This here is an automated, pre-written post as I’m currently away on one of my spy missions to the USof until the 21st January. Not only does my welcome absence afford TWoTH some much needed ‘down time’ from my giddy ninnying, she also has about 2 weeks of having to only worry about the DCHQ cats dropping half-chewed food on the duvet, leaving suspect puddles on the floor & jumping all over her head at 3am because they can’t sleep & want attention.

This week, then, in a further installment of the Drunk Covers series, TWoTH & I am genuinely delighted to present GUILT BY ASSOCIATION VOL. 2, the second album of intriguing & sometimes ingenius cover versions (recorded by a gaggle of well known, & not so known, indie bands & artistes) on the wonderful Engine Room Recordings. Read the rest of this entry »

[Warning: Another long article, but there will be mp3s at the end, I promise. There's a lot more of the interviewee in this one than in my Willard Grant Conspiracy interview, so it's maybe less of an article and more of a proper interview. Please do give me your thoughts though. I have interviews with both The Young Republic and iLiKETRAiNS to write up as well, so the tips and feedback would be appreciated.]

Meeting Shara Worden at the End of the Road Festival was an interesting experience, it really was. Diminutive, with very rock ‘n’ roll hair, she definitely seems to spend a lot of the interview evaluating me, deciding if I’m one of the good guys or not, deciding whether or not she really wanted to talk, or just to give out answers. It seems like a sort of wariness, born of making the leap from New York club circuit to international indie favourite relatively recently. The attention is something she comes across as enjoying in some ways, but rather mistrusting in others.

Indeed this impression is tangentially confirmed by something she says to me towards the end of the interview: “Someone said to me ‘oh you must be so extroverted, you’re a performer’ and I’m actually a very introverted person, and the need to get up and perform, I don’t really understand it. It’s not about me needing attention. I think it’s about me believing very, very, very much in a feeling and in the power of what that can do for me and for other people, and also so that I don’t feel alone. I mean, I’ve been performing since I was a kid, and it’s a weird thing for me to think ‘am I just in need of attention’. And I don’t know that it’s about needing attention or if it’s more about feeling that you have something that someone else has felt.”

I’ve known quite a few very introverted people who have ended up as performers, and sometimes it seems to me almost as if they use the shield of the performance as a way of expressing things they might find too personal to put into words otherwise. Shara strikes me certainly as being someone who would not like to give someone she doesn’t know or trust the kind of personal advantage necessary to hurt her feelings normally, but her frank and emotional music can in some ways do just that. To My Brightest Diamond though, rather than Shara Worden.

Read the rest of this entry »

My what a splendid festival. You’ve read what I had to say about the thing (overview, day one, day two & day three), now here’s the ‘downloadable in one easy to digest chunk’ version, with more tunes.

I had a splendid time at this, I really did. The line-up was spectacularly good and, despite being not much more than a well-executed variant on the standard festival format, I would highly recommend it to those of you sick of the exercise in cattle-herding and aggressively intrusive marketing that the modern festival has become.

Anyhow, I’ve gone through the festival in chronological order, playing songs from artists in the order in which I attended them over the weekend. Hopefully I give you a decent overview of the festival itself as well as a taster of the quality of the lineup, from the indie legends to the connoisseur’s selection of emerging acts that made this such a quality bill. No ranting in this one either, or at least, very little. What a relief for you all.

Toadcast #12 – The End of the Roadcast

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1. Midlake – Young Bride (02.08)
2. Yo La Tengo – By the Time it Gets Dark (07.43)
3. My Brightest Diamond – Dragonfly (14.17)
4. King Creosote – You’ve No Clue Do You (23.19)
5. Monkey Swallows the Universe – Sheffield Shanty (28.29)
6. David Thomas Broughton – Unmarked Grave (34.56)
7. British Sea Power – Remember Me (46.11)
8. Port O’Brien – Five & Dime (51.39)
9. The Young Republic – Excuses to See You (56.14)
10. The Wave Pictures – Long Island (63.28)
11. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Tickle Me Pink (70.44)
12. Paris Motel – My Demeter (77.20)
13. Charlie Parr – Worried Blues (80.53)
14. Howe Gelb – Get to Leave (88.34)
15. Lambchop – Up With People (95.35)

Well Saturday started with a fair bit of confusion. I was supposed to be interviewing Howe Gelb at 11am but that fell through (in a tremendously tedious and long-winded game of telephone tag) and has now been downgraded to an email interview and the promise that I can have another go the next time Howe is in the UK which, given there is a new Giant Sand album relatively close to release, should hopefully not be all that long.

So that one didn’t happen but I did end up, at about one-ish, having a lovely chat with Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond which I shall be writing up over the weekend some time, I hope. I am not sure what these rock star types make of my interview technique, to be honest. Instead of trying to come up with questions I tend to just try and talk to them about music for a bit and see what sort of stuff makes them tick and what kind of people they are and find out how they approach their music. It probably comes across as a bit unstructured, which it is, but lists of questions don’t really interest me at all, so until I get blacklisted this is what they’ll get.

Anyhow, after talking to Shara (please note: first name terms there – ooh yeah!) I pottered about a bit, caught the tail end of Slow Club at the Bimble Inn, and found some salad and a smoothie to help ameliorate my hangover. My tent neighbours led me astray with – not a word of a lie – tequila and pink champagne on Friday night so I was still a little tender by the time the gigs started on Saturday.

Alessi: She is painfully, painfully shy and with a really rather odd voice. She hated the mic and the amp, casting it off and playing unplugged for a song, and throughout the show looked a little like one mean spirited heckle could have reduced her to tears on the spot. That said, I actually thought she was ace: engaging, charming and a talented songwriter. I can’t exactly foresee fame and fortune, but if she’s playing I’d say she is certainly worth going along to see. Gentle, personal acoustic songwriting, and a genuinely lovely lass to boot.
MySpace

Alessi – My Bedroom

My Brightest Diamond: Christ on a bicycle this woman rocks. A wee slip of a lass, knee high to a dragonfly, metes out some serious guitar punishment in-between bouts of alternate vocal gymnastics and vocal loveliness. It’s quite dazzling to see, and she really plays and sings with quite genuine ferocity. If you are even a casual fan, honestly go and see her live if you get the chance. She’s touring the UK with the Young Republic at the moment and I can’t suggest a better way to spend your money.
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My Brightest Diamond – Magic Rabbit

The Young Republic: This was my first chance to see these guys live, and I’ve been excited about them for ages and indeed *clears superior indie-snob throat* writing about them since before they were signed, so I feel I have paid my dues in terms of patient waiting. They had three different shows pencilled in for EotR so they started the set with Tonight I’ll be Staying Here With You by Dylan, which came from a set of Dylan songs they were working on for the following day. It was the Rolling Thunder Revue version as well, not the Nashville Skyline one, which I actually found shed some light on them as a band because they did seem just like the Rolling Thunder Revue at that point. Still, an excellent set, and they came across as very confident and entirely comfortable on stage, which impressed me for a band on their first international tour.
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The Young Republic – That Won’t Change the Sight (Of Your Heart Rolling By)

King Creosote: On the back of his new album of splendid indie pop album Bombshell, the King is touring with a genuine spring in his step. Uncle Beesly on Bass was arsing about with a sheep mask (I have no idea, don’t ask), The Pictish Trail was forever interjecting with smart-arsed banter and Kenny himself was bouncing around like a man having the time of his life. They just look like they’re having so much fun at the moment, it’s brilliant. So boo sucks to Tim and his mates for not liking the new amped-up sound – I think it’s a fucking blast.
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King Creosote – Twin Tub Twin It may sound hushed, but this was an absolute riot live.

Monkey Swallows the Universe: Apart from being mildly threatened by a not very intimidating looking fellow as I tried to squeeze into a packed gig, this was just gorgeous. These guys may be largely unheard of but they had a big, big crowd and when they played Jimmy Down the Well there was a polite acoustic folk uproar. Everyone knew the words, everyone knew the songs. These guys play a rather lovely kind of music – personal storytelling and charming delivery. And in the most pastoral, lovely way imaginable, they kind of seem to rock. Amazing!
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Monkey Swallows the Universe – The Chicken Fat Waltz

Danielson: In their matching uniforms they looked a bit weird and, although I like some of the tracks’ I wasn’t that taken. The performance was good though, so if you’re even slightly a fan, get stuck in and see them live. I keep expecting to like this lot more though.
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Danielson – Ship the Majestic Suffix

David Thomas Broughton: A genuine revelation. One of the few people I saw this weekend that I knew absolutely not one tiny thing about, and he was bloody incredible. He is classic Fence Collective actually, sort of a cross between Art Pedro and The Magic Arm, and spends time setting up his loops and samples at the start of each track before letting it all loose and following the rabbit down the hole. His music is a kind of low-fi folky electronica, quite atmospheric and rather abstract as well. It’s rarely clear where the songs start and finish, and we ended up just clapping in the quiet bits because there had to be some way to show this chap some appreciation – he was completely and utterly mesmerising. I have ordered albums and there will be reviews approaching.
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David Thomas Broughton – Ambiguity

British Sea Power: They were bloody late but they were worth it. I heard a lot of criticism, mostly valid, of this set including accusations of self indulgence and and needless fannying around. Both are undoubtedly accurate. They ended with a completely insane twenty-minute wig-out that left my ears ringing until the following morning. But what they did do, which very few groups do these days, was blow my socks off with a blazing onslaught of indie fucking rock. They played well, and with passion and with rage and bile and spite. And they fucking blew us all to shit. And that was all I could take for the evening – just brilliant.
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British Sea Power – Carrion

Mrs Toad and myself went to Bestival on the Isle of Wight last year and, although we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, I must admit that this year I was after something a little smaller. There’s something rather uninspiring about bald fields covered in a sea of broken plastic cups and a two hour queue for warm beer. Once the truly abysmal Bestival lineup for 2007 was announced – Beastie Boys, Chemical Brothers, Primal Scream? Have I gone back in time by ten years or something? – I decided that was it, I was looking for something smaller and far more friendly. Sod the bands, I just want a nice weekend.

Well I’d exchanged a few emails with Simon from End of the Road Records about The Young Republic, who are superb and recently signed to the label. I knew the label had formed from the End of the Road Festival so I thought it might be a good one to take a chance on. There wasn’t much in the lineup that I recognised, but what the hell – a festival full of smaller, less well known bands would be quite fun. And besides, Howe Gelb was on there, so that did it for me and I bought a couple of tickets.

That was something in the region of a month ago. Since then that lineup has just got better and better, as Simon has dropped one gem after another into the mix. This morning they announced Midlake and Yo La Tengo. I can’t believe it! Suddenly instead of just looking forward to this, I am excited as little boy.

Full line-up thus far (I’ve highlighted the ones I think are interesting and provided a few samples – although I haven’t used the little player this time as the javascript would slow the whole page down too much with this many links, sorry):

Alessi (music)
Archie Bronson Outfit
Architecture In Helsinki - Heart it Races
The Bees
Besnard Lakes – Cedric’s War
Brakes
The Broken Family Band
C. W. Stoneking
Charlie Parr
The Congregation
Dan Sartain
Darren Hayman
David Thomas Broughton
David Vandervelde
Devastations
Euros Childs
Findlay Brown
Fionn Regan
Herman Dune
Howe Gelb – Pontiac Slipstream
Hush the Many
Hyacinth House
Indigo Moss
James Yorkston – Someplace Simple
Jeffrey Lewis
Jim White
Joan As Police Woman
Johnny Flynn – Brown Trout Blues
Josh T Pearson
King Creosote – Missionary
Micah P Hinson – I Still Remember
Midlake – Van Occupanther
Misty’s Big Adventure
Monkey Swallows the Universe
My Brightest Diamond
Paris Motel - Entrez Dans la Salpetriere
Pete and the Pirates
Port O’Brien
Reigns
Richard Swift
Seasick Steve
Slow Club
Sons of Noel and Adrian
Stephanie Dosen – Vinalhaven Harbour
Sunny Day Sets Fire
Super Furry Animals
Telegrams
The Twilight Sad – And She Would Darken the Memory
Viking Moses
Woodpigeon – Home
Yo La Tengo – Tom Courtenay
The Young Republic – Your Heart Belongs in Tennessee

Now all Simon has to do is pull off some miracle of scheduling that allows me to see absolutely all these bands, as well as leaving some space for me to check out some of the new ones. Good luck, mate!