11. The Scottish Enlightenment – St. Thomas

I waited ages for this album to materialise, and then once I’d loved the preceding EPs so much I started to get paranoid about over-anticipating it and ruining it for myself.  Once the ludicrous over-thinking was over, however, it turned out to be slow-burning gem: an album that simply fixes you in its gaze and keeps on reeling you in, sometimes so slowly that you wonder how it is so impossible to escape.

The Scottish Enlightenment – Pascal

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

12. Liars – Sisterworld

There are times when I really think this is the album Grinderman should have been; not entirely, but here and there.  It does embody that drooling malevolence however, grumbling intimidatingly along before exploding into fearsome, thumping noise.  And when it does go mental it inspires some of the most unhinged leaping around that our living room has seen in ages.  There is more spite and rage in the fiercest moments of this album than pretty much anything else I’ve heard for years.  Not pure noise, just oozing malice.

Liars – The Overachievers

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

13. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor

I have to confess that the first few times I heard this I just thought it was a big, ridiculous mess.  Honestly, there are guitar solos in here which sound like Celtic bagpipes, and all manner of other rambling digressions, often in the form of massive, proggy wig-outs.  Slowly though, once the ‘fuck, what?‘ impulse had worn off, I found myself loving this album, to my considerable surprise.  It is still a massive, preposterous mess, but it is done with such joyful abandon that I just can’t help myself.

Titus Andronicus -Richard II

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

14. Run On Sentence – You the Darkness and Me

This record flavours its dark, fairytale folk atmosphere with that touch of glamorous theatricality which has been so badly done by so many others – only Dustin Hamman absolutely nails it.  There’s rattling percussion and a touch of exaggerated dramatics, marvellous vocals and a genuine emotional grip which doesn’t let you go from the start to the finish.  It’s not emotional in that uptight, inwardly focussed indie-kid way either, instead it erupts out of the album in an unabashed, unfiltered way which, for all it can seem over the top at times, always feels so genuine that even a professional sneerer like myself can’t be cynical about it.

Run On Sentence – Lost in Winter

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

15. Glaciers – Here Come the Glaciers

In many ways I thought this was going to be a slow album of carefully constructed noises, drifting between the experimental and the odd, but it is far from that.  There are certainly those aspects to it, but there is a fullness and a pop sensibility to much of this which belies the introverted DIY aesthetic of the label and the album artwork (in other words, I made groundless assumptions and was wrong).  Nevertheless, this is a bold alternative to the acoustic sessions I had already heard, and an album I have come back to many a time since first hearing it.

Glaciers – Brooklyn

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr
Audio: freely downloadable below…

Loch Lomond came over to the UK in May to play some dates in Scotland, so we took the opportunity to record a Toad Session with them.  We first met the band when we went out to Pickathon in 2008 and interviewed them there.  Since then we have released a split 12″ and an EP by them over here on Song, by Toad Records.

Elephants & Little Girls is actually from that split 12″ release, but the other three songs are new, and from their next album.  That album has been finished for about three months now I believe, although I have yet to hear it, so all I know about it is from these three songs.

Many thanks to Gavin Tarling for recording and mixing the session, to Matthew Swan and Fiona Buckle for their help with the photography and video cameras, and to Chris Bryant for being in the band for the day.  Feel free to help yourselves to the downloads, and enjoy the videos.  The whole interview can be heard on the podcast below, the video at the top of the page is sort of a general video of the whole day, and those of the individual songs are embedded below.

Toadcast #138 – Loch Lomond Toad Session

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Loch Lomond – Blood Bank (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Loch Lomond – Egg Song (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Loch Lomond – I Love Me (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Loch Lomond – Elephants & Little Girls (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Loch Lomond – Blood Bank (Toad Session) (04.39)
02. Run On Sentence – Out in the Woods (11.07)
03. Sallie Ford – Danger (14.35)
04. Loch Lomond – Egg Song (Toad Session) (22.10)
05. Vadoinmessico – In Spain (27.02)
06. Brothers Young – Good Deeds (32.35)
07. Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer (37.10)
08. Loch Lomond – I Love Me (Toad Session) (45.00)
09. The Generationals – When They Fight They Fight (48.24)
10. Loch Lomond – Elephants & Little Girls (Toad Session) (59.35)

So, the Festival descendeth upon Edinburgh once more, and once more we are beset by London-based Home County Yahs braying their zany way through the city until finally someone snaps and sets fire to their stupid fucking stilts once and for all.

Actually, as I confess pretty sharpish, I am the classic Edinburgh Festival hypocrite, if I’m being honest with myself.  I love it as much as I loathe it and I enjoy moaning about it almost as much as I enjoy the Festival itself.

As a native you really do have to have the right attitude though.  If you come from outside just for the Festival then there’s little chance of you failing to take advantage of it, but if you live here the only way is to do it by extremes: either totally ignore it and stay as far away as you can, or just stop moaning, get stuck in, get pished and go to lots of shows.  I tend to prefer the latter option, but I’ll confess I don’t always do a good job of actually taking my own advice.

Direct download: Toadcast #134 – The Festicast

01. Thee Single Spy – OK Corral (02.53)
02. Lach – A Quiet Distance (11.50)
03. Bob Dylan – Man of Constant Sorrow (Live) (14.59)
04. Run On Sentence – Wide Open Sky (22.20)
05. Skeleton Bob – Findlove is a Housing Scheme (33.11)
06. Wounded Knee – Coffee Ballad (34.43)
07. The Delta Mirror – He Was Worse Than the Needle He Gave You (39.31)
08. Balkans – Georganne (45.50)
09. Modest Mouse – This Devil’s Workday (50.33)
10. Eels – I Put a Spell on You (58.36)

Alright, this time for real.  I reviewed this album, or at least a very close approximation of it, a few months back when Dustin Hamman first got in touch with me to invite me to have a listen.

Generally I don’t review albums until they are actually available for purchase, because things don’t spend that long at the top of a blog page and I think that maximises the opportunity for impulse purchases.

So after a lot of work You, the Darkness & Me finds a home on Hush Records, one of if not the best record labels to be found in Portland’s everso fertile music scene.  Good, is all I can say, because this is a fucking lovely album.

Going back to my original review, there is a lot of Gothic folk-noir about this but more along the lines of Elvis Perkins than Timber Timbre.  That I am comparing Run On Sentence to two of my favourite bands of the last few years is entirely appropriate, because I think this stuff is right up there with recent work by both of those bands.

It positively drips with emotion.  There’s something in the performance which pretty much promises that he really, really means it.  In the initial review I said that the flamboyance of this album and the borderline melodrama of some of the emotional crescendoes went a little over the top for my taste, but over time I think that has changed.  Yes, it is an emotionally expressive album, but not excessively so; it just took me a little while to get used to it.

My friend Ritchie from Loch Lomond, another Portland band, tells me that Dustin Hamman is one of the few people he knows who can truly pull off a solo acoustic show with genuinely compelling charisma, and without sounding like ‘just another singer-songwriter’, and listening to this I can really believe it.

So, now that you can actually do so, please go an buy this record.  You won’t be disappointed.

Run on Sentence – I am the Blood

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Run on Sentence – Out in the Woods

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Hush Records

I will be in Macclesfield at Unconvention, pretending to know what the fuck I am talking about when it comes to new music business models when you come to listen to this.

I do get a shiny new pair of Converse, courtesy of the sponsors, which is cool.  But above all, me, the chance to talk shit… well, it’s just a match made in heaven isn’t it.

My Granddad lives in Manchester too, which is rather convenient, so on Sunday I will go round to his house and say hello.  Who knows, it might even shunt me slowly out of the Bad Son status I have been occupying for all these years.

This playlist is largely composed of new stuff which has appeared in my inbox recently, and a couple of bizarre wild cards – two covers,

Toadcast #121 – The Votecast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Yusuf Azak – Turn on the Long Wire (06.23)
02. Micah P. Hinson – 2s and 3s (12.50)
03. Nina Nastasia – Cry, Cry, Baby (17.58)
04. Emit Bloch – Milkshake vs. Passenger (Kelis & Iggy Pop) (23.50)
05. Run on Sentence – Out in the Woods (30.16)
06. eagleowl – Morpheus (33.43)
07. David Tattersall – The Old Family (39.15)
08. Los Hombres – Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) (41.36)
09. Male Bonding – Year’s Not Long (46.12)
10. Willie Nelson – Smells Like Teen Spirit (49.22)
11. Super Adventure Club – Pick Up Sticks (57.03)

With vocals reminiscent of The Cave Singers, but with miles more emotional and textural variety and an odd mix of musical styles, this does sound familiar from the word go, only to prove a little bit more elusive when you start really trying to pin it down.

Initially I found myself thinking ‘Ooh, that’s a nice bit of the usual gothic folk noir stuff I frequently listen to’.  And it is.  But the instrumentation is a lot richer than that description would probably lead you to believe – more akin to the likes of Elvis Perkins than Timber Timbre.  There certainly are some of Perkins’ funeral jazz moments here and there, and only very occasionally I even find myself thinking of the likes of Rufus Wainright.

This album has a subtle knack of wrongfooting me as well – just as I expect it to get big, it doesn’t.  Then, just as I am settling into a lovely, mournful number there is a crash of cymbals and a burst of brass.  The mood shifts around a lot as well, from the foreboding to the reckless, meaning that despite being a little long (only forty-eight minutes though – hardly an epic) I never stop enjoying this record.

There are times when the vocal style can be a bit dramatic and up-and-down for my personal taste, but in general I like the silghtly over the top aspect to the arrangements actually.  It gives the album bombast and drama, and emphasises the other-worldly quality which infuses the whole thing.  If there are eccentric, sinister characters from old folk tales here, there is just a touch of flamboyance to them, which makes for an odd, compelling listen. Definitely recommended.

Run On Sentence – Lay Your Words Down

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Run On Sentence – Water

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Hush Records