Song, by Toad

So, finally some more sessions happening – this week we have Edinburgh’s most tippediest new band The Last Battle popping in.  There are something like seven of them, I think, so I hope they’ve either limited their numbers for this evening or I suddenly develop into a technical genius, because recording seven musicians with two microphones might prove to be somewhat tricky.

Ruth and I are still trying to think up a suitably hybrid name for the show.  Song, by Toad is basically my thing, and calling the show that rather underplays her role in it, so we thought we’d try and find another name if we could.

Last week’s suggestions included the Princess and the Toad and the current favourite: Toad on a Hot Tin Ruth.  Any further suggestions will be most welcome – please just pop ‘em in the comments below.

Live on Air 8pm-9.30pm – Listen live here.

I’ll fill in the playlist live below from 8pm onwards, so please come and say hello, shout mindless abuse or whatever else it is you internet people spend your time doing.

1. Clem Snide – Moment In The Sun
2. Amanaz – Sunday Morning
3. The Last Battle – Nature’s Glorious Rage (Live in Session)
4. Joni Mitchell – Carey
5. Slow Club – Lets Fall Back In Love
6. The Last Battle- Black Waterfall (Live in Session)
7. Dr. Dog – Shadow People
8. The Last Battle – Cutlass (Live in Session)
9. Hailey Beavis – In Any Case
10. Yo La Tengo – Yellow Sarong
11. The Beatles – Sexy Sadie
12. The Last Battle – Oh Best Beloved (Live in Session)
13. The Akron Family – River
14. The Last Battle – Soul of The Sea (Live in Session)
15. Lambchop – Every Time I Bring it Up it Seems to Bring You Down

Thanks people, see you next week for the Mammoeth session.

I like Slow Club.  I love them live, I love their previous single and EP releases, and they are truly lovely people, but unfortunately I just don’t like this album very much.  It’s just sort of… sluggish, I think.

It’s taken me ages to review it because I just don’t know entirely what to say.  Large portions of the album have the full rock ‘n’ roll treatment and in doing this they seem to have lost a lot of the quirks which made them such a charismatic and idiosyncratic band in the first place.  Their sound does tempt this sort of approach.  Charles’ guitar has always seemed like it was stuck in the 50s (in a good way) and the whip-crack beat of the drumming and the use of boy-girl vocal harmonies makes the kind of music which can be added to pretty much ad infinitum.

This doesn’t really seem to benefit most bands, though, especially not when faced with their first full album and often their first proper, full-on studio project as well.  This is where a sympathetic producer who understands the music and who understands and gets on well with the band becomes crucial, particularly on a debut album where the band are often still inexperienced and in need of a little guidance.

Basically, I think this album should have been de-tuned slightly.  Having spoken to the band at Homegame, I get the impression they have perhaps thrown a bit too much at the recording, simply because toys were there to use rather than because they were compellingly necessary, and I also think the producer – or maybe not the producer, but someone at least – should have reigned them in a little.

The main issue though – and this might be the harshest criticism of all and I do not like making it – is that I am not all that convinced by the songwriting.  The highlights of this album for me are still the older songs like When I Go and the brilliant Because We’re Dead.  It Doesn’t Have to Be Beautiful is a cracker as well, and a couple of the slow songs are lovely.  But this just feels like an album which never quite gets going, one which lacks a real catalyst somehow, and never really catches fire.  I am really sorry to say it, but I think Yeah So is very disappointing.

Slow Club – When I Go

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Slow Club – It Doesn’t Have to Be Beautiful

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Moshi Moshi

Slow Club’s performance at the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival last month really shouldn’t have surprised me, but for some reason it did.  I’ve seen them before, at another Fence event in Edinburgh’s Caves a couple of years ago, and I really like their Moshi Moshi singles, but for some reason I’d allowed them to drift somewhat from my consciousness; I really don’t know why.

When they played at the Anstruther Town Hall, however, I was reminded pretty sharpish.  They were sharp, energetic and bags of fun to watch.  It all just seemed incredibly natural, watching them perform, as if playing their songs was simply something they found as normal and everyday as brushing their teeth.  Where other bands had laboured, for instance, under the appaling sound conditions, running the full gamut from quietly disconcerted to openly irritated, Charles and Rebecca just laughed it off, played through it and generally made it seem like it was the most insignificant thing in the world.

This attitude breezes through their music as well.  Even their less lyrically perky songs are infected with a relaxed, bouncy enjoyment and they rattled through their set at a fair clip.

The band are from Sheffield, but where up until only very recently there was a fairly thriving alternative music scene, loosely based around entities like the Sheffield Phonographic Corporation label, now there is apparently something of a wasteland.  Consequently, Slow Club seem to have been adopted by a number of other groups, whilst not necessarily being an obvious part of any of them.  Their label, Moshi Moshi, brings something of a scene with them, and they also seem to have been somewhat co-opted by the posh-folk crowd which includes the likes of Johnny Flynn, Noah & the Whale and Laura Marling.  Then there’s their relationship with Fence, which now stands at two Homegame Festivals and a Fence Club.

Their music also doesn’t seem to quite belong in any such easy niche, though.  It thumps along, with plenty of rockabilly and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, but they seem to get lumped in with alt-folkies which, apart perhaps from some of the company they keep, makes no sense at all.

Their album, Yeah So, is basically finished though, and will be out in July so maybe then they will get the chance to make an impact on the UK music scene more in keeping with who they themselves are, rather than being pigeonholed by either the city of their provenance or the other bands who like them.  After their superb performance at Homegame, I am really looking forward to this record, and so should you be.

***

The videos here are snippets from their Homegame set.  I actually recorded a whole interview with them while they were in Anstruther and, in the mother of all IT disasters, lost the fucking lot.  So my sincerest apologies to Charles and Rebecca, and to Debbie who set it up, but if you want to hear a proper interview with them then download DC’s podcast of his Waiting Room show for woxy.com, or alternatively go and check out Andy’s live Off the Beaten Tracks Session videos from the same day, as well as Dylan’s photos on Blueback Hotrod.  This must be a significant annoyance for professional music people actually, having to deal with an increasingly amateur music press, so I really am sorry.

I love Homegame.  Have I mentioned that before?

For the uninitiated, the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival is held once a year in the small fishing village of Anstruther in Fife (well, it used to be a fishing village but it seems to be largely touristy now – neighbour Pittenweem seems to be more of a working harbour).  A huge pile of Fence Records acts, bolstered by friends and neighbours, get together and play lots of gigs in the town halls, school halls and beer halls of the town, and about six hundred or so lucky punters get to go along.

There are a few things I love about this festival, so here are a couple, put as briefly as possible:
- Anstruther is small, so the festival itself has to be small, or the town wouldn’t be able to cope.
- Fence Collective music is fucking brilliant.  There will be no sets by the View, not even acoustic ones.
- It’s actually in a town, so if it pisses down you can just stay in the pub and not get wet.
- The bands themselves are all relaxed, friendly and as interested in seeing good music and getting plastered as the rest of us, which makes for a really nice, communal atmosphere.
- It’s in a seaside town so if you ever get all musicked out, you can pick up a paper, sit on the promenade and read for a bit.
- Did I mention the relaxed atmosphere?  It’s the nicest festival in the world to be at.

This year Mrs. Toad and I rented a couple of cottages in Pittenweem – we were too slow to get Anstruther – which ended up being absolutely full of bodies at the end of every gin-sodden night of debauchery.  And when I say full I mean full; every inch of floor and ever sofa or cushion covered with some passed out drunkard or other.  Fuck me it was fun. Read the rest of this entry »

In order to get into a good mood for this weekend, how about some reasonably good news from the European Parliament? This recent vote slaps down the recent threats by ISPs to simply disonnect people accused of naughty file-sharing. The joy of this is not that I am necessarily in favour of completely unrestricted file-sharing of any and everything, but that if you are going to threaten something as drastic, in the 21st Century, as cutting off someone’s internet access then you had better have some independent oversight of this kind of decision. Law enforcement, basically, should be performed by law enforcement agencies, not by ISPs at the behest of the companies who give them most of their high value content.

It’s weird, here in Europe we seem to be stuck in between the Mercans and the Middle East at the moment, with moves like the one above which come dangerously close to mimicking the dangerous American taste for completely unaccountable law enforcement, which basically means no law at all. The on the other side, we’ve got the crazies in the Middle East trying to get the Declaration of Human Rights to include fucking idiotic clauses that state that it is a violation of someone’s human rights to have their religious sensibilities. Without wishing to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities, fuck you, fuck your infantile fairytales, and fuck right off and snivel yourself to sleep in the dark of your bedroom, coddled in your childish fantasies that we have some sort of privileged places in the universe, that anyone gives a fuck about your fucking feelings and that you won’t die and rot like every other living thing on Earth. You fucking baby.

I give the Americans a hard time over their dismantling of the rule of law in their own country, something we dismayingly seem to be trying to mimic on our side of the pond, but honestly, their freedom of speech laws, and specifically the First Amendment, would be very, very welcome in amongst all this craziness. I am reminded of the quote from legal scholar Ronald Dworkin: “the only right you don’t have in a democracy is the right not to be offended”. Quite. Fucking. So.

Anyway, it’s Friday, and we are having a half day here at Proper Job in order to go out for a meal this afternoon and then get biblically rat-arsed in the evening. So Izzy, if you’re reading this, beware of dribbling design engineers stumbling about your pub at about eight o’clock. Feel free to sling us all out – we’ll probably deserve it.

So without further ado, here’s your Five for Friday.  Please take the opportunity, and try and treat the subject matter with some creativity – calling Christians a bunch of cunts isn’t very imaginative:

1. Cause some religious offence.
2. Cause some political offence.
3. Cause some musical offence.
4. Cause some national offence.
5. Cause some cultural offence.

That should do it – jihad by Saturday.

Tom Lehrer – National Brotherhood Week
Yukon – Sweden
Slow Club – Apples & Pairs
Yo La Tengo – Little Eyes
The Fiery Furnaces – Inca Rag/Name Game

Moshi Moshi Records do indeed seem to be Record Label du Jour in the UK at the moment, which is no bad thing.  This month’s Welcome to Our TV Show is a Moshi Moshi special, with Slow Club, Hot Club de Paris and the superlative Wave Pictures turning up to play some stuff and do some interviews and such like.

I love the Our TV Show project – the production values are easily good enough, the music is phenomenally good and the atmosphere of the whole thing is excellent.  It just feels like the right way to go about music.  You can watch the whole lot on their YouTube page here, if you like, and here are a couple of mp3s as well:

The Wave Pictures – Now You Are Pregnant (Live on WtOTVS)
Hot Club de Paris – This Thing Forever (Live on WtOTVS)
Slow Club – When I Go (Live on WtOTVS)

Oh the busyness just doesn’t subside, does it. And there’s nothing quite so life-affirming as being in the office on a Bank Holiday Monday. The way things work around here they just lump Bank Holidays into your overall holiday allowance, so you can take the days when you want. This makes a lot of sense for plenty of reasons, but it falls short in one crucial way: every once in a while it is nice to be forced to take some time off and just waste a day with your other half.

Mrs. Toad is at home by herself, no doubt drinking a cuppa in our south-facing, sun-drenched garden. Or proto-garden more like, as it was all planted from scratch last year and is only slowly growing into itself.
As much as I like where I work, I would dearly love to be at home with my silly missus and her preposterous cat, drinking tea in the sunshine and cursing my silliness at failing to dead-head the fennel before the bastard went to seed and caused an explosion of miniature fennel plants in the little bed in front of the shed. Or something like that. Rats.

So, coming down from Nick Cave in Glasgow last night with JC and Mrs. Villain, what can we find to try and fail to live up to that experience this week? And what the fuck is going on on Thursday for crying out loud?

Tuesday 6th May: Frightened Rabbit at The Hive.
I don’t know what the venue is like, but The Hive’s website is so monumentally shit and clunky to navigate that I sightly resent plugging their gigs. And actually, Frightened Rabbit’s new album isn’t exactly blowing my socks off either. Mind you, I’ll be busy doing radio things, so what do I care. Ross Clark is supporting, and he’s pretty handy.
Frightened Rabbit – The Modern Leper

Thursday 8th May: King Creosote & Slow Club at Fence Club, the Caves.
Another excellent Fence Club lineup, with good ol’ KC and the excellent Slow Club – another Moshi Moshi band, I have serious Label Envy! There’s also an exclusive vinyl treat (that sounds kinky) if you come along, so what more incentive could you want? These parties are brilliant fun.
Slow Club – Me & You

Thursday 8th May: Attic Lights at Cabaret Voltaire.
I keep hearing these lads mentioned as the Next Big Thing, and highly complimented by plenty of very reliable people. Honestly though, I have never heard anything that gets me all that excited. Still, I have yet to give the time necessary to qualify that kind of negativity, so I will make more effort before I shrug my shoulders once and for all.
Attic Lights – Never Get Sick of the Sea

Thursday 8th May: The Kays Lavelle & The Mannequins at Limbo, the Voodoo Rooms.
The Kays Lavelle will presumably be shit, once again*.
Anyway, once the humour subsides, expect some rather dark, generally piano-led indie-rock. The Mannequins are new to me, but a cursory listen to their MySpace sounds pretty promising. Sort of punk-croon, if you can imagine that.
The Mannequins – Little Black Book

Thursday 8th May: Dave Graney, The Low Miffs & the Bum-Clocks in the Speakeasy at the Voodoo Rooms.
This is a superb lineup. I don’t know much about the headliner, but the Low Miffs are fantastic, and as for the Bum-Clocks… well, can you imagine Robert Burns’ poetry performed against a backdrop of Malcolm Ross’ indie guitar riffs? This is really, really worth going to.
The Bum-Clocks – A Tale o’ Twa Dugs

Friday 9th May: MGMT at the Liquid Room.
I’ll admit I’m being a bit of a pop slut by going to this, but Time to Pretend is just brilliant and although the rest of it slides a little closer to the Scissor Sister than I might personally choose, I expect this to be a load of fun. Someone told me they were shit live, but I’ll withhold judgment on that until after Friday. I’m bloody well committed now anyway.
MGMT – The Youth

Friday 9th May: Rachel Unthank & the Winterset at the Voodoo Rooms.
If I’m being honest I would say that this is a little bit too folky for me, really. There’s a lot to like in the music though, and some of my readers may well love this, so it’s definitely worth considering. And her rendition of Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk is just brilliant.
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset – Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk

[Edit: an irate Bart, who couldn't even be arsed to list this gig himself, insists I mention the following gig. They're so good they don't feature on his own listings page, but hey, they're presumably good enough for me, eh? Fucksake.]

Saturday 10th May: The Second Hand Marching Band, Skeleton Bob & Woodenbox at the Wee Red Bar.
Apparently this lot are all very good. For more complete descriptions, complete with a girly ginger hissy-fit, see the comments below. Good grief.
The Second Hand Marching Band – Dance to Half Death

*Sorry, that’s an in-joke. Lead singer Euan is a regular reader of this site and so my first review of the band was a one-liner: The Kays Lavelle were shit. Side-splitting, eh? Yes, I know, sometimes I wonder how I do it.