What a lovely, lovely podcast this is.  No Mrs. Toad this week (yeah, yeah, I know, fuck off the lot of you) partly because she is away in the States being important and businesslike and so forth and partly because you are all a bunch of cunts for liking her best, you shower of ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, needless alienation of one’s audience aside, I am a little tired of doing themed podcasts.  Nothing particularly pressing leapt to mind this month so I thought I’d just throw on a pile of stuff I was really enjoying and sod having a coherent theme – that’s for the professionals anyway.  So it’s just a big old mish-mash of stuff I’m enjoying at the moment, but I think it’s quite a good playlist for all that.

There are actually a couple of songs chosen for other women in my life!  Oh shock horror! One is our reception lady here at work who revealed a surprisingly excellent vinyl collection when a few of us went round to her place after a staff night out recently, including Pavement and The Pixies.  Who would have thought it!  The other lady song is from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, after I was entirely charmed by the niece of our next door neighbour who apparently used to go out with their keyboard player.  She is trying to move to New York at the moment actually, where there are plans to play fiddle and harp on the new Au Revoir Simone album, which is splendid news.  Apparently this one is to be more folky than the last, which bodes very well indeed.  So go Ruth!  I can’t wait to hear it.

Better stop talking about ze laydees now of course, before I get skelped by my lovely lady.  Not one of of ‘em a patch on the sparkling gem that is the delectable Mrs. Toad of course, not even close!  *ahem*

Toadcast #14 – Total Self-Indulgence

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01. The White Stripes – 300mph Torrential Outpour Blues (03.04)
02. Rachel Unthank & the Winterset – Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk (12.34)
03. Jonquil – Lions (18.58)
04. Misophone – The Sea Has Spoken (20.46)
05. The Pixies – Where is My Mind (29.25)
06. The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning (36.09)
07. The Monochrome Set – Tomorrow Will Be Too Long (39.37)
08. iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist (44.10)
09. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Over and Over Again (Lost & Found) (50.23)
10. Ringo Deathstarr – Starrsha (55.00)
11. Babyshambles – UnBiloTitled (57.02)
12. New Pornographers – Adventures in Solitude (64.29)
13. Phil Ochs – Here’s to the State of Mississippi (75.18)
14. The Mabuses – Bonus Track (82.46)
15. The Real Tuesday Weld – Waltz For One (86.49)
16. Kenneth Williams – When the Toad Came Home (88.40)

This really is a superb, spiky, joyful record. Phew! Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to this album as much as any all year, so it was with a little trepidation that I first sat down to listen to it. I was even more twitchy when it didn’t quite grab as instantly as their previous singles. Christ, surely it wasn’t going to be mediocre was it? Fortunately, no, it was more like that awkward moment on a first date where you have yet to relax.

A few listens in, I was hooked. Pure, bouncy enjoyment from start to finish, this is twelve shiny tracks of indie-pop glitter. The drums rattle through the record like a machine gun, Hywel Roberts voice is right out of the early 80s and the songs are overflowing with brilliantly choppy guitar. They lurch through the rhythms, stop and start and make you fucking dance – even me, seriously. They have an old-fashioned sound, primarily due to Roberts’ voice I think, but there are elements of ska and mod sounds in there too.

The only song I have heard before is, surprisingly, the superb French Way of Life. Neither Patients nor Nobody Dreams About Me provide any material for this album, which is perhaps the slight stylistic shift it took me a moment to get used to. I’m not about to get into an argument about what is and isn’t derivative. No music is created in a vacuum, nor is there a particular reason that new and innovative is better than well-executed re-tread. The first Libertines album is hugely derivative, stylistically nothing new and nonetheless utterly brilliant. This album, however, does sound new and different to me. I can hear a lot of the stuff they are working with in the songs, but nevertheless it definitely does sound fresh and exciting to my ears.

It makes me want to dance, it makes me want to fuck it all and get pissed and have a laugh, it makes me want to be a student again (don’t really understand that one, but it does), it makes me wish I was having a party just so I could play this album. And to top it off, it actually gets better as it goes on, too. The Usual Delights, Lets Go Drinking in the Afternoon and The Grass is Never Green are a superb 1-2-3 at the tail end of the album, so perhaps that’s why it took me a bit to get into. But for a brand new group to spit out twelve cracking songs like this, without even any recourse to their existing singles, is pretty bloody impressive.

I see the utter drivel that we are supposed to like, the dross in the NME, the Kate Nashes and Jack Penates of this world, and it’s all fucking streets behind this stuff. Do the people who decide what to pimp in pop culture just not like music very much? It bloody looks like it, because this lot spank the pants off anything I’ve heard on the radio for a very, very long while.

The Sequins – Treehouses
The Sequins – The Usual Delights

website | hype | buy the album

Make sure you go to the website and buy it direct from the label. Want to know why? Here’s a quote from an email I got from Tough Love Records:

Can’t stress enough how important it is that people buy through us. Not sure if youre aware or not, but if we sell the album for £8 in shops, we only get back about £2-2.50. That’s a pretty crippling return! So, yeah, basically any help you can provide on that front is well appreciated.

They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make this look gorgeous as well, so click below for a peek at what you get for your £8. Bargain, I’d say.

Bugger me, what fun! How about a podcast! By Me! With mandatory exclamation marks! Lots of them!!

Sorry about this chaps, but in truly characteristic all-or-nothing fashion, instead of getting my miserable arse in gear to record a meagre intro for the splendid Contrast Podcast I have, on my first outing, gone right out and recorded an entire podcast of my own. Bloody typical. I tell you what, if I don’t finally get off my lazy, disorganised and generally fucking useless arse come the next Contrast Podcast time then I deserve to be tarred and feathered, so please hold me to that, I bloody deserve it.

And you’ve got to tell me what you think too, because believe me this is far more personal than blogging – shit, my own actual voice! The shield of a computer screen and four thousand miles’ distance is some insulation believe me, whereas all you lot listening to me talk idiotically to myself in the middle of my own living room, well quite frankly it scares the shit out of me. So let me know – good? bad? indifferent? more? never again? It’s in your hands, people, so make your voices heard.

Fancy a listen? Well click like fiends, Toadlets, like fiends!

Toadcast #1, June 2007

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Here’s the tracklisting:

1. The New Pornographers – Mass Romantic (01.22)
2. Bishop Allen – Like Castanets (07.10)
3. Jet – Lazy Gun (10.21)
4. The Sequins – Patients (17.40)
5. Grandaddy – Broken Household Appliance National Forest (25.53)
6. The Wedding Present – Corduroy (30.25)
7. The Sequins – Nobody Dreams About Me (35.22)
8. The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing (38.30)
9. The Scottish Enlightenment – Eyes (44.02)
10. Sons & Daughters – Johnny Cash (48.55)