Ruth Theodore first came to my attention via 17 Seconds a couple of years ago, when Ed reviewed her debut album Worm Food, out on River Rat Records.  At the time there was something of a glut of chirpy young female singer-songwriters, and Theodore’s vague entanglement with the fringes of that particular fad brought with it an awful lot of associations which made me twitch a little.

Even at the time, however, it was obvious that she had an awful lot more to offer than the lazy, reflexive comparisons might suggest and now that she’s back, having largely outlived that particular phase in the musical zeitgeist, hopefully her stuff can be taken rather more on face value.  Or to put it another way, out of all the disparate, vaguely similar musicians towards whom people gravitated a couple of years back, it looks to me like Ruth Theodore was the only one who actally was the real deal.

What do I mean?  Well, she’s sharp, witty, and has a vocal delivery which perfectly embodies the old adage about floating like a butterfly and, when necessary, stinging like a bee.  Buried within the dancing torrent of words she delivers are genuine moments of insight, and countless barbed statements which are notably less nice than you might expect from the childlike charm of her voice.

She picks along with this on her guitar in a lively way, her fingers glittering across the strings like words flit around her lyrics.  There is clarinet, double bass and cello added to this basic structure, and the flighty playing of the former only serves to add to the impression that these songs are actively shy of being pinned down – almost like a young child in adult company who shies away from every introduction.

That’s just the music, though.  I almost get the impression Theodore herself might tell me to fuck off at the suggestion, and in that slightly belligerent forthrightness perhaps suggests comparisons with the likes of Animal Magic Tricks and Candythief, both fronted by women who have their own eccentricities, but would probably bristle a little at pretty much any kind of pigeonholing which involves terms like ‘female singer-songwriters’.

There are certainly times when this willful idiosyncracy produces music which has just a little too much character for my personal liking.  Sometimes, I guess, I find it all a little too much and I notice the personality of the song more than the song itself, and this does definitely interrupt my enjoyment of this record a little more than it did Worm Food.  Nevertheless, although I would add a note of qualification, I’d still recommend you investigate Ruth Theodore’s music.

Ruth Theodore – False Alarm

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Ruth Theodore – The Evolution of Mr. Charisma

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from River Rat Records

Erm, really sorry that this is so very, very late, but life rather caught up with me this week.  So I never quite managed to find time to get my shit together until this evening, unfortunately.

It’s surprising how much of my time these weekly podcasts seem to take up – it can be quite hard to find an evening every single week to record these things.  What I find amazing is that I don’t run out of blather.  I don’t recall ever saying anything profound or all that intelligent either, so this little collection must represent hours and hours of inconsequential rambling.

On Friday a nice young lady in the pub asked me “Has anyone ever told you that you talk loads and loads.”  I suppose, looking back at a hundred and some podcasts the miracle is that actually the answer to that question is ‘no, not really, not that I can remember’.

Oh, and yes, that is Tina Turner and Kim Carnes you see there.  Suck it up, hipsters.

Toadcast #107 – The Tardicast

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01. The Walkmen – This Job is Killing Me (03.30)
02. Grandaddy – Hey Cowboy, the Phone’s For You (09.57)
03. Comaneci – Satisfied Girl (15.51)
04. Tina Turner – Private Dancer (17.50)
05. Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou – England (27.33)
06. Ruth Theodore – False Alarm (34.09)
07. The Waterboys – Sweet Thing (40.54)
08. Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes (48.04)
09. R.E.M. – Half a World Away (53.55)
10. Radiohead – Creep (Acoustic) (59.59)

Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

The next installment of late year list-o-rama brings us up to date with the first half of the Toad Festive Fifty. Slightly more, in fact, because I’m gearing up for a top ten, so I’ve cheated slightly on numbers here are there. For those of you who want to make your own lists, see this post for the rules, and get stuck in. The more who take part the better.

One of the things that struck me with this part of the list is the inclusion of a song from the Broken Records Toad Session. Basically, Broken Records would be all over this list, apart from the fact that they were all over last year’s list, as submitted to the Contrast Podcast, and all the songs they released this year are songs I knew from last year. So instead of where they belong, on this year’s list, they are on last year’s list. Later on there are also songs by bands which were released last year, I’m pretty sure, it’s just that I only discovered them this year.

So as well as not being in rigid Order of Toadly Merit they aren’t even in accurate chronological order either. Ah well. You’ll live. Read the rest of this entry »

A big thanks to Ed from 17 Seconds for turning me onto this album last year. Why has it taken me so long to review? Well as lovely as it is, there are a couple of flaws that bother me and it has taken a while to reconcile the two.

It seems churlish, given how much there is to genuinely love about Worm Food, to whinge so thoroughly about the very few things that are wrong about it, but that is what I am going to do. Imagine a more pathologically melancholy version of the likes of Kate Nash, but one with genuine ability to write lyrics that are more advanced than an unusually verbose ten-year-old. And one you wouldn’t want to punch.

Partly the accent and partly the slightly flighty delivery mean that Ruth Theodore is liable to get lumped in with that supremely irritating brand of ‘female Mike Skinner with an accent and some pink ribbons’ that are currently infesting our charts, but she genuinely is far, far superior to that lot. There are some gorgeous, gorgeous songs on this album, and some moments of genuinely intelligent, laugh-out-loud wit.

The problem? Well, some of the musical style is that kind of fast-plucked affair that, when overdone as it is on second track Rash, is not just something I find less than enjoyable, I find it really rather annoying. It actively interrupts my enjoyment of the music and makes me look around the room guiltily, hoping no-one actually thinks I like that sort of thing. Ditto one or two of the vocal tics – just too close to Nash-ville. In all honesty, there’s really very, very little of it but its mere presence is enough to make me wince on occasion. So if you’re at all like me in this department, you may wish to approach with caution.

Idiotic personal bug-bears aside, what do we have? An absolutely gorgeous album of superbly written female singer-songwritery. The best bits of this album are truly brilliant. Most of the rest is bloody marvellous. A tiny fraction grates on me. She’s really sharp lyrically, and there are times, particularly when the music is most pregnant with a peculiar sort of tormented, angry sadness, that it really is moving. The other beautifully managed touch is the perfect use of the supporting cast. Accordion, clarinet and strings drift in and out of the songs, but they are kept subtle so as to give them maximum impact, and to keep both the engaging voice and distinctive guitar style of Miss Theodore centre-stage. So as long as you’re prepared to skip a couple of tracks, this should be one of the smartest, sharpest and loveliest albums you’re likely to hear in a long time. It doesn’t sound like I love this album I know, but honestly, large bits of it are absolutely brilliant.

Ruth Theodore – Nothing On
Ruth Theodore – Murray’s Wives

website | hype | buy the album

Well you know how I said I wasn’t so convinced by Toadcast #17?  Well it proved somewhat prophetic, although that prophesy may have been somewhat self-fulfilling of course.  It’s one of my least downloaded podcasts for ages, but this one should sort that out.  There’s some genuinely excellent music on here, although most of it is pretty obscure.  There’s no Arcade Fire or anything to pull in the punters, bar a bit of The Magnetic Fields, but a really good selection of new and emerging music nevertheless.

And why the Homecast?  Well that’s obvious of course: we’re back in our house at long last and I recorded this from my massive old lab bench that doubles as a desk and music centre all at once.  It’s fucking brilliant – I really should take a picture and post it for you so you can see.  The bench is 2.75m long, so I have computer and stuff at one end, stereo equipment at the other and a couple of good sized speakers either side. A music anorak’s paradise!

Toadcast #18 – The Homecast

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01. Aidan John Moffat – Eureka Springs (Edit) (00.00)
02. 4 or 5 Magicians – Forever on the Edge (02.30)
03. Flashguns – St. George (07.53)
04. George Pringle – Carte Postale (13.52)
05. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (16.59)
06. Destroyer – Foam Hands (21.55)
07. Howlies – Aluminum Baseball Bat (28.44)
08. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Aspidestra (38.36)
09. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Leftovers (40.48)
10. Ruth Theodore – Overexpanding (49.22)
11. Akron/Family – Ed is a Portal (55.28)
12. Victor Borge – Phonetic Puncutation (63.22)
13. Josiah Wordsworth – Drive-by Media (70.23)
14. King of Prussia – Spain in the Summertime (74.44)
15. The Magnetic Fields – Threeway (83.07)
16. The Forms – Knowledge in Hand (87.44)
17. Howlies – Smoke (90.14)
18. The Beat – Mirror in the Bathroom (95.38)
19. Found – When You Fall (102.09)