This is called the Slowcast because there are so many songs and, more commonly, whole albums out there which I took ages and ages to get into, and for no really obvious reason.

There are several reasons, I guess: how familiar a sound is, your emotional state at the time, what your mates are listening to, how popular something is and stuff like that.  I know I’ve admitted plenty of times in the past that I have a habit of refusing to like things if they get too popular.  That sounds ludicrous, but it’s not exactly a conscious decision, more an instinctive recoiling.  I never have liked much popular stuff, although I do certainly go through phases.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons that, with the label, I am not looking to sign or work with the modern equivalent of a Top 40 band – I have never much liked Top 40 music.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of the podcast.  This is dedicated to those albums which for some reason you have to hear about a million times before you eventually, out of nowhere, realise that you love them.

Toadcast #72 – The Slowcast

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01. Billy Bragg – Honey I’m a Big Boy Now (04.36)
02. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (08.37)
03. Radiohead – My Iron Lung (14.14)
04. The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels (23.42)
05. Mancino – Definition of an Accident (32.26)
06. The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest (36.09)
07. Interpol – Obstacle #1 (43.31)
08. My Latest Novel – Wolves (49.30)
09. The Wedding Present – 2, 3, Go! (55.29)
10. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (59.56)

This morning I have no plans.  Nothing to do, no gigs, no chores, no work to do on the house, nothing – it’s great.  I’ve been outside to the garden and had a potter… actually, let me tell you about our garden.  It’s some rock ‘n’ roll shit, babies, seriously.

When we moved into our house our back garden was basically a courtyard.  I have always had lots of plants and my family is full of gardeners, so we saw that courtyard and had only one thought on our minds.  So we bought a ton of compost and a sledgehammer and, of the course of last Summer, took up slabs one at a time, dug in some good stuff and started to take it back.

It’s been a bit backbreaking, but quite fun wielding the sledgehammer, and now we have a couple of pretty decent sized beds and what’s left of the patio in the middle.  It was mostly planted last year with very young plants, largely ordered from internet nurseries, so there’s a lot of bare earth.  Everything’s had a year to bed in and put down some roots though, so this year we’re hoping for a bit more in terms of growth – we reckon we might just have a proper garden.

So every weekend for the past month we’ve woken up on Saturday morning, poured some coffee and wandered out into the back to peer and prod at our ever-increasing number of little shoots and buds.  There’s something so exciting and satisfying about this time of year in a garden.  All the dea, brown stuff starts to sprout tight-wound little buds of new life, and the whole thing just promises so much.

We’ve not done it the right way at all, in the sense that we haven’t planned it properly and we have no real idea what we’ve put in where, but that doesn’t matter.  We’ll see what we get this year and tinker as we go along.  It’s just nice.  There’s something so relaxing about shuffling around the garden with a cup of coffee gazing at the exact same stuff you stared at last week.   I’ll take some pictures this year and post them so you can see what I’m on about.  It’s not all coke and hookers in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, you know.

So, erm, what songs go with that, then?  Saturday afternoon music, I suppose.  You know what I mean: cup of tea, pyjamas, slightly weak March sunshine, flicking through a book, but not really paying much attention.  Bliss.

The Mountain Goats – You Or Your Memory
The Mabuses – Dark Star
The Smiths – Frankly, Mr. Shankly[
(The Real) Tuesday Weld – At the House of the Clerkenwell Kid
The Innocence Mission – I Haven’t Seen This Day Before (Live)
Adem – Everything You Need

16. Bob Frank & John Murry – World Without End

It’s a deep, emotional and an amazingly harrowing record.  True murder ballads delivered with pathos, yet never shying away from their inherent horror.   Johnny Cash and Robert Fisher would be proud.

Bob Frank & John Murry – Joaquin Murietta, 1853

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17. Ice Cream Socialists – Belles & Missiles

Sheer, unhinged mental brilliance.  Imagine if indie, pop, rock, and at times even classical, country and hip-hop were let loose in the circus and sung by Kermit the Frog.  It may sound nuts but it works.  Sheer genius.

Ice Cream Socialists – Zagnut’s Revenge

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18. The Mabuses – Mabused

The indie band that kidnapped a couple of classical musicians and told them they were in a new band now, without ever explaining to them what indie music is.  It’s laid back indie pop, but the musical inventiveness lifts above just about anything else in this particular territory.

The Mabuses – Havana

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19. Paris Motel – In the Saltpetriere

I think I’ve described these guys as the band on the Marie Celeste and I don’t think I can better that.  Ethereal fairy tales, with a hint of the macabre, although I couldn’t find a single standout track for my Festive 50, the album as a whole is one of the best I’ve heard this year.

Paris Motel -  City of Ladies

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20. Donny Hue & the Colors – Folkmote

I’ll admit this didn’t seem that special to me at the time, although I enjoyed it very much.  There’s just something I find incredibly satisfying about it.  I couldn’t quantify what it is about this album, but it sits perfectly with me nonetheless.

Donny Hue & the Colors – Mountain Piece

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What a lovely, lovely podcast this is.  No Mrs. Toad this week (yeah, yeah, I know, fuck off the lot of you) partly because she is away in the States being important and businesslike and so forth and partly because you are all a bunch of cunts for liking her best, you shower of ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, needless alienation of one’s audience aside, I am a little tired of doing themed podcasts.  Nothing particularly pressing leapt to mind this month so I thought I’d just throw on a pile of stuff I was really enjoying and sod having a coherent theme – that’s for the professionals anyway.  So it’s just a big old mish-mash of stuff I’m enjoying at the moment, but I think it’s quite a good playlist for all that.

There are actually a couple of songs chosen for other women in my life!  Oh shock horror! One is our reception lady here at work who revealed a surprisingly excellent vinyl collection when a few of us went round to her place after a staff night out recently, including Pavement and The Pixies.  Who would have thought it!  The other lady song is from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, after I was entirely charmed by the niece of our next door neighbour who apparently used to go out with their keyboard player.  She is trying to move to New York at the moment actually, where there are plans to play fiddle and harp on the new Au Revoir Simone album, which is splendid news.  Apparently this one is to be more folky than the last, which bodes very well indeed.  So go Ruth!  I can’t wait to hear it.

Better stop talking about ze laydees now of course, before I get skelped by my lovely lady.  Not one of of ‘em a patch on the sparkling gem that is the delectable Mrs. Toad of course, not even close!  *ahem*

Toadcast #14 – Total Self-Indulgence

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01. The White Stripes – 300mph Torrential Outpour Blues (03.04)
02. Rachel Unthank & the Winterset – Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk (12.34)
03. Jonquil – Lions (18.58)
04. Misophone – The Sea Has Spoken (20.46)
05. The Pixies – Where is My Mind (29.25)
06. The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning (36.09)
07. The Monochrome Set – Tomorrow Will Be Too Long (39.37)
08. iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist (44.10)
09. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Over and Over Again (Lost & Found) (50.23)
10. Ringo Deathstarr – Starrsha (55.00)
11. Babyshambles – UnBiloTitled (57.02)
12. New Pornographers – Adventures in Solitude (64.29)
13. Phil Ochs – Here’s to the State of Mississippi (75.18)
14. The Mabuses – Bonus Track (82.46)
15. The Real Tuesday Weld – Waltz For One (86.49)
16. Kenneth Williams – When the Toad Came Home (88.40)

It’s amazing how important the order in which you listen to songs can actually be. My phone, which I use instead of an iPod or some such other nonsense stores about five albums at a time, so I use it for whatever albums I am thinking of reviewing at the time and listen on the way to work and when generally wandering. The thing is, apart from using random, there is no way to order the tracks in any way other than alphabetically by song name. For some albums this can be disastrous. Remember the Alex Cornish album I reviewed a while back? Well I thought it was dreadful when I listened to the songs this way round, and it was only once I started listening to them in the order in which Mr. Cornish actually intended that I began to like the album.

With The Mabuses it has been the other way around. For some reason, in the proper order, the songs haven’t quite grabbed me but when I listen on my phone I love this album. Even now I have realised this is still isn’t quite happening when I hear them the right way around. Odd that, but I am glad it happened because this is a bit of a wee gem of a record and I might not have realised it otherwise.

Basically about two thirds of it is a pretty standard indie album, drifting between a slightly Echo & the Bunnymen style dark indie style thrum and a lighter, more playful thrum with mobile harmonies. They even sound a bit like Gomez at times, actually. So far so similar to a million other albums. What sets this record completely apart is the other third. This half is the same sort of thing, but with peculiarly classical accompaniments that, instead of applying classical instruments to indie songs, which is nothing new, or dishing up a tedious helping of ‘Hollywood strings’, do something quite unusual.

It’s almost as if they kidnapped a classical musician or two who had never heard of indie music and told them that they would never play another symphony again, they were now in an indie band. With no idea what indie is, these musicians simply play classical refrains whenever anyone looks at them, as this is the only music they know. A peculiar clarinet (I think) loop co-exists with opener Dark Star in such a fashion that it seems to only accidentally have been played at the same time, rather than being part of the same song. Garden Devils could be part of Peter and the Wolf. That clarinet makes a near-identical return on Mirth.

These unexpected juxtapositions are the high points of the album for me, but they seem to need the plain vanilla indie tracks to throw them into perspective. Basically, although this record couldn’t exist without the straightforward indie tracks, it is invariably these that let it down: a couple are leaden and lack a sticky hook of any sort, which is a shame because the rest of the album is an inventive pleasure. Three-quarters brilliance, I’d say, and a very pleasant surprise indeed, given how long I took to get into the thing.  Stupid thing though – my favourite song might actually be the fucking bonus track hidden at the end of Destinations.

The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest
The Mabuses – Dark Star
The Mabuses – Bonus Track

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