves at them with a slightly disturbing fervour. If I’m frank, I don’t really understand it. They are an excellent band, there’s no doubt about that, and when you hear them, that mark of a band with something special about them is all over. But more so than other groups I could name? Well, I’m not sure. What both they and Meursault have is that they both have a very distinctive sound indeed. Both sound quite familiar, but when I look for comparisons I am stumped.

Whatever you say about it though, both bands were on form. Jill O’Sullivan, Sparrow’s lead singer, had The Rage in her eyes for some reason. There was real fire there, and that really showed in the performance, dwarfing their somewhat tentative first East Coast show at the Liquid Room a week ago. They were playing to an Edinburgh audience for pretty much the first time, and quite frankly, they rocked. They are very much the business, this band.

Their effect on Meursault was interesting as well. Meursault are a sensitive bunch, and they like Sparrow & the Workshop an awful lot, so after such a fine performance they clearly felt the need not to be upstaged, and it showed. Neil’s trademark howl was at its most unhinged, and although the uke and the banjo were somewhat drowned out by the electronics (Meursault are a swine of a band to mix, really they are) it was just a brilliant performance.

We’re lucky people. Scotland is a good place for music, and these bands are two of the finest we have.

View some photos here

Sparrow & the Workshop – Swam Like Sharks
Meursault – Salt Pt. 2

It’s a bit crowded with interesting things this week, with everything kind of happening at once, making it a little difficult to decide what to go to. Then there’s always Mrs. Toad of course, who has the selfish habit of complaining when I spent every night of the week out doing musicky things, the unreasonable old bag.

We’re off on a big holiday shortly too, so there is a fair bit of organising to be done and so far I am not proving particularly adept. Ah well, organisation was never a strong suit, but I guess we’ll be just fine. Going away is hardly a tricky business, especially if jabs aren’t involved. So what will I probably be skipping this week, in preparation for my parents’ visit on Friday?

Wednesday 23rd July 2008: Lanterns on the Lake, Lipsync For a Lullaby & Laura Lewis & the Tea Dance Orchestra at the Voodoo Rooms.
I don’t know much about these chaps, but Lipsync were highly recommended to me quite recently, although by whom I can’t remember. It was probably Bart “There is No Such Thing as a Shit Band” Owl I should imagine, but I’m not sure. Lanterns on the Lake are a Newcastle bunch who play rather dreamy pop, Laura Lewis is a local concern, who sounds quite breathless and just a little twee, and Lipsync deal in guitar soundscapes, so it sounds like a really diverse bill and a very decent night out indeed.
Lanterns on the Lake – This Year

Thursday 24th July 2008: Meursault & The Kays Lavelle play Duty Free at Cabaret Voltaire.
I like these Duty Free gigs – they’ve put together some pretty good lineups, despite the freeness, and this week sees a couple of very good Toadpals Meursault and The Kays Lavelle on the bill, along with a couple of other bands I don’t really know: Barnowl and Ross Clark.
The Kays Lavelle – The Chemistry Between

Thursday 24th July 2008: Sara & the Snakes & Black Diamond Express play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.
I’ve wanted to see Black Diamond Express for a while, but they don’t play that often and when they do I have an annoying habit of being otherwise engaged, which may well happen again this time, which is really frustrating. Sara & the Snakes likewise, really. I’ve seen their guitarist Andy do a solo set and he was absolutely outstanding but I’ve never seen the full band which is a little bit frustrating.
Black Diamond Express – Jack