Song, by Toad

I hate to use the word, but ‘nice’ is the one that springs to mind when listening to this album.  It’s basic template Americana-style indie-pop with plenty of happy horns and swirling organ to lift it above the waves, and there is an all-pervading loveliness about it that makes it a pleasure to listen to.

What this won’t do is knock your socks off, shock you, surprise you or persuade you to see the world in a different way or any of those things that the more discerning music critic, and indeed listener, can tend to demand from their records.  What it will do is bring Sunday afternoon sunshine into your drab Autumn afternoons.

It’s all instruments and melody, this record.  Pianos, horns and Lawr’s sensible, nice lad vocals deliver what is a slightly soulful, more roll than rock record that splashes the staples of West Coast Americana generously across their landscape.  I can’t say it doesn’t tail off a bit towards the end – the last few songs lack a little something for me – but the first three quarters of this are really nice.  Cutely, the lyrics subvert the sunny sounds with a somewhat darker tinge which brings welcome depth to this record.

No comparisons spring to mind for some reason despite, or perhaps because, it sounds so like almost everything.  Bright Eyes, if he were more mellifluous, is a possibility.  Brendon Benson, but a little less sunny and a little more traditionally-American sounding perhaps?  I don’t know, but it’s lovely stuff whatever way you look at it.

Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs -  Righteous Heart
Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs -  Make Yourself

website | hype | buy the album (this is a shitty link, but browse around and DON’T buy the $25 one!)

There’s no real theme to this week’s podcast, but there’s plenty of splendid new music. Basically I felt so guilty about the crazy rant that the Pink Podcast descended into that I have tried to say as little as possible in this one.

I’m off to the End of the Road Festival this weekend, which is why I recorded an advance post, so you’ll be enjoying this while I’m away getting rained on. The lineup is just phenomenal actually, so it should be really quite a splendid weekend. Tim from the Daily Growl will be there, as will Jamie from the Runout Groove and I believe possibly Sweeping the Nation as well, so it may turn into quite a blog-in. Tragically, however, I will be without my Midget Companion. Mrs. Toad is away in Australia (jammy bitch) with work and doesn’t get back in time to come along, so I will be taking a book and enjoying the pleasure of my own company as best I can.

There was at least one inevitable balls-up though – when describing the Catherine Howe song I said ‘I can’t believe this is current – it sounds so old-fashioned!’ and I have since discovered that in fact it is a 2007 re-release of a 1971 record which may just explain that. In the process I also discovered that I am something of a fucking idiot.

So, End of the Road, and in the meantime, enjoy the podcast – Toad on his very best behaviour!

Toadcast #11 – Not Sure What This One’s About[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo11.mp3]

01. A.A. Bondy – Vice Rag (00.52)
02. White Rabbits – The Plot (03.39)
03. The Courteeners – Cavorting (08.19)
04. Alaska in Winter – Close Your Eyes/We Are Blind (11.46)
05. Beirut – Fork & Knife (La Fete) (18.32)
06. Band of Horses – Is There a Ghost (21.57)
07. Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs – We Go Down (26.52)
08. David Dondero – Rothko Chapel (30.34)
09. Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game (38.15)
10. Calexico – All the Pretty Horses (41.45)
11. Catherine Howe – In the Hot Summer (48.53)
12. Little Name – How to Swim & Live (53.31)
13. Emma Pollock – Adrenaline (56.36)
14. George Pringle – Fellini For Prime Minister (63.52)
15. Octoberman – By the Wayside (67.27)
16. The 1900s – When I Say Go (74.54)
17. (The Real) Tuesday Weld – Kix (79.44)

About two or three months ago Facebook exploded, almost literally. This is neither good nor bad in and of itself – Facebook is decent software. I am a bit sick of friend requests from people I barely knew in high school, but ultimately it’s not bad stuff, especially for keeping track of the increasingly disparate group of friends we all seem to have in these mobile and virtual days.

Annoyingly though, Facebook has utterly killed MySpace. I used to get four or five friend requests from new bands per day, now I get as many in a week. A friend of mine from work recently deleted her account altogether. Basically, we really only need one of these social networky things in our lives, if that, so given we are all Facebooked up to our eyeballs these days is it any wonder no-one can be arsed with MySpace? Of course it isn’t. MySpace was enormously popular for a bit, but this was despite itself in many ways. It is a very limited, horribly clunky and spectacularly ugly website. It is truly a horrible user experience – where Facebook is nice and tidy by comparison.

That said, I miss MySpace. Why? Well for the music. I didn’t use MySpace to keep track of friends or write posts about hating my teacher or what a smelly bitch Julie from Class 3C is. I signed up to be friends with every band I liked and used it to keep track of their announcements in one handy place. I used it to browse and preview new music, and discovered loads of new groups this way; for now, Facebook does none of this. I really, really miss this functionality and I wish someone would find a way to keep this alive.

Well, either Facebook, or whatever one of these fucking stupid things we’ll all be using at this time next year. These sites are useful, they really are, but they are only useful if they either have a strictly defined purpose like Last FM or if absolutely everyone is signed up to it like, it appears, Facebook. In other words, far from competition being a good thing, this is where a monopoly is to everyone’s benefit. I am going to be really pissed off in the almost depressingly inevitable circumstance that in six months’ time something else is going to be newer and cooler and quirkier and we are all going to make like rats and leap as one for some new ship – well, for at least as long as it takes that one to start listing dangerously, anyway.

These things are handy, but if they don’t either settle down or start talking to each other they are going to get right on my bloody tits. And how am I going to keep track of all my favourite bands now, you bastards?

Thank MySpace for Nathan Lawr – more from him in the coming weeks hopefully:
Nathan Lawr & the Mintoaurs – Make Yourself
Nathan Lawr & the Mintoaurs – Righteous Heart
Nathan Lawr & the Mintoaurs – We Go Down