Song, by Toad

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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Hmmm.  I am not a big fan of Christmas, really.  Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy it, because I do, more that there are a million things about the season which fucking irritate the living shit out of me.  A simple example would be the appearance of Christmas decorations in shops in October; that annoys everyone, I know, I am not claiming to be unique here.  High Street Christmas is an ungodly shitfest of an invention, and the less I have to do with it the happier I am, generally.

Then, on the other hand, there’s actual Christmas.  There’s the dark and the cold, both of which I love, funnily enough.  Then there’s the quiet evenings with family and all the food and watching the Back to the Future Trilogy one after another and all that sort of stuff.  Hell, I even kinda like the decorations.  I really like that Christmas.

The thing is, the first, shitty kind of Christmas starts really early so it’s basically the only kind of Christmas there is available for the best part of two months.  Then, at some undefinable point, Proper Christmas quietly takes over and the whole thing becomes very pleasant indeed.  My Mum’s already been in touch to ask what kind of things we’d like her to cook when we get to France on Christmas Eve.  Christmas trees are available everywhere, and for some reason I really like Christmas trees.  So it’s starting: actual good, decent proper Christmas is starting to rear its head, but it’s not there yet.

For some reason I am still waiting to actually feel at all Christmassy.  I suppose the contradiction of despising the high street at this time of year is that if you boycott it entirely, which we have, and if you make no actual Christmas effort yourself, which we haven’t, then you end up just a little short of the cues to trigger that Christmas feeling, which their relentlessly avaricious Yulery tends to do whether you like it or not.

So I think that at some point, probably towards the end of next week when everyone in the office stops even pretending and I start to feel a genuine panic at not having bought my bloody mother anything, I will start to feel that warm, restful, bosom-of-the-family kind of Christmas feeling, but it hasn’t happened yet.  I can see Christmas starting to happen all around me, but for some reason I am still waiting to actually feel like it’s Christmas time.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Right Now I’m A-Roaming

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Lift to Experience – Waiting to Hit

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I know, it’s a shocking thought, isn’t it – the idea of me spouting tedious garbage on the World Wide Superhighways in the faint expectation that anyone might take the time to listen.  Anyhow, recently I have been involved in two such enterprises, both eminently listenable, but for entirely different reasons.

Firstly, I made my debut appearance on Hype Machine Radio this month, talking about Julian Plenti.  Given that Hype Radio is supposed to be at least loosely related to their charts I think the chances of my making regular appearances on this thing are pretty slim, although I’d love the chance to go on and slag off The XX, who are fucking dismal, but I’m not sure that faux-hipster sneering is quite what they intend to be about so that chance probably won’t come my way.

Anyhow, the episode I am on is September 2009, which is currently at the top of this page, here.  My friend Dev who runs Hype Radio and comments here from time to time was drinking whisky the other night and was not impressed with his tipple.  He emailed me this plea for help:

I am currently sipping a single malt from Islay, the maker is Bowmore (clearly a mass producer posing as a small producer) and it kinda sucks.  Wine is really my thing these days (or, you know, beer, or margarita, or gin & tonic, of course, depending on the occasion) but I have been every so slowly endeavo(u)ring to develop my Scotch palette over the years… and this stuff sucks.  You have any favorites?

My personal favourite is Laphroaig, but I am so new to whisky that I’m in no position to offer advice or suggestions at all, so I thought I might throw this one open to the readers.  And Dev is a nice guy, so don’t offering the poor man cleaning products just for fun.  Suggestions in the comments, please.

And secondly, do you all listen to the Contrast Podcast?  Well if you don’t, you should.  Every week for the last 180-plus weeks Tim has put together a podcast assembled from songs and intros emailed in from music people around the world, all centred on an ever-changing theme.

I chipped in two weeks ago on the topic of darts, not because I know any songs about darts, but because I know one which mentions them somewhat tangentially and also contains the stupendous line ‘Is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a twat?’ which is, in its supremely brilliant delivery as much as its rather brutally hilarious content, one of the funniest things I have ever heard in a song anywhere, ever.

Half Man Half Biscuit – Surging Out of Convalescence

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Rye Whisky (I know, I know, he doesn’t want a rye, but I like this song so fuck off.)

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DO NOT WORRY!  This is not a podcast stuffed full of tedious moralising and empty pontificating and generally depressing garbage about a subject far too weighty and philosophical for this sort of half-arsed internet enterprise.  In fact, towards the end it really gets quite chipper.

Basically, there are so many extraordinarily good murder ballads that that particular aspect could so easily have entirely overtaken a podcast ostensibly about prison, crime and criminal justice.

This week, however, I have still managed to marginalise the role of the murder ballad, because the concept of death incorporates so many disparate emotions and aspects that simply doing a whole podcast about murderous folk tales and their musical counterparts seemed unnecessarily narrow.  So you get this.  Which starts out a little heavy but becomes positively gleeful by the end, I promise you.

Toadcast #86 – The Deathcast

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01. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Painter Blue (03.01)
02. Samamidon – O Death (12.33)
03. Eels – Going to Your Funeral (22.31)
04. Melanie Rivaud & Strange Weather – The Fall of Troy (Tom Waits Cover) (25.05)
05. Bob Frank & John Murry – Jesse Washington 1916 (31.53)
06. Bruce Springsteen – Dead Man Walking (37.02)
07. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Up Jumped the Devil (41.15)
08. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Green Fields of France (48.26)
09. Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Tramp the Dirt Down (57.02)
10. Chumbawamba – Passenger List for Doomed Flight 1471 (66.35)

For those of you coming along to help collect for the Lifeboats tomorrow, that you so much.  If you know where we live, then just swing by and we’ll give you a tin to shake for an hour (or more if you like) and then you can stick around for tea and cake (or beer as the hour grows later) or go about your business, as you please.  If you don’t know where to come along to, then just drop me an email and I’ll tell you.  I’m not too keen to just type our address out in the middle of teh internetz, although god knows it’s hardly a secret anyway.  Thanks so much for everyone who has agreed to help, it really is good of you.

Now, on to the more frivolous business of the day: it’s Friday and hence time to get silly.  We had our first real expedition in the mighty Toadmobile yesterday, driving through to Glasgow for the Hinterland Festival.  Honest to goodness, that van fucking rocks.  I stopped to ask a copper where the best place to park it was and he – yes, a policeman – said “This is Glasgow, mate, nowhere’s secure.”  Then we embarked on a ten minute conversation about how cool the van was, then he recommended I do a massive great illegal u-turn in the middle of the road.  Glasgow cops: tremendous value!

In honour of the Lifeboat collection effort tomorrow, I thought the five this week should have a vaguely nautical theme, so here we go.  It has become a most sociable post in the last couple of weeks, with all sorts of reckless de-lurking and far more people than the usual suspects taking part, which I think all of us appreciate, so go on, go for it.  Step out of the sordid intershadows and reveal yourselves.  Actually, that sounds more than a little wrong.  Just chip in, that’s all.  Then talk pish to your heart’s content.

1. Best name for a kind of boat.
2. What’s the most camp, being in the navy or riding a motorcycle?
3. When was the last time you actually went swimming in the sea?
4. Coolest boat-based movie.
5. Ever been on a boat journey where you feared for your life?

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Ship Song (Live)

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The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Dover Lights

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The Pogues – South Australia

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Van Dyke Parks – Greenland Whale Fisheries

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The 6ths – The Sailor in Love With the Sea

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No, we’re not doing that this week actually, although Five Ways to Leave Your Lover would be a fine Friday Five at some point in the future.  Nothing too insulting, nothing too pedestrian, and points given for believability combined with strangeness.  Nice idea actually but, well, maybe later.

This week’s five were suggested by the excellent Mr. Team Turnip on the Pains of Being Pure at Heart review, I think.  It was all about bands who develop their songwriting and those who simply consolidate once they have found a style with which they and their fans are comfortable.

This is a nice one actually, because it exposes our prejudices.  The sum total of all music criticism pretty much boils down to ‘I like this… and I don’t like that.’  It’s an instinctive decision and as much as we can try and rationalise it afterwards, no amount of good argument can make you like or dislike anything much more than you do instinctively.  I suppose being pointed out that something was ripped off from somewhere or that such and such is a dickhead or so on can make you cool on something, but basically I think we’re mostly left with just a gut reaction, as far as music is concerned.

So for all we praise bands for developing, complain that they are derivative or criticise them for standing still, there are always plenty of groups we love who make total hypocrites of us for doing so. So chip in with yours, please, and take this opportunity not to worry about the fact that 90% of the comments on this site come from the same ten or fifteen people.  Ignore them, they’re harmless, and I’d be delighted to be introduced to a new lurker, should you fancy it.  Take the plunge, the water’s lovely.

1. Band who just knock out the same old shit time after time, but you love them anyway.
2. Band who have impressed you by continuing to develop, despite having a lot to lose.
3. Band who have become better and better with time.
4. Band who are a total rip-off, but you don’t fucking care, thank you very much.
5. Band you love who make you feel like a total hypocrite.

Eels – Sweet Li’l Thing

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The Strokes – Vision of Division

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – We Call Upon the Author

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The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle

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Babyshambles – Delivery

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Live recordings – in fact, specifically, live albums – came up in a recent post on Song, by Toad and the idea of doing a podcast composed entirely of live recordings really appealed to me because there are so many great ones.

That said, on the post in question there arose a debate, one voice expressing my deepest hatreds of the genre, and another being perhaps over-generous in the other direction.  Frankly, I despise the vast majority of live albums.  Mostly they are shit recordings of songs we already know, released for the sole reason of fleecing fans whose devotion has already been established, and whose wallets can clearly be plundered for a few more empty sheckles.

Despite that, of course, there are some truly stunning live recordings.  In fact, I’d argue that some of the most memorable, legendary recordings of all  time are in fact live ones.  Bob Dylan live at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1966.  Bruce Springsteen pretty much any time in the seventies.  Basically, for all live recordings are mostly rip-off bollocks, there are some truly phenomenal live albums, ones which open your eyes to the artist, ones which fill in that artist’s musical upbringing, and some which are just genuinely amazingly wonderful recordings in their own right.  Therefore we bring to you the Livecast.  Enjoy, Toadlings…

Toadcast #57 – Production Values

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01. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – 10th Avenue Freeze Out (04.09)
02. Andrew Bird – Why (11.47)
03. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Papa Won’t Leave You Henry (16.22)
04. The Moulettes – Country Joy Song (25.29)
05. Colin Meloy – Blues Run the Game (32.49)
06. Quasar Wut-Wut – The Partisan (35.45)
07. Jeff Mangum – Two Headed Boy (43.04)
08. Tom Waits – Diamonds on My Windshield (54.37)
09. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (56.46)
10. Ben Folds Five – Satan is My Master (60.15)
11. Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone (64.16)

We both hate Valentine’s day and have no desire to take part in its consumerist pantomime.  It seems to have created its own little rituals in our house though: we have an annual Valentine’s hate-fest, which lasts a couple of days, where we pour scorn on both the event itself and anyone who takes part in it.  The problem is, in doing so, we have sort of made ourselves part of what gets on our own nerves.  Fucking people and their fucking stupid valentine’s traditions like, er… this one.

This is only the second in what will probably become an annual Valentine’s Scorn-o-rama, but it already feels like a time-honoured tradition.  So if you’re single, generally antagonistic, miserable, lonely or just plain indifferent then this is the podcast for you.  We even have an odd conversation where we wonder what the point of marriage is – a slightly bizarre thing for a married couple to start wondering about.  But that’s the Toadcasts for you.

Toadcast #56 – Valentine’s Schmalentine’s

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01. Nirvana – Rape Me (00.57)
02. Weeping Willows – Failing in Love (06.39
03. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – When I Change Your Mind (13.36)
04. The White Stripes – Conquest (16.04)
05. Tammy Wynette – D.I.V.O.R.C.E. (22.38)
06. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – She’s Leaving You (25.32)
07. Yo La Tengo – Stockholm Syndrome (35.26)
08. Aidan Moffat & the Best Ofs – Oh Men! (42.33)
09. The Avett Brothers – The Ballad of Love & Hate (45.36)
10. Arab Strap – There is No Ending (59.09)