I’d be a lot more inclined to be patriotically English if all our national traditions weren’t as fucking lame as prancing about the Maypole and nonsense like that.

Actually, that’s a lie.  I’m not English enough to be patriotically English, and patriotism gives me the fucking creeps anyway, in all its guises. Not that this has anything to do with the unavoidable fact that the Maypole is still just a little bit silly, of course.

We aren’t really getting the Spring weather up here in Scotland, although it’s been threatening it here and there.  Still, it would be nice to be able to get out into the garden again without a coat on.

Wednesday 2nd May: Cashier No.9 & Homework at the Electric Circus.

Cashier No.9 have been much discussed over the last year or so.  I declined to review their album because to be honest I thought it was no more than pretty good – the kind of thing the popular press described as being rough and ready and bristling with energy when it was nothing of the sort.  Nevertheless, as a smooth, rather more polished incarnation of that description they do have some pretty decent stuff so this should be worth popping along to if you have no other plans this week.

Friday 4th May: Ute Lemper at the Queen’s Hall.

This is a bit of a strange one for me to be listing, you might justifiably think, given that we are talking about a cabaret singer here who, while she has a great voice, is bordering on caricature.  Nevertheless, she released an album a few years back with songs by the likes of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neil Hannon and Elvis Costello, so she’s an interesting artist and this might make a nice change of pace from the usual stuff I recommend.

Ute Lemper – Little Water Song (written by Nick Cave)

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Saturday 5th May: The Machine Room, Thank You So Nice & Reverieme play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

This is a solid lineup of three really quite new Scottish bands.  I have to confess to not knowing all that much about any of them, honestly, although if pushed I think I would say that The Machine Room probably have the most promise – to my ears anyway, for whatever that’s worth.

Umm.. nada, absolutely nada this week.  Not one single gig I would be likely to go to myself, which is a bit unusual.  Still, I am going to Glastonbury for the first time, so this not entirely a bad thing from my perspective.  As a good friend of mine pointed out: ‘Giving up your job and then off to Glastonbury – it’s like the end of your adulthood’.  And he’s not far wrong.

Oh yes, giving up my job, did I mention that?  Well yes, as of Wednesday I will be a full-time Toad.  Or ToadPRO as someone called it, not that it will entail being much more professional I wouldn’t have thought.  Still, I am hugely fucking excited, not to be giving up my job actually, which I have always enjoyed, but the idea of being able to tackle all this Toad bollocks head on and really do it properly is a really exciting prospect as far as I am concerned.  More on this later, though.

Last week I strayed wildly outside the list format for my Monday listings, which caused howls of upset from the cheap seats, and this week will be no different.  There are a couple of interesting things happening, notably a Great Junction Street Music Studios showcase at Henry’s Cellar Bar on Saturday 26th.  I know nothing at all about the bands involved, but I really think this kind of event is a good idea.  If you are looking to get your band off the ground and start finding an audience, club together with your mates, put on a gig, invite all your friends and give it a go.

Alternatively, there’s the Penguins Kill Polar Bears EP launch tour passing through Scotland this week.  I may not like the music myself, but these guys are doing a really good job of  getting themselves noticed on an entirely DIY basis, and the more of that that happens around here the better.  I always admire people who just get on with it, rather than whining about what other people should be doing for them, and this band certainly deserve your support.

Can you call a list comprising one single item a list at all?  And it’s not really a gig either.  Ah well, to soothe the agitation of those I upset last week, here is my list for this week:

Thursday 24th June 2010: Nick Cave speaks at Canongate Books‘ Irregular night at the Roxy Art House.

To say that Nick Cave is one of my heroes would be something of an understatement, and I am grinding my teeth down to fucking stumps with frustration at the fact that I will be in out of town on Thursday night when he comes to do a reading down at the Roxy.  Arse monkeys.

And to make up for the lack of giggage, I have a special present for you all, courtesy of Jon from Virgin of the Birds.  He played the Toad New Year’s House Gig this year, and seems to have developed a bit of a taste for Meursault, to the extent that he is one of the first people in weeks to actually bother to spell the band’s name correctly.  Anyhow, Jon sent through this rather lovely cover of Crank Resolutions last night, and it’s great, so I thought I would share it.

Virgin of the Birds – Crank Resolutions (Meursault Cover)

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I think Nick Cave finishes a whisker below Tom Waits in my personal pantheon of musical heroes. I think. It’s bloody close.

If I were to really have to come down on one side of that argument or another I think it might end up being on the basis that I think Cave has taken marginally more missteps over the course of his career, but then that’s hardly a cut-and-dried assertion. I don’t know.

One difference is that for all the prospect of a chat and a cuppa with Tom Waits would terrify me, I would really rather avoid the same with Mr. Cave. For all that for the most part I worship his artistic output, personally he seems like a right tosser; pretentious, vain, and quite incredibly full of himself. I’m not saying that this is how he is as a person exactly, but it is very much how he comes across to me, and I can’t imagine much good would come of meeting the man – a few too many images to be destroyed that I would prefer to keep intact thank you.

Of course, without that impossibly grandiose attitude his music would never be so good and his live show would be a shadow of its strutting, messianic self, so in wishing it away you’d be stripping the emperor of his clothes. As it is, you just have to accept it as a fundamental part of the pantomime, sit back and enjoy. And if you can do that, then the Bad Seeds’ live show is just scorching. Warren Ellis leaps about at the front like a demented hobo, torturing his violin in a manner that would thin the lips of a classical purist at fifty paces.

Musically, I am reminded of two things: firstly, what a genius this man is. The set list is peppered with old classics like Tupelo and Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, but for the most part songs are drawn from his most recent album Dig, Lazarus Dig. This is the second thing of which I am reminded: a lot of this album really isn’t very good. There are exceptions – Night of the Lotus Eaters, We Call Upon the Author and Dig, Lazarus Dig are just brilliant – but a lot of the others just don’t cut the mustard, especially when surrounded by his older material.

It works very well as a set list though, and this is one of tightest groups you will ever see play live, odd assortment of mad, lecherous old bastards though they may be. And what a brilliant, driven, raging performance for a group of duffers in their 50s. The Rolling Stones had long since given up by this point.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – I Let Love In
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – We Call Upon the Author
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Tupelo

I may be very much in love with Mrs. Toad, but if the opportunity to get a quick divorce were to present itself I may consider it, if just so I could run away in the dead of night with this album. The problem is, it’s so primal it would probably make me its bitch and I would be condemned to a life of gimp masks, beatings and sexual subservience. Mind you, one listen to Go Tell the Women and actually that doesn’t sound too ba… no, no, I’ll stop there.

It’s like that though, this album. Sexually charged, brutal, visceral; it reminds me of those vicious old folk tales of rape and torture and pillage. And it’s all delivered in a festering, menacing piledriver of scabrous blues-rock that quite frankly makes me want to subject myself to its nefarious will for ever more.

Really, given how generally poor the major releases have been so far this year, and the absolute dearth of people continuing to produce excellent music into their dotage (well, musically speaking anyway) this is an absolute rocket delivered squarely up the arse of the rest of the industry. Why the fuck aren’t any of the rest of you this good?

It’s not all the explosion of angry guitars that I was expecting though, although it is a hugely guitar-dominated record. Actually, there’s more simmering menace than there are mental wig-outs. Songs like the smouldering Grinderman, Electric Alice and Go Tell the Women are tense, brooding and threatening. But when they do cut loose and go for it you really get your money’s worth, with tracks like the brilliant single No Pussy Blues – probably Nick Cave’s best raging stalker anthem since the towering Loverman (for ’tis his band, don’t you know – explanation here).

Honestly, I’d post half this album if I thought I could get away with it. If you want feral music with huge fucking balls that you are pretty sure would slam you over the desk and shag you hard up the arse if you turned your back on it for a second, then this is your baby.

Grinderman – Go Tell the Women
Grinderman – Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)

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