Firstly, the flurry of posts yesterday, from my rather tardy podcast to radio show post, meant that my brother’s Sunday Supplement – a rant about classical music – was buried rather too fast, so please do go back and check it out if you have a little time to waste this afternoon.

Secondly, the Edge Festival goes bloody nuts this week, and if I listed all the gigs then I’d be here all day, and there really is no need for that, so you can have it in paragraph form instead: on Monday 23rd we have Field Music at Sneaky Pete’s and Bear in Heaven at Electric Circus (late).  Tuesday sees The Phantom Band at the Electric Circus, Wednesday Eels at the Picturehouse and Thursday Mark Lanegan at the Liquid Room (who have finally got a website worthy of the name).  Friday is quiet, and then on the weekend we have Harlem at Sneaky Pete’s on Saturday and Modest Mouse at the Picturehouse on Sunday.  All these things you can Google yourselves if you are interested, and there is more info on the Edge site, here.

When it comes to more homegrown things, however, there is still plenty on this week, a good deal at the reassuringly active Bristo Hall – a really nice space which doesn’t get used as often as it might.

Monday 23rd August 2010: Pet, The Leg, The Pineapple Chunks, Sara & the Snakes at the Bristo Hall.

This might well be a late one (11pm-3am) so check it out before you go or you’ll be totally fucking wasted by the time the first band comes on.  I haven’t heard much from the Chunks for a while, as I believe they’ve been recording, so it would be rather cool if there were some new material here to be enjoyed.  There’s quite some distance covered from Sara & the Snakes’ swampy, bluesy garage stuff, the Chunks’ ramshackle whateverthefuckitistheyplay, and the Leg, who are so good they makes themselves sick down themselves (or so I hear anyway, because I have yet to see them live, for shame).

The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage

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Tuesday 24th August 2010: White Heath, French Wives, Fiction Faction (Formerly Casino Brag,) Sebastian Dangerfield, Washington Irving, and Foxgang at the Bristo Hall.

This is a big lineup selected by Foxgang for their Festival Special.  Given the reluctance of local promoters to do anything at all during the festival (and I have every sympathy – I do the same) it is good to see these guys putting on their own showcase.  Highlights for me would be the indie-pop of Sebastian Dangerfield, and Glaswegian indie pair Washington Irving and French Wives, from Instinctive Raccoon.

Sebastian Dangerfield – The Flood (Pt.1)

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Saturday 28th August 2010: Broken Records and Sparrow & the Workshop at the Liquid Room.

These are two of the original Song, by Toad bands, in a certain sense.  Both now have labels and albums and careers, dammit, and it’s weird.  With debut albums fairly well in the rearview mirror I would imagine that there will be a fair amount of new material on show here, although I know Broken Records don’t want to ruin the surprise for when their second album comes out later in the year.  Their new stuff sounds a lot more layered and guitary and a lot less folky than their earliest material, and I am deeply curious about the new record.

Broken Records – A Leaving Song

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Saturday 28th/Sunday 29th August 2010: Retreat Festival at Pilrig St. Paul’s church.

A free download sampler featuring a large number of the bands playing can be downloaded from here, if you’d like a bit of a preview.  Other than that, take it from me, this is going to be the highlight of the Edinburgh gig calendar, no exceptions – full details here, and I reckon you should probably buy tickets in advance (weekend – Saturday – Sunday) too as I doubt there will be too many left on the door.

So, the Festival descendeth upon Edinburgh once more, and once more we are beset by London-based Home County Yahs braying their zany way through the city until finally someone snaps and sets fire to their stupid fucking stilts once and for all.

Actually, as I confess pretty sharpish, I am the classic Edinburgh Festival hypocrite, if I’m being honest with myself.  I love it as much as I loathe it and I enjoy moaning about it almost as much as I enjoy the Festival itself.

As a native you really do have to have the right attitude though.  If you come from outside just for the Festival then there’s little chance of you failing to take advantage of it, but if you live here the only way is to do it by extremes: either totally ignore it and stay as far away as you can, or just stop moaning, get stuck in, get pished and go to lots of shows.  I tend to prefer the latter option, but I’ll confess I don’t always do a good job of actually taking my own advice.

Direct download: Toadcast #134 – The Festicast

01. Thee Single Spy – OK Corral (02.53)
02. Lach – A Quiet Distance (11.50)
03. Bob Dylan – Man of Constant Sorrow (Live) (14.59)
04. Run On Sentence – Wide Open Sky (22.20)
05. Skeleton Bob – Findlove is a Housing Scheme (33.11)
06. Wounded Knee – Coffee Ballad (34.43)
07. The Delta Mirror – He Was Worse Than the Needle He Gave You (39.31)
08. Balkans – Georganne (45.50)
09. Modest Mouse – This Devil’s Workday (50.33)
10. Eels – I Put a Spell on You (58.36)

Yes, it’s Fresh Air time again, and Ruth is back from the bring of death and ready to chatter away once more.  This week we have Russell from Mammoeth playing live in session for us.  He has an album out on Mini50 Records some time in the relatively near future, so we may try an weasel a preview out of him if we can.

We’ve also got some interesting new stuff – Eels released a new song from their forthcoming album just the other day, and we’ll be playing the phenomenal new eagleowl single as well.  We are recording a Toad Session with them in December, which is also really fucking brilliant news.

On air 7pm-8.30pm GMT – listen live here.

This week’s playlist:
1. Modest Mouse – Float On
2. Taken By Trees – Anna
3. Mammoeth – Latin Scribe (Live in Session)
4. Dr. Dog – The World May Never Know
5. Mammoeth – Scramble Eggs (Live in Session)
6. Brian Eno & David Byrne – Strange Overtones
7. Belle & Sebastian – She’s Losing It
8. Arthur Russell – Love is Overtaking Me
9. Mammoeth – Writing on the Walls (Live in Session)
10. Fleetwood Mac – Everywhere

And as always we have last week’s session below the fold – it was with the Pineapple Chunks, and we have downloadable mp3s, and interview podcast and four live videos for you to check out. (All our videos can be found on our Vimeo page.) Read the rest of this entry »

Hello people, more podcastenfun once again.  Having done the Deathcast recently, I thought it might be nice to do the polar opposite – the Birthcast.  This week’s podcast is all about the birth of Song, by Toad.  I’ll tell you about how I started writing about music, how I discovered blogs, how I discovered that what I was writing was in fact a blog and how I ultimately ended up on WordPress writing what you are now reading.  r casually skimming over, depending on your bent.

It has also ended up being something of a 2004 retrospective, because that’s when this all started, however slowly, and that side of it has been nice.  I had met Mrs. Toad by this point, and I was all excited, and despite the fact that my job was bollocks, living in London was great fun.  I was on a narrowboat at Nine Elms Pier at this point, which was an amazingly brilliant place to live, and I used to cook myself kettle noodles because I couldn’t be arsed firing up the stove.  I’d boil some water, throw it over some noodles and some stock and chuck in lots of fresh veg – bloody delicious.

Toadcast #40 – The Birthcast

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01. Modest Mouse – Bury Me With It (01.39)
02. The Fiery Furnaces – Chris Matthews (07.57)
03. The Innocence Mission – I Have Not Seen This Day Before (Live) (17.54)
04. American Music Club – Only Love Can Set You Free (22.57)
05. Brian Wilson – Cabin Essence (28.40)
06. Andrew Bird – Lull (35.30)
07. Jim White – Static on the Radio (42.52)
08. Tom Waits – Trampled Rose (49.09)
09. The Dears – Lost in the Plot (54.36)
10. Giant Sand – Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle (59.43)

I can see the indie-police descending on me for this one, but here goes anyway: in all honesty, as much as I loved Good News for People Who Love Bad News, I don’t think I really like Modest Mouse very much. After Good News I went and tried to explore their back catalogue a bit and really didn’t get very far. Neither The Moon & Antarctica nor The Lonesome Crowded West did much for me at all and I pretty much gave up.

This latest one is a bit of a return to earlier territory which, for me, means a boom-boom drum rhythm and far too much shouting. One of the joys of Good News was the variety of sound, from the devil’s carnival stomp of Bury Me With it to the wistful dream of Float On, with plenty in between. We Were Dead has far less of that, which makes it all a bit one-paced most of the time. Most of the songs have trademark shouty bits interspersed with trademark melodic bits, with the result that most of the variety in the album is actually within songs rather than between them. The Fiery Furnaces do this a lot as well, and I don’t really like it.

That said, the overall sound is largely decent, if you’re listening for it then Johnny Marr’s contribution on guitars is clearly in evidence, and there are a couple of excellent songs. Dashboard, for example, is so superior to the pre-release leak it acts as a bit of a lesson to those of us with an ill-advised habit of drawing too many conclusion from sketchy pre-release gossip. All in all though, Modest Mouse aren’t my favourite band and this isn’t really my favourite album.

Modest Mouse – Dashboard
Modest Mouse – Missed the Boat

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