Recent podcast listeners will have spotted Ink on the Page on the latest Song, by Toad podcast this weekend just gone, and here is the 7″ single from which it is taken.

When I first started listening to Phil & the Osophers there was a really rough, garagey edge to them, and a looseness to both the playing and the singing that made you wonder if they were either drunk or just not taking things very seriously at all.

Well the guitars don’t quite have that rough edge anymore, but although the recording is a little smoother, the general feel of the music is still just as loose and skittery.

I sometimes think that if any one of the dozens of bands with a touch of calypso to their guitars had retained any kind of edge or wit or invention they might have been as good as Phil & the Osophers, instead of the hatefully tedious sludge they mostly turned into.  But even whispering that is a bit of an insult to this band, so I promise you it is very much a tangential aside.

I actually think Ink on the Page is the better of the two songs on this – lively, catchy and bright.  Phil & the Osophers have done stuff I haven’t liked here and there, but in general I think they are a fucking excellent band who write excellent pop songs, and here is simply more evidence to confirm the fact.

They’ve allowed me to share the songs from the single, and like them I don’t think that free mp3s dissuade the kind of people who buy vinyl from actually buying it (which you can do from their splendidly ramshackle website, incidentally), but given you’ve already heard the b-side I think I should probably leave it at that, because I don’t want to ruin all the excitement for those thinking of purchasing it.

Money very well spent though, I promise you.

Phil & the Osophers – Ink on the Page

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The Braincast is not so called because it unusually filled with penetrative insights, but because if you listen to it this weekend it will be while I am down at the Brainlove Festival either listening to bands, DJing or sneaking off to watch the Champions League final at the nearest pub.

This week is another relatively haircut-friendly playlist actually, with words like ‘remix’ to be found and some fashionably hazy production and everything.  In fact I may have to do another ‘tedious old shite’ podcast soon, just to make up for it.

Anyhow, next week looks like being the Scottish Enlightenment Toad Session, which is coming along nicely.  I just need the photos and to complete the constantly challenging ten minute main video, which always takes quite a long while.  I will listen to the podcast on the train down to London and figure out which bits I think should go in the video.  In the meantime, enjoy…

Direct download: Toadcast #176 – The Braincast

01. FOUND – Anti-climb Paint (00.22)
02. Silverbacks – Atta Boyz (07.32)
03. Phil & the Osophers – Ink on the Page (13.02)
04. Slim Twig – Priscilla (18.57)
05. Yuppies – For the Future’s Sake (21.41)
06. Lau vs Adem – Imporsa (Silver Columns Remix) (24.11)
07. Dirty Beaches – Coast to Coast (Remastered) (35.06)
08. Tasseomancy – Soft Feet (44.37)
09. Sonny & the Sunsets – I Wanna Do It (52.11)
10. Youth Lagoon – Cannons (54.54)
11. Psychedelic Horseshit – Laced (60.40)

Today I am off to Aberdeen to see Meursault play, get cabbaged with Paddy and Andy from Gerry Loves Records, and put up some posters for the Yusuf Azak album launch gig.  We will record this week’s podcast with monumental hangovers, probably in Andy’s Mum’s living room I think.  My ambitions are limited to scoring a coffee and a bacon sandwich, anything other than that will be excessive.

Some interesting news in the world of Rupert Murdoch and his lovely, cuddly NewsRape corporation – the company which brings the world Fox News, a news channel so full of lies that it is actually banned from calling itself a news channel in Europe.

Firstly, apparently the Times lost about four million readers when they put their content behind a paywall, which seems a little careless.  In some ways you have to admire them for their courage, because as long as the world’s two most reliable online news sources, the BBC and the Guardian, remain free then people have access to all the news they want and are likely to just switch, and they are a little out on their own there.  On the other hand, it’s the Times, it’s Murdoch, fuck ‘em, hahahahaha!  Mind you, I doubt this will be something they didn’t plan for, to be fair, as everyone knew it would happen, so I assume there must be a plan.

Secondly, it appears that MySpace has had its knuckles rapped for… well, for being shit, I suppose.  According to the Graun their quarterly operating losses have increased to around $156 million, which also seems a little careless, and has led to some fighting words from Murdoch HQ.  You have to laugh at MySpace though.  They had all the users, they were the dominant force, despite having a woefully slow and ugly site and clunky user experience, and when they got a massive injection of cash, did they streamline, redesign and modernise their site?  Did they fuck.  They tinkered with it a little, but even now it’s still basically just the same old shit it was in 2004.  Not good enough chaps, and now you’re fucked.  That’s what happens.

And finally, we seem to have an awful lot of scientists who read this site, so that picture above is taken from the webshop of XKCD, the best webcomic of them all.  Science: it works, bitches.

So, here we get to the five silly questions and talking pish part of the week.  I ask five silly questions and, in the comments, you answer them as sensibly or trivially as you please.  Then we all talk pish on the internet for the rest of the day.

1. The first of the five songs is Chumbawamba’s genius Passenger List for Doomed Flight 1721.  Have a listen and tell me who else you’d put on that flight.
2. When was the last time you checked your MySpace inbox?
3. When did you sign up to Facebook?
4. When was the last time you paid to view a news article online?
5. Why do so many scientists read Song, by Toad (answers need not be entirely accurate)?

Chumbawamba – Passenger List for Doomed Flight 1721

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Four randoms from my music library.  I hope Shuffle is kind to me.

King Creosote – Alas, etc.

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The Metasciences – Four Colour Love Story

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Phil & the Osophers – Let Me Light Your Path

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The Libertines – What a Waster

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Phew, seemed to get away with that one.

I managed to miss last week’s Fresh Air show because… well I somehow failed to realise that the bloody station was back on the air, which is spectacularly dumb. This week I present Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show With Toad and a Little Bit Less Ruth Than Usual, or indeed any Ruth at all because the lovely herself can’t make it tonight, so you will be treated to the wonderful pleasure of listening to me burble on to myself about tunes and stuff and stuff and some tunes and then probably some more stuff just to cap it off.

Live on Air 8.30pm-10pm – Listen live here.

01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You, But Goodbye
02. Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us Now
03. The Left Banke – Evening Gown
04. Bettye Swann – Don’t Look Back
05. Lee Dorsey – My Old Car
06. The Scottish Enlightenment – All Homemade Things
07. Super Adventure Club – Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle
08. Sam Amidon – Fiddle Mayhem (Toad Session)
09. The Shaggs – What Are Parents
10. Nico Muhly – The Only Tune
11. Phil & the Osophers – Uses of a Man
12. David Tattersall – The Old Family
13. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge
14. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden
15. Songdog – Obediah’s Waltz

Next week we have the splendid Loch Lomond live in session, and to tide you over until then the videos from Mammoeth’s session on the show are below the jump.  The tracklisting for tonight’s show will appear below live as we go along, and feel free to heckle in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is about as smooth and polished as I have heard Phil & the Osophers sound, I think.  Regular readers will presumably see this statement as a prelude to a negative review, but not in this case.  It’s still a patchy record, but there are moments when it’s bloody brilliant: opener Uses of a Man is fantastic, to begin with.  The next track, Extra Weight, is lurching in a sense, but another cracking pop song, as are the two which follow.

Basically, with this kind of music, no matter how much I enjoy the wailed vocals and scruffy-as-you-like production, it really does come down to whether or not this is a successful bunch of pop songs. Unfortunately it doesn’t retain much of its momentum past the first half of the album.  I’ve always found this band to be a little hit and miss, but in this case after the halfway mark the sheer infectiousness of the songs seems to slide a little, for me, until by the end I am usually struggling to really pay attention at all any more.

The old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll sound is prevalent throughout, to the extent that they sound like an American take on the Wave Pictures at times, albeit with a very different lyrical style.

I’ve liked other work by Phil & the Osophers better, I have to confess, but Staring Down the Sun and Pineapple pick things up in the latter half, to add to a sterling first half, so this is still a pretty good album in my eyes, if a little inconsistent.

Phil & the Osophers – Uses of a Man

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Phil & the Osophers – Mayan Calendar

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

Mrs. Toad (malingering old bag) and I are going to be live on Fresh Air at 6.30pm tonight, and I’ll post the playlist here as we go along.  This way any foul remarks can go here and not sully Fresh Air’s fine reputation as an upstanding family station.

Click on the big Listen Live button on this page to tune in.

01. King Creosote – No-one Had it Better
02. The Japanese War Effort – St John
03. Broken Records – Wolves
04. Eels – Fresh Blood
05. Jason Lytle – Flying Through Canyons
06. Jason Lytle – On a Piece of Wood I Go
07. Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were
08. Yusuf Azak – The Key Underground
09. The Wave Pictures – Canary Wharf
10. Wilco – The Jolly Banker
11. Phil & the Osophers – They Threw a Shoe at You
12. The Leisure Society – The Last of the Melting Snow
13. Alberto Veto – Through Her Teeth
14. Rock Plaza Central – Don’t You Believe the Words of Handsome Men
15. The Limes – Dead Furniture
16. X Lion Tamer – Life Support Machine

Cheers folks, been fun.  See you next week 6.30pm-8pm once again.

Spring makes a fucking colossal difference, doesn’t it.  People have been tripping around Edinburgh with a spring in their step for the last week, when the sun has come out and the air, whilst it may still be a little chilly, is notably warmer.  It’s gentler, I suppose, is the main difference.  There’s something of a release about Spring, as if all the uncomfortable restraint of Winter no longer has to be acknowledged.  Does anyone remember that episode of Northern Exposure when the ice melted?  Everyone went nuts, and the relieved exhalation we all express on the coming of the sunshine does remind me in many ways of a tame version of the exact same mania depicted in that episode of, erm, a serialised drama from the, er, mid ah nineties…  anyone still reading?  Never mind.

In any case, this is a purposeless but musically excellent podcast which is something of a lazy one, if I’m honest.  Frankly though, I think I deserve it after the effort put into the Pictish Session, so fuck you if you have an issue with that.  Tee hee.  There’s a lot of new release stuff on here, a couple of bands reviewed recently on the site, and a couple who are going to be reviewed later this week.  Next week I’ll think of a theme. Promise.

Toadcast #63 – Sprrring is Here!

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01. The Soft Pack – Right & Wrong (01.33)
02. Maxwell Panther – A Shade Away (08.24)
03. Phil & the Osophers – They Threw a Shoe at You (11.16)
04. The Felice Brothers – The Big Surprise (15.34)
05. The Empty Set – Alice & Bob (Forlorn Photo Love) (24.01)
06. The Van Allen Belt – The Revolution Will be Merchandised (27.24)
07. Meursault (no, not that Meursault) – Blindfolds (33.31)
08. Outlaw Con Bandana – Rainy Season (37.16)
09. Dame Satan – Ghost Dance (39.25)
10. Peter Doherty – 1939 Returning (49.30)

One of the finest, most perfectly polished pop acts you’re ever… no, actually, this really is fucking rough as hell.  It really is – rougher perhaps than anyone bar the likes of Maxwell Panther and the Wave Pictures (before their Moshi Moshi days).  And do I love it?  Of course I fucking do.  Cast iron proof that really all you need in order to make a great album is a cast-iron knack for an infectious tune, and the ability to write good lyrics.

This has both of these qualities in spades.  The rough recordings seem to be used as an extra instrument, because Phil himself sings in a lazily casual sort of a way, so I get the impression none of this is all that accidental.  There are only two of them as well, and they’ve known each other since school too, so the parallels to the Wave Pictures continue.

They seem to take a perverse pride in not really being able to play things all that well.  The recorder (or whatever it is, I’m not sure) on I Will Reverse It sounds like a primary school music class, and apparently the drummer, Kevin, didn’t learn the drums all that recently and there were one or two teething problems early on.  Honestly, though, it really doesn’t seem to matter.  They clatter and wail their way through their songs and somehow it all just seems to work.

It’s largely upbeat and oddly infectious, with a sort of careless enthusiasm which seems to pervade the album.  Sure, it might be a little inconsistent but I’ve really enjoyed listening to this, and I look forward to raising eyebrows when we invite my parents round for dinner next and it slowly dawns on my Mum that, no, it’s not the fucking Lighthouse Family.

Phil & the Osophers – Third World American

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Phil & the Osophers – La Bastille

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from the band’s website

By the time this is published I will be lying in bed in Toad Hall with a hangover like a nasty case of death warmed up.  The Song, by Toad Christmas Party was on Friday 5th December, and given how exhausted I am at the moment I would imagine that about two or three gins into the evening I will be whistling Waltzing Matilda out my fucking ears.

Still, the Meursault album will be out, the party will be sorted, the Song, by Toad Records publicity juggernaut will be chuntering along comfortably and I will be able to begin the gentle slide into Christmas relaxation.  Finally finally finally.  I am so fucking exhausted from all the bloody time I’ve thrown into this since the Summer, and over Christmas there will be two weeks off with little to do but move this site all over to self-hosting and tinker a little with the design.

I’ll be trying to make the sessions and Toad Records things a little more prominent, and generally poking about in general.  The problem is that my CSS is so piss-poor that I really am limited in what I can do, so I’ll just have to hope it turns out okay.  I am loath to pay someone to redesign the thing for me though, because that seems to be somewhat contrary to the Spirit of All Things Toad.

The Spirit of All Things Toad, of course, being gin.

Toadcast #49 – Hangovers

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01. The National – Fake Empire (01.30)
02. Doveman – Teacup (06.05)
03. Samamidon – Wild Bill Jones (12.53)
04. Phil & the Osophers – High Art (22.43)
05. Miracles of Modern Science – MR2 (26.15)
06. Radiohead – Idioteque (32.49)
07. Chopps Derby – Down the Dogs (41.22)
08. The 1900s – Age of Metals (47.01)
09. Alela Diane – White as Diamonds (50.12)
10. The Wave Pictures – Leave the Scene Behind (58.07)

You know how much I love music that rattles along, sounding like it was recorded on a tape recorder that got accidentally trapped under a duvet in the next room. Well I’ve got another ‘un for you.  I’ve been sent a big old sample zip file with songs from Phil & the Osophers’ various albums – there have been several over the years – so I’ve ended up with a slightly odd sense of how they all fit together, but I am really enjoying their stuff.

Perhaps the closest comparison I can come up with is Adam Balbo, who I’ve posted about here a few times, although lyrically this isn’t quite as acerbic, and they don’t quite have the flair for pathos that Mr. Balbo seems to possess, but nevertheless it is very good indeed.  Imagine if the early Wave Pictures had been inspired by indie instead of rock ‘n’ roll, and add that into the mix as well, and we might just be getting there.

Their new album is just out on Factual Fabrications and is called Toward Conquering the Invisible North.  I have just ordered it, and although I’ve already heard about half of the songs I am really looking forward to putting the full thing on the stereo and hearing it as a discrete album.

It sounds like it was recorded in a barn, he sings like he can’t really be arsed making an effort, and yet somehow there’s a really loose, irreverent energy to this music.  It embraces its failings with spirit, and defiantly turns them into virtues.  Great stuff.  I shall be exploring further.

One from the new album:
Phil & the Osophers – La Bastille

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And a couple of older ones:
Phil & the Osophers – Pineapple

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Phil & the Osophers – Bogota

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Website (& old records) | More mp3s | Buy the new album from Insound