Jesus ear-fucking Christ this fucking hurts to listen to.

The Willow Garden is a song I first came across as a b-side to Where the Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.  I didn’t know it was a traditional song at that point, but I didn’t care where it came from.  I didn’t even know who Warren Ellis was, but the fiddle playing on the song was some of the best I had (and still have) ever heard.

It’s amazing – managing to sound mournful, morbid and creepy all together.  Like a lot of Warren Ellis’ stuff it is really quite horrible and utterly beautiful at the same time

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Willow Garden

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Anyhow, at some point I twigged that it was actually a traditional tune, probably when I was browsing through eMusic’s amazing collection of stuff from Smithsonian Folkways.  This kind of horribly macabre tune suits that style perfectly.  Nothing quite seems to deliver the gleeful brutality of old folk and fairy tales quite like the screech of those pre-war folk voices, and the harsh, sawed violin which tends to accompany them. It fits well with Ellis’s approach to the violin as well actually, and to The Bad Seeds’ approach to folk songs and murder ballads: they revel in the discord, the casual malice, the horror, the almost cartoonish evil of it all.

Hobart Smith & Texas Gladden – Down in the Willow Garden

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One thing a lot of this old music doesn’t fit too well with, however, is soft pop.  Sam Amidon, for example, is hardly hard on the ears, but his voice has character, and where Cave and the like bring cheerful brutality, Amidon brings a lovely sense of empathetic sadness.  The intensity of the emotion is still there of course, and it is always a rather grim emotion to embrace.

I have heard these songs sung with a degree of beauty however, and sometimes it works.  Kind of.  Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes snuck a couple of covers onto MySpace a few years back under the name White Antelope.  They were simple recordings, and although they were pretty unembellished I really quite liked them.  I find his songwriting rather boring, I have to say, but he has a lovely voice and I really enjoyed hearing his versions of songs like Silver Dagger, Wild Mountain Thyme and things like that.

White Antelope – Wild Mountain Thyme

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And then this fucking happened.  Jesus donkey-fucking Christ, what an awful, awful thing to have heard.  I should have known better, frankly.  It was fucking stupid of me to click on the link anyway, to be honest, but like a Presbyterian surfing child porn on the internet all day, I knew just what I was going to get and a large part of me was just dying feel the outrage.

Bon Iver’s first album For Emma, Forever Ago wasn’t too bad.  It had a couple of nice tunes, and the minimal arrangements suited his vocal delivery, making it seem ghostly rather than just weak.  The new album was a fucking awful soft-pop horrorshow though.  The lush, utterly objectionable arrangements were abysmal enough in themselves, but they made his voice turn from lip-wobbling emotion to a sort of pathetic, needy bleat.  And now he’s taken to giving The Willow Garden the mother of all public shamings with this dreadful, wan, weak, lifeless version.

Is it fair to call the Chieftans the Elton fucking John of folk music, given the sheer number of people they’ve collaborated with?  I know that collaboration and cover versions are a central part of the folk tradition, but honest to God I wish there was some way I could unhear this fucking song.  And to make matters worse, I keep playing it again and again, just to remind myself that I am not exaggerating the scale of the horror.  And if you’ve got the Bad Seeds’ version, and that gorgeous old version by Hobart Smith and Texas Gladden in your head already, it sounds even more utterly abominable by comparison.  Sing with some fucking spirit man.  Sing as if something, anything, depended on it for the love of fucking God!

Justin fucking Vernon & the Chieftans – The Willow Garden

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Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr
Audio: download links below

This Toad Session is something a little different, in that instead of setting up a studio environment in the house, we actually just recorded the songs at a house gig.  The gig was in fact also the band’s first live appearance in four or five years.  So the whole atmosphere of the session is massively different to the usual ones we record. The interview took place all at once before the gig, rather than in and around the songs like it usually does, and for the podcast I have just spliced bits of it into the podcast as and when it seemed suitable.

We also webcast this live, which was kind of fun.  I am not sure how brilliant the image and sound were for everyone, but it was an extremely fun thing to do and something we’ll be looking to do more of in the new year I hope.

It was a little tricky to ask people to take pictures in the middle of a performance, so we have a few photos by Anneli and Fiona but not very many.  As per usual we have videos of four songs, over and above the main video above, all of which are also available on Vimeo and YouTube.  Martin actually read some of his poetry before the gig started, so there’s a little of that in the main video as well.  The session tracks are all downloadable for free below, as is the main interview podcast, with the full tracklist for that at the bottom of the page.  A large thank you to Fiona Buckle and Anneli Kuukka for their pictures, to Neil Pennycook for recording and mixing the songs and to Ben Clarke for helping with the filming.

Direct download: Toadcast #152 – The Savings and Loan Toad Session

The Savings and Loan – These Hands/Catholic Boys in the Rain (Toad Session)

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The Savings and Loan – Met (a Storm) (Toad Session)

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The Savings and Loan – The Ropes (Toad Session)

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The Savings and Loan – Her Window (Toad Session)

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01. The Savings and Loan – These Hands/Catholic Boys in the Rain (Toad Session) (02.07)
02. Evan Crichton – Holiday Time (12.27)
03. Palace Brothers – Stable Will (17.16)
04. The Savings and Loan – Met (a Storm) (Toad Session) (27.24)
05. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Ragged Garden of Your Eye (32.46)
06. Otis Redding – That’s How Strong My Love Is (37.34)
07. The Corries – Loch Tay Boat Song (40.04)
08. The Savings and Loan – The Ropes (Toad Session) (50.11)
09. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Darker With the Day (53.23)
10. Codeine – Broken Hearted Wine (60.22)
11. The Savings and Loan – Her Window (Toad Session) (69.52)

Whee, back on the radio.  And for some reason tonight’s playlist is going to consist of lots of pretty well-established artists.  There is no reason for this at all, it just worked out that way when I was selecting the playlist.

Nevertheless, I find myself focussing so much on new music that the old stuff kinda gets neglected these days.  I have actually stopped listening to my digital music collection for pleasure, and now only listen to vinyl when I am actually listening for the pure enjoyment of it.  This isn’t an ideological stance against digital music, more a logistical one.  The drive with all my music on is now upstairs, and I haven’t been arsed to set up a link to the stereo yet.

Live from 8pm (UK time) – listen here.

As per usual I will update the playlist live below as I go along, so feel free to chip in with any suggestions and comments and assorted smart-arsed remarks you might have.

1. Sleepy Horses – Lubbock Love Song
2. Paul Simon – Graceland
3. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Optimist vs the Silent Alarm
4. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Graceland
5. Paul Simon – Adios Hermanos
6. The Scottish Enlightenment – Necromancer
7. Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy for the Good Times
8. Droney Mitchell – An Empty House (Droney may actually be Rob St. John.  Just perhaps.)
9. The Savings and Loan – Pale Water
10. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow
11. White Antelope – Silver Dagger
12. Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway
13. The Maladies of Bellfontaine – Black Biro

I am almost shocked to find myself writing that I really don’t like this album very much.  It is growing on me, but only because I’ve listened to it about twenty times, assuming that it is impossible for me to be just this plain indifferent to a Grinderman album.  I fucking adored the first one, and it never occurred to me, I suppose, that it would be any different with this.

I remember describing a relatively recent Rolling Stones album as being a bit like ‘The Stones covering The Stones’, and there’s an element of that in this as well.  It’s almost as if the concept of Grinderman has been too influential in the genesis of this record, rather than just allowing the ingredients to be given a bloody good shake and accepting whatever comes out.  Put those four guys together and whatever you get should be brilliant, whether it’s ‘Grinderman’ in the strictest sense, or, well, pretty much anything. Whereas this feels like they got together specifically in order to make a Grinderman album instead.

So why doesn’t it work.  Well, this is a music blog, so the perpetual answer to this is pretty simple: I just don’t enjoy the songs, for some reason.  A lot of them, particularly the first couple, sound like little more than re-treads of songs from the first album.  As per usual, there is some great air guitar to be played and some brilliant lyrics, but little that… well, grabs me by the fucking nuts, to be honest.

That may sound facile or glib, but that was the incredible thing about the first Grinderman record: it absolutely, instantaneously, grabbed you hard by the balls and just kept on twisting for an hour or so.  It cleaned an awful lot of cobwebs out of my ears too, and was just plain thrilling to listen to.  This one isn’t bad, but that’s about as much praise as I can manage for it.  It is growing on me all the time, but generally only in bits here and there, and not at the kind of pace where I ever really anticipate much love for the whole album really blossoming.

Grinderman – Heathen Child

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Grinderman – Evil

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

Instead of prattling on about whether or not early Bonnie Raitt was heavily influenced by the Arcade Fire, this week we shall be doing something extremely constructive with our time.  Thomas Western, shortly to be unveiled as half of Edinburgh’s answer to the Silver Columns (I’ve not heard it yet, but all I have to say is woo hoo!), is actually a highly studious gentleman (see pic) in his spare time and has asked if I wouldn’t mind posting five questions to help him with his research.  Quite what he thinks the nonsensical bollocks we talk here on a Friday is going to do for his academic ambitions I don’t know, but I thought we might as well humour him.

He’s actually studying something to with the sociological aspects of live music, which anyone who has ever seen the queue outside a Hadouken gig (yes okay, it was some time ago, but it was still hilarious) will know is a rather interesting topic. I’ve always been kind of fascinated by the social dynamics of gig-going, from the tribal self-identification to the impact of the crowd mood on the show itself, so I’m looking forward to finding out a bit more about this.

Until then, however, here are five questions for you from Thomas.  And once you’ve de-lurked to help push forward the boundaries of academia, feel free to talk utter shite with the rest of us all afternoon.

1. What is the best thing you’ve ever seen live? Including where and when this took place.
2. Why was it so good? Try and keep this answer as open as possible – it can cover factors such as the music being played, the performance, some kind of cultural significance, or just people having an ace time together.
3. Is familiarity with material a prerequisite for a great gig? Or has anyone been to a gig to see the headline act, only to be blown away by an unknown support band?
4. How important is a venue when we go to gigs? Do they have their own aura that can contribute to our enjoyment of a performance?
5. And do people go to gigs because folks like me tell them to? This is about the idea of blogs and online critics as cultural tastemakers – Pitchfork being the most obvious example. In other words, when you read a positive preview of something in my Monday listings, are you more likely to attend, and perhaps more likely to enjoy the gig as a conequence?

Now, some great live recordings, including a song from Nick Cave’s Live Seeds, possibly the greatest live album of all time.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – John Finn’s Wife (Live)

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Eels – I Put a Spell On You (Live)

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Radiohead – No Surprises (Live Acoustic)

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Frightened Rabbit – Poke (Live)

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Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band – Thunder Road (Live)

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This is a not entirely accurately-titled podcast, in that the whoring only takes place over a couple of songs at the tail end and does not at all influence any of the rest of the playlist.

What am I talking about, you ask?  Well when I played a few trendy songs a few months back the listership of the podcast doubled over the course of a few weeks.  I noticed this back when I was a bit more rigorous about the blog in the early days: if I reviewed high-profile new releases in the week of release it generated a large spike in readership.

So I’ve dropped a couple of very hype-friendly songs into the end of this podcast to see if that actually has any influence on anything at all.  I found nice ones – ones I actually like, I mean – so don’t worry, your normally glittering listening experience will not be tarnished one bit.  But bear in mind that this week we are all the guineau pigs in a silly internet hit-whoring experiment.  Sorry.

Toadcast #125 – The Whorecast

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01. Burnt Ones – Sunset Hill (03.46)
02. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat (09.34)
03. Girls Names – You Should Know by Now (18.32)
04. Pagan Wanderer Lu – Banish Negative Thoughts (20.26)
05. The Cure – Pictures of You (28.01)
06. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (35.37)
07. Taken by Trees – Watch the Waves (42.12)
08. Wild Nothing – Summer Holiday (49.21)
09. The Beets – What Did I Do (53.20)
10. Silver Columns – Warm Welcome (56.17)
11. Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs (62.41)

I had a teeny-tiny but nevertheless intriguing brush with the law last night.  I have had slight entanglements (no, not that sort) with police officers and prison cells before but that’s another story for another Friday.  “Had a fight with the wife did we sir?”

Anyway, last night a couple of coppers came to the door asking about the previous owner of the house ‘in relation to a police investigation’.  I was even asked to show some ID to show that I was not him, and suggested that our very recently ex-next-door-neighbour might be able to help them a little better.

We still get post for the fellow actually, and Mrs. Toad rather impudently opened something once, a while ago and it happened to be a bank statement from one of the most exclusive banks in Edinburgh showing a fairly considerable debt.  Consequently my bet for the nature of this little ‘police investigation’ is fraud, but I have really got no idea.  Funny, though.

This actually reminds me of the time my little brother was getting married (a year before his actual wedding, but don’t tell our parents) and getting his US visa sorted out it turned out that there was more than one Benjamin Young on the books at the Department of Hating Brown People or whatever it is the US calls their immigration service.

So, for several months my little brother had to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove to the US government that he was just Plain Old Sound Engineer Ben Young, rather than the much more elusive and interesting-sounding International Criminal Mastermind Ben Young.  This wasn’t helped by the fact that we have dual nationality, two passports each and a rather nomadic background, but apparently he managed it eventually. Either that or they figured that with all the lies they were telling about Iraq at the time, a career criminal might have excellent job prospects within the administration.

So, before you get dragged off to chokey, take the opportunity to delurk and say hello and chip in with your Friday Five.  This thread is intended entirely for wasting time on a Friday when most people are basically trying to skive off work in anticipation of a heavy weekend.  So feel free to take advantage, fill in your five, and then talk pish to your heart’s content.

1. Favourite fictional policeman.
2. Favourite fictional criminal.
3. Do you prefer the orange jumpsuit, or mime costume as a prison uniform?  Or a different one altogether.
4. If you scored control of the prison gramophone (as in Shawshank) what would you play?
5. Name a sentence which would be more suitable for a particular crime than prison.

The Clash – Know Your Rights

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Fog – Check Fraud

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – There’s No Night Out in the Jail

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The Veils – State Trooper (Bruce Springsteen Cover)

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The Radiators – Prison Bars

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eagleowl Toad Session from Song, by Toad on Vimeo.

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod
Audio: below

A large part of me thinks there should be an Eagleowl Interviewers’ Support Group.  They are some of the loveliest people you will ever meet, but getting them to talk is like trying to learn Kung-Fu in an afternoon.   I’ve been down the pub with these guys, so I know it’s not like they don’t have anything to say for themselves, it’s just that teasing it out of them with cameras and microphones present requires a black belt in interviewing people which I quite simply do not have yet.  Next time I will be prepared.  Possibly no more successful, but prepared nevertheless.

The music has come out beautifully, recorded by Neil Pennycook and Gavin Tarling, and mixed by Neil – eventually.  Dylan took the pictures, and I have a Song, by Toad set on our Flickr page, but Dylan’s full set can be found on his own site at Blueback Hotrod.  I’ve made videos of the songs themselves and there is of course the main video at the top of the page which gives a not-entirely honest and rather heavily edited impression of what the whole day was like.

The playlist for the interview podcast is at the bottom of the page and as per usual all the Toad Session recordings are available for free for you to download and generally do as you please with.  Hope you like it.

Toadcast #112 – eagleowl Toad Session

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eagleowl -Into the Fold (Toad Session)

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eagleowl -Blanket (Toad Session)

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eagleowl – Laughter (Toad Session)

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eagleowl – Sleep the Winter (Toad Session)

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Toadcast Playlist:

01. eagleowl – Into the Fold (Toad Session) (07.03)
02. Rob St. John – December & Whiskey (Live) (16.26)
03. Silver Jews – How to Rent a Room (19.31)
04. eagleowl – Blanket (Toad Session) (30.25)
05. Spokane – Proud Graduates (36.12)
06. eagleowl – Laughter (Toad Session) (49.21)
07. Adrian Crowley – Bless our Tiny Hearts (54.54)
08. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Willow Garden (57.34)
09. eagleowl – Sleep the Winter (Toad Session) (66.42)

Today rocks.  It’s freezing cold, even Edinburgh has a little snow, and the Water of Leith has completely frozen over outside our office.  Basically, this is a proper Winter and, as you might have guessed from my last post, I am loving it.

My hair froze on the way into work this morning, which is something I haven’t experienced since I was about seventeen.  I went skiing for a day with my Dad this Christmas which, rather sadly, is something we haven’t done for nearly ten years.  Christ it was perilous on the first few runs down!

So yes, basically I am loving it, it’s like regressing to childhood again, at least as nostalgic as the Elton John song I put in your Friday selection.  Yes.  Yes I did.  Elton John.  Suck it up, bitches (as he presumably must have said to Wham at one stage).

This weekend I will be sorting out video and audio from the New Year’s House Gig, making a start on the eagleowl Toad Session, getting a couple of our new releases sorted out and generally being an efficient little weasel.  I think I work harder in my free time at the moment than I do at my actual job – I’m certainly far more organised, there’s no doubt about that.

I was mocked yesterday for constantly carrying about a a big (and very pretty and colourful) chart of the Song, by Toad Records release schedule for the year.  Fair point and all, but between the timeline and the actual cost figures I have in there, it’s a pretty important chart to have. Yay admin!  Whoever thought it could be so sexy.

1. Name one plan/resolution/Very Important Decision you have made for the new year.
2. Have you done any Extremely Fun Snow Stuff yet?  And if not, WHY NOT?
3. Favourite snowy bit in a film (NOT Hoth-related because that’s too easy).
4. Coldest you’ve ever experienced.
5. Favourite warming up beverage for freezing cold days.

Trips and Falls – It’s the Snowpocalypse

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow

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Elton John – Cold as Christmas

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iLiKETRAiNS – Terra Nova

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Tacks, the Boy Disaste – Frozen Feet

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I am stumbling towards the Christmas break like a punch drunk boxer dreaming of the bell.  I made up my to-do list for the rest of the year and it’s pretty fucking terrifying.  Still, time spent in France with my Mum fussing like a bloody mother hen and being determined for Christmas to be just so and me ruining it by being rude and too busy to be festive.

There tend to be some musical disagreements in our house around Christmas time.  Mum likes her festive shit, even if it is bordering on being a parody of itself at times.  I like what I consider to be relaxing music – that downbeat, morose stuff which is both warm and comforting.  Stuff like The Willard Grant Conspiracy, Micah P. Hinson, Leonard Cohen, that kind of stuff – The Boatman’s Call by Nick Cave is a favourite, for example.  Not for Mum, though, it seems.

So we both have pretty definite ideas of what kind of music should be played around Christmas time, but it just happens to be in total opposition to the other’s.  The difference being, of course, that I am right and she is not.

Last week we had the top five songs vote, probably just shaded by something by Withered Hand, but I’ll do all the proper counting before the new year and make some grandiose declaration of electoral triumph.  Which leaves this week for us to vote for our favourite album of 2009.  So that’s all the Friday Fives are this week – just list your favourite five albums released this year.  And for anyone wondering, voting for The Low Anthem is just fine, if that’s one of your favourites primarily because I can’t be arsed splitting hairs about self-releases, re-releases and all that other shit.  So please de-lurk and say hello and have a vote – these things are always more fun when more people join in.

Meursault – Salt Pt.2 2008

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Grinderman – No Pussy Blues 2007

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The Veils – Not Yet 2006

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The Decemberists – We Both Go Down Together 2005

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Cannibal’s Hymn 2004

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