So, the 200th podcast.  I remember a couple of years ago when the 100th ticked past, it happened to be a Toad Session, and as those are pre-recorded with little idea when they’ll fit into the sequence of Toadcasts I never really marked the milestone in any sort of a way.

This time around I was very much conscious of it, but still couldn’t really think of a way to make it interesting and, on Thursday night, with no real plan, I just sat down to have a go at editing a compilation consisting of at least one swear word from each podcast.  It took fucking hours, and in fact had to be finished over a combination of Saturday and Sunday evening, which is the reason the podcast is so late this week.

For some reason though, it seems kind of fitting, because in amongst the swearing there are some bits and pieces which remind me of events now quite a surprisingly long way in the past.  We have the first Toad Session, the first time Mrs. Toad joined me on a podcast, various long-forgotten birthdays, the passing of the legendary Floyd and all sorts of other things.  The kind of things, in short, which make this whole load of bollocks a lot more personal than just a music blog and a record label.

Direct download: Toadcast #200 – The Cusscast

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01. Song, by Toad Swearing Omnibus #1 (00.20)
02. The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing (11.27)
03. Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster (18.11)
04. Song, by Toad Swearing Omnibus #2 (20.54)
05. The 63 Crayons – Spoils for Survivors (25.09)
06. Broken Records – Out On the Water (Toad Session) (35.18)
07. Meursault – The Dirt & the Roots (42.47)
08. Song, by Toad Swearing Omnibus #3 (46.20)
09. Dusty Springfield – What Good is I Love You? (51.53)
10. Thelonius Monster & Tom Waits – Adios Lounge (60.12)
11. Mike MacFarlane – Done For (70.01)
12. Song, by Toad Swearing Omnibus #4 (72.43)

 I wonder, sometimes, how many of you reading this blog have been here for, say, the last four years or so.  It was November 2007 when I first moved my old music site over to Blogger, and I am sure one or two people have been around since then, but I am never all that sure.

I only mention this because Death Songs hark back to the earlyish days of the blog, and very much to the early days of the Song, by Toad podcasts.

Back in those days – mid 2007, I think it was – I was obsessed by The Shaky Hands’ amazing self-titled debut album.  Mrs. Toad and I went over to the States that Summer, to go to my little brother’s wedding, and we spent some time driving around Massachusetts, Maine and Nova Scotia while we were there, with a very limited collection of CDs, including The Shaky Hands. Consequently, I have really fond memories and very pleasant associations with Nick Delffs’ voice, and the easy going, but nevertheless purposeful rhythm of his songs.

Hearing his new project, Death Songs, for the first time brought that all flooding back, and it was a very, very nice surprise indeed.  This project sounds a little more bare-bones than The Shaky Hands, but nevertheless a lot of the old charm is still very much present. I like the bareness though, it makes it sound like it could all have been recorded live in a single take, which is nice for reasons I can’t really explain.

This is most easily described as an album of acoustic pop, with the mood elevated by a framework of handclaps and a crisply strummed guitar. Despite the name, this is far from morose music, having more in common with early Dodos stuff than the kind of dingy laments you can get when a nice young man picks up an acoustic guitar.  In fact it isn’t until the gorgeous second half of rather schizophrenic closer Remain in Love Straight to the End that things get a bit more downbeat, but by that time you’re ready for it.

I think that what I’ve always enjoyed about both the Shaky Hands and now this music probably comes from the combination of the way Delffs sings and the way he plays the guitar: I am never really all that sure if the predominant feeling it conjures is wistful or upbeat.  Sometimes the pace of the music and the vocal delivery contradict one another a little, creating a pleasantly shifting palette of emotions.

It’s not the most insistent or attention grabbing release, this, but I am really enjoying it.  And I am really glad that Delffs is back, too.

Death Songs – Water in the Eyes of Man

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The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing

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The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life

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Death Songs on Reverb Nation | More mp3s | Buy from Post-Consumer Records

Mrs. Toad and I might be gallivanting about the Italian countryside, but we are still thinking of you, our loyal Toadlings. We may be relaxing by the pool, but we understand that life might not be quite so easy for those of you at home. Actually, fuck it, life is never this easy for us either. This is like some bizarre anomaly for us – time, peace, reading books… it’s all so fucking restful I’ve almost forgotten to swear at the locals.

The place we’re staying is just plain ridiculous. We are living in what amounts to the tiniest of little comedy garden sheds imaginable, but the outside space is some great big gigantic plaza. It’s just ridiculous.

Fortunately, there is something to lower the tone. Nature is basically a great big urinal, as we all know, and I have been doing my best to maintain a time-honoured male principle of ‘no place being too sacred or picturesque for having a sly piss’. So when the bladder beckons, so does the wall, and there I go to water the olive groves of Puglia. It feels like a public service, really it does.

Thanks again to Euan and the lads for keeping things going while we’re away. The connection here is so damn slow I really haven’t been able to read it all, but Mrs. Toad periodically checks up on things on her Blackberry (the woman’s insane) and lets me know how things are going. This news I generally treat with an indifferent grunt, before returning to the pondering of precisely which sort of cheese I most fancy for lunch, but I appreciate her efforts.

Toadcast #74 – The Poolcast

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01. The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life (03.26)
02. Lemonjelly – Spacewalk (12.45)
03. Grandaddy – Ghost of 1672 (19.44)
04. Billie Holiday – Good Morning Heartache (24.36)
05. Animal Magic Tricks (with Neil from Meursault & Pete from The Leg) (34.42)
06. Edith Piaf – C’etait Une Histoire D’amour (38.11)
07. The Flaming Lips – Can’t Get You Out of My Head (48.12)
08. Wilco – Jolly Banker (52.17)
09. The Laurel Collective – No Pirates Left (63.04)
10. Yoshimi! – Philosophy For Fangirls (69.12)

Apart from being brilliant from a musical perspective, Homegame was brilliant for a great many other reasons.  One of which was seeing semi-official Toad photographer Dylan walking around glowing like a well-spanked arse throughout Sunday.

How did this happen?  Well, sleeping spots were at something of a premium over the weekend, and Mrs. Toad and I hosted well over a dozen people, spread between two tiny and massively over-populated cottages in the town of Pittenweem.  This was all very well, except that on Saturday night, after a prolonged and somewhat industrial drinking session, we acquired a couple of hangers-on.  Dylan, having departed to spend the evening with a couple of other friends of ours, returned to the cottage he was supposed to be staying in to find the floor entirely covered in bodies.   Seeing as how he’s actually far more sensitive and nice than you would think, given he reads this pish every day, he didn’t just hoof out the interloper or decide to sleep on top of him, no he spent the night wandering the streets of the East Neuk and eventually fell asleep on the beach in Anstruther.

This would have been fine, of course, apart from the fact that it was gloriously, joyously sunny on Sunday.  So much so that a certain gentleman of leeky persuasion spent the entire day with a face as red as our little simian friend in the picture.  And there was much tittering.  There’s nothing quite so funny as the misfortune of your friends, is there, for some reason.  Maybe it’s just gratitude that it was them, not you, who was made to suffer.

I bumped into ex-lurker Dan at Sneaky Pete’s on Wednesday at the Casiotone gig, which was really nice, so do feel free to follow his example and emerge from the woodwork.  You don’t have to make any sense or be all that witty or anything, you just have to fill in your five and then natter about total horse manure with the rest of us.  And come to Yusuf Azak and Enfant Bastard at Sneaky Pete’s tonight, because it will be brilliant.

1. Beetroot – pickled, roasted, not at all..?
2. Worst sunburn you’ve had.
3. Ever fallen asleep somewhere inappropriate.
4. What is your activity of choice at the beach.
5. Ever cooked a lobster alive?

The Avett Brothers – At the Beach

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Eilen Jewell – Too Hot to Sleep

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The Shaky Hands – Sunburns

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Elvis Perkins – While You Were Sleeping

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Maximillian Hecker – Sunburnt Days

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This is the podcast to accompany all the Portland and Pickathon things I’ve been slowly but surely writing up over the course of the last couple of weeks.  With all the video to edit it may take a while to get it all sorted, but just follow this Pickathon search and you’ll find it all.  My full review of the festival is here.

This is a musical journey through our trip, from the Shaky Hands and The Builders & the Butchers who got us out there, to Eef Barzelay who we saw in Portland, several bands from the Pickathon Festival and even a song from Ray Rude’s Gameboy pop outfit Operation Mission.

It’s rather shorter than usual, but that is part of a new strategy: shorter podcasts more often.  I am going to try and go for once a week, and make them a maximum of an hour long.  I can’t promise anything, but I am going to try, and I think this might be a better approach for all of us, frankly.

Toad’s Pickathon pictures | Toad Vimeo page | Other Pickathon Features

Toadcast #34 – The Portland Podcast

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01. The Shaky Hands – A New Parade (2.20)
02. The Builders & the Butchers – When It Rains (08.47)
03. Eef Barzelay – Numerology (12.21)
04. Operation Mission – Aqueous (19.30)
05. Lackthereof – Choir Practise (23.22)
06. Langhorne Slim – Restless (31.20)
07. Bombadil – Cavalier’s Har Hum (40.47)
08. Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Beloved, We Have Expired (43.26)
09. Oz St. Fossils – Jeweller’s Daughter (53.54)
10. Loch Lomond – Tic (59.49)
11. The Cave Singers – Cold Eye (66.34)

Christ it’s been weird watching my website ticking over perfectly happily in my absence. Given that I and only I have held the keys to this site for so long, watching you guys quietly getting on with it in my absence has been oddly eerie.

The best bit, I think it’s safe to say, is that it is clear that even without my instigation you’re still prepared to be a right bunch of bastards to anyone doing anything foolish (like, say, not thinking Newton Faulkner are shit) and that at any random moment threads are still liable to disappear off into some downward spiral of surreal mentalism.

More than anything, I think Dylan has done an amazing job with the writing. It’s been a brilliant combination of old stuff, new stuff and general rambling, with a wonderful balance of worthwhile writing and tongue-in-cheek frivolity. Poor lad’s all knackered now, having burnt just a little too much midnight oil, and found the tracking down of new stuff to be less straightforward than it might have been. I really should have given him a stack of promos to dig through, had I thought about it, but I’ll learn for next time.

So a massive Toadly thanks to Dylan for all his brilliant work keeping the house in order, and just time for one little gripe…

…Bombay? Bombay??? TANQUERAY, my good man, a gentleman drinks Tanqueray. Cleaner, crisper, altogether a superior gin, and the Tanqueray 10 stuff is just lovely as well, but as far as this gin sot is concerned there simply is no better gin. Bombay. Goodness gracious me, what has the world come to.

Here are a couple of things from my inbox, which contained nearly 400 emails on my return.

These lads are really good, and currently working on an album too, which is excellent news.
Inspector Tapehead – Sugar on Your Sheets
This is off the new Shaky Hands album, which is approaching in a month or two. I’m really looking forward to this one.
The Shaky Hands – We Are Young
And here’s a little treat from the stuff I’ve been listening to whilst away:
Blind Pilot – Oviedo
Ratatat – Falcon Jab

Not the easiest of Google searches, that one, but amazing what useful advice it turns up. Now, you know my sparkly new record label that I’m slowly levering into existence? Well Catbird Records were pretty much all the things I am trying to do myself, only at least three years older. So in other words, respect and deference due.

Of course around here, like most music blogs, it comes down to one thing: tunes any good? Fucking yes indeed they are, crikey this is a terrific album.  The presence of The Shaky Hands’ Nathan Delffs comes as no surprise, listening to it.  I don’t know how much he had to do with the songwriting, but the lazy, confident rhythm definitely evokes their vibe.

Shimmering, vaguely uncomfortable  guitars build the atmosphere in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a less thunderous version of The Low Lows, and the vocal delivery chimes with a similar kind of unease.  You could be in a half-awake feedback-oppressed dystopia one minute, and a lovelorn dustbowl romance the next.

The combination of that tension with the romanticism is about as squarely perfect an approach for someone like me, it’s untrue.  If they’d been aiming for my kind of music I doubt they could have scored any more direct a bullseye.

Forest Fire – I Make Windows
Forest Fire – Fortune Teller

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Catbird Records

Hello and welcome back to the Toad Sessions. I was a little drunk when I noticed that Alela Diane was playing in Edinburgh as part of the Triptych Festival, so the idea of emailing her label and inviting her to do a Toad Session didn’t seem quite so preposterous. In the morning, I thought I was mad and would be laughed at, but amazingly they agreed, and now here it is.

This one was also recorded by Nick at Bananarow and he’s done another amazing job – the songs sound absolutely gorgeous. Dylan’s pictures can be found at the Flickr page, and we have some more videos at the Song, by Toad YouTube page. Here’s the interview podcast, with the tracklisting at the bottom of the page.

Toadcast #30 – Alela Diane & Mariee Sioux Toad Session

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Here are the sessions tracks themselves. The Cuckoo is a traditional song, and Dry Grass & the Shadows is from Alela’s new album which should hopefully be out later this year. Mariee’s songs are Flowers & Blood from her recent album Faces in the Rocks, whereas the gorgeous Icarus Eye is an old song from a home release.

Alela Diane – Dry Grass & the Shadows

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Alela Diane – The Cuckoo

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Mariee Sioux – The Icarus Eye

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Mariee Sioux – Flowers & Blood

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Here are the videos, all hosted at the YouTube page. Again, the interview is going to have to go up later because I seem to have entirely lost Morgan, my resident editing expert, so I’ve had to cobble these things together myself. I am going to work on the interview movies as best I can, so they should hopefully be available in a week or two.

01. Alela Diane – Dry Grass & the Shadows (Toad Session) (04.51)
02. The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life (08.36)
03. Johnny Cash – I See a Darkness (11.45)
04. The Holy Modal Rounders – Hesitation Blues (20.42)
05. Neutral Milk Hotel – The Communist’s Daughter (24.10)
06. Mariee Sioux – Flowers & Blood (Toad Session) (26.07)
07. Hem – Half Acre (32.29)
08. Bonnie Prince Billy – No Bad News (41.41)
09. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Twistification (46.05)
10. Vashti Bunyan – Glow Worms (53.35)
11. Mariee Sioux – The Icarus Eye (Toad Session) (58.10)
12. Alela Diane – The Cuckoo (Toad Session) (62.56)

Well I hope you like these. The next session is going to be with local band Meursault, and will be the first one to be recorded in Toad Hall. Very exciting!

You all know I’ve been doing a regular slot on DC’s radio show, The Waiting Room, of late, don’t you? Well this week’s slot saw me picking a track by Sky Larkin, as well as three wonderful songs from the splendid Happy Realease Records from darn sarf*. I may have been a little rude about their sound actually, but it was inadvertent. I was trying to head off the criticism from indie snobs – What? Who? None of those round here, surely? – about the fact that they are just plain enjoyable indie-pop for the most part, and ended up implying that I thought they were lightweight. The Genius of Tact strikes again. I should teach courses in this shit.

Anyway, swing by The Waiting Room to download this and past episodes, and Error FM to see what sort of crazy fools agree to put this sort of rubbish on the airwaves. The, er, internet airwaves. Interwav… oh never mind, you know what I mean.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 12th March 2008

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* Darn sarf, for my non-British readers, is the phonetic spelling for how a cockney might pronounce the words ‘down South’. Which is where they are from. Yes, I know, hilarious wasn’t it.

And here’s a sneaky little bonus podcast from myself:
Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

A week or so ago, I recorded a demo show for Fresh Air FM, the local student radio station, with a view to applying for a slot during next term, only the computer ate the bastard thing. Fucking technology. Anyhow, Sunday was Mrs. Toad’s birthday, and for some reason she was keen to get plastered and do a podcast with me, so we re-did it together. It wasn’t played quite as straight as I’d hoped, and by the time I’d had time to reflect on submitting it I was pretty certain Fresh Air would chase me out of the building with sticks. Fortunately for me, however, they didn’t hate it, didn’t seem to think I was a smart-arsed twat and didn’t dispatch me from the building with a boot print in my arse.

As this show is just a pre-record and will be going out randomly over the night when they stop broadcasting, I thought I’d pop it up here for you to have a listen. I won’t be doing this with any more Fresh Air things because, well, you need to go over there and listen for yourselves really, don’t you. But for this once I thought you might like it seeing as you shower of treacherous fuckers all seem to love Mrs. Toad so very bloody much. Be warned though, because it was made for a different audience, so there may be a bit of duplication from previous podcasts, and it’s rather long, as apparently there is a lot of time to fill overnight when there are no presenters in the building.

The Fresh Air plugs themselves were enough to see us kicked out.

Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

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01. Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave It (03.09)
02. The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing (06.41)
03. The Cave Singers – Thinking of Heaven (13.05)
04. Preston School of Industry – Straits of Magellan (17.23)
05. Adam Balbo – Talkin’ Bush (27.11)
06. Donnan Linkz feat. Baje One of Junk Science – The N Word (29.18)
07. Riff-Raff – Romford Girls (36.44)
08. The Pogues – Dirty Old Town (38.58)
09. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City (46.44)
10. Edith Piaf – Elle Frequentait la Rue Pigalle (50.11)
11. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (53.34)
12. AA Bondy – Vice Rag (59.12)
13. Relatively Clean Rivers – Hello Sunshine (68.09)
14. The Eighteenth Day of May – Lady Margaret (71.05)
15. Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar (81.27)
16. Nightjar – Poor Man’s Son (84.01)
17. Ravens & Chimes – General Lafayette, You Are Not Alone! (93.03)
18. Eels – Love of the Loveless (95.59)
19. Glasvegas – It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry (106.49)
20. Flashguns – St. George (111.01)
21. Elle S’Appelle – Little Flame (123.09)
22. Elk City – Cherries in the Snow (125.58)
23. The Low Miffs – Also Sprach Shareholder (130.41)

People fall in love for lots of reasons, some good and some bad. I don’t know why I fell in love with my midget companion, but I did and now I’m stuck with her.

What is the reason for this post then? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s late and I am pished and I am feeling a rush of elated giddiness about my sheer good fortune in ending up with this lass. Happiness is an elusive thing too, so I think you have to note the occasions when life is good to you, if just out of gratitude. A doff of the cap to the fates, if you will, because bad luck is always ready to make things shit the minute you take anything for granted.

People who are miserable fuckers, I am always tempted to conclude, don’t recognise the happy times when they have them. I never want to be someone who doesn’t acknowledge his enormous and entirely undeserved slices of luck when they materialise. I hate people who don’t know how lucky they are.

Anyhow, the point, yes of course. Well we have just come back from a friend’s house having had a delicious meal (grey sole and queen scallops on a bed of spaghetti with lemon, parsley and purple sprouting broccoli – what a cunt I’ve turned into!) and watched an amazing film. It was Death Watch with Harvey Keitel, Romy Schneider and Harry Dean Stanton and is shot in Glasgow in 1980. Try finding it anywhere – I bet you can’t. French Amazon is where we eventually tracked it down.

Anyhow, after all this grown-up middle class bollocks what does my darling girl want to do when we get home? Turn the stereo up fucking loud and plough through the vinyl. Play music, play it fucking loud, get mashed and act like idiots. Like I needed any encouragement. So the gins are poured, the amp is bursting at the seams and the neighbours are praying for the SAS. God I love this girl!

The Builders & the Butchers – Black Dresses Play this really, really fucking loud. Really fucking loud. Break something, you played it that loud.
The Sequins – Patients
Billy Bragg & Wilco – Hesitating Beauty This is just a love song. I make no apologies. I am besotted. Fuck you too.
White Rabbits – Kid on My Shoulders
The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing