Song, by Toad

Instead of being at a friend’s stag do in Berlin I am stranded in Edinburgh.  Even more frustrating, this stag do was going to involve going to a football match and indie clubs instead of strip bars and nightclubs, so would almost certainly have been excellent fun.  Given my general terror of stag nights, I was actually rather looking forward to this one.

I actually didn’t bother to have a stag do, largely because I couldn’t be bothered, but also I have never had enough of a predominance of male friends to make it seem anything other than awkward.  Contrary to the suspicions of the feminists I have outraged on these pages, I have always got along very well with women in general.  Presumably this is because I tend to judge people entirely on whether they irritate the shit out of me or not, so despite being an offensive bastard, I’m not all that prejudiced really.  So erm, how do you decide to head off with all your male pals and leave the women behind, especially when, like myself, you would have no intention of doing anything especially blokey in the first place.

My brother had an excellent stag do actually (more of that later), and Mrs. Toad got absolutely wrecked with her family and ended up dancing around the kitchen with her sister-in-law and niece bellowing pop classics into mop-head microphones.  There are pictures and no, no they aren’t good.

The reason I am not in Berlin an hammered off my tits at this precise moment in time is because we are having something of a mental panic at Proper Job, motivated by our most incredible client.  They should give up on medical devices and turn their attention to a perpetual motion machine, because the sheer inexhaustible power of their knee-jerking just never seems to run out.  It’s not even a complicated product, but there you go.  The decision paralysis that descends upon large groups of people is a powerful force indeed.

Ach, so take pity on me and de-lurk.  Last weekend lots of new London people de-lurked at the Meursault shows and said hello, which was rather nice.  And just last night Jesus H. Foxx de-lurked as well, opening their new blog to the public, where they are going to post news on the recording of their new album as well as demos and works in progress from the recording sessions, so I recommend you keep an eye on that one.

1. Ideal stag/hen do.
2. Stag/hen do from hell (anecdotal or imaginary).
3. Most dubious place you’ve ever allowed a partner to go, unsupervised.
4. Marriage: is there really any point (this is not a loaded question; I am married myself, remember, and I still don’t think I have an answer).
5. Proportion of your life you’ve known your current/last partner.

Billy Bragg – The Marriage

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Tom Waits – Better off Without a Wife (Yes, I know I always play this one.)

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Mark Lanegan – Wedding Dress

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Clem Snide – Forever, Now & Then

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Snow Patrol – Make Love to Me Forever

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Well, we are nearing the end of our time in Puglia.  We’re spending a couple of days in or near Napoli before we fly back on Sunday, presumably troughing like total pigs, rather than paying all that much attention to culture and all that bobbins.

Mrs. Toad is doing Sudoku and complaining about the ‘wrong sort of paper’.  I kid you not, it’s just like British fucking Rail and their ‘wrong type of snow’, but she insists it’s just for that reason that she can’t solve them, not because they’re too hard.  Personally I find myself wondering if ‘evil’ is used to describe the comments one’s spouse will inevitably make when you fail to complete it, rather than the actual difficulty of the Sudoku puzzle itself.

So yes, we have done the lazing about and there are now a few days of actually doing shit in between us and a return to the damp splendour of the British Isles.  I suppose this is what you’re supposed to do on holiday – pay attention to the country you’re in and return, eventually – but honestly, another week of doing bollocks-all wouldn’t hurt anyone would it?

Toadcast #75 – The Bone Idlecast

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01. Snow Patrol – An Olive Grove Facing the Sea (04.14)
02. Beck – The Golden Age (12.33)
03. Belle & Sebastian – Simple Things (19.32)
04. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Tom Justice, the Choirboy Robber (21.00)
05. Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues (29.10)
06. Navigator – Work is Done (NOT Change, as we announced, sorry!) (34.44)
07. Lord Cut Glass – Holy Fuck! (40.19)
08. Son Volt – Sultana (46.46)
09. Smog – Drinking at the Dam (56.30)
10. Alela Diane – Age Old Blue (60.17)

After a week spent debating it, how about a podcast embodying the discussions we’ve been having about production values I thought a podcast which sort of pulls all the disagreements and moans and whingeing and so on into one big mp3 of joy would be a good idea.

So we’ve got some Big Production, some demo scratchy stuff and a few bands who have dabbled with both.  I fart on about production values as if I have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, which of course I don’t.

I’m not sure how well it works as a playlist – it might be a bit disjointed – but in general I like it.  I like the debate in general, I like the thought process we’ve all gone through together this week, and in general, by association, I like this podcast.

Toadcast #57 – Production Values

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01. Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA (Original Nebraska Sessions Demo Version) (04.31)
02. Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place (11.13)
03. Enfant Bastard – Vessel (20.19)
04. Half Man Half Biscuit – 1966 and All That (22.37)
05. U2 – Red Hill Mining Town (29.56)
06. Snow Patrol – Last Ever Lone Gunman (37.40)
07. The Divine Comedy – Life on Earth (42.10)
08. Yann Tiersen – Geronimo (Black Session w. Neil Hannon) (46.07 )
09. The Wave Pictures – A Long Way Away From Me (53.34)
10. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) (Live at Hammersmith Odeon, 1975) (57.35)

Hello, more Toadcastery. I’ve, erm, focussed on Dadrock for this one. Not too much of it on the playlist, fortunately, although there’s a couple of well-known names on there. In my defence though, I couldn’t bring myself to feature Coldplay, so I was forced into the compromise of playing an almighty butchering of one of their songs by the splendid Richard Cheese.

Basically I spend most of this podcast trying to justify the presence of so much bland music in the charts and how the hell that came to pass. There’s plenty of chatter about how music is used as a sort of social glue as well, in which case the quality of the stuff becomes almost secondary. There are some really good new bands on this as well – The Velcro Quartet are particularly brilliant, as are the songs by Mumford & Son, Yoshimi! and Honeytrap. Enjoy responsibly.

Toadcast #32 – The Tribecast

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01. Hercules & Love Affair – Hercules Theme (01.32)
02. The Velcro Quartet – Dead Dog’s Hill Replaced with Johnny Cashback, at the band’s request. (07.53)
03. Seabear – Teenage Kicks (11.17)
04. Athlete – Shake Those Windows (21.02)
05. Richard Cheese – Yellow (30.31)
06. ESL – Czarne Oczy (31.59)
07. Emiliana Torrini – Me & Armeni (39.50)
08. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal (43.24)
09. Snow Patrol – Last Ever Lone Gunman (48.11)
10. The Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done (58.17)
11. The Pictish Trail – All I Own (66.52)
12. Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page (73.01)
13. Honeytrap – Song For Nona (82.17)
14. The Velcro Quartet – How to Kill Your Wife (87.04)
15. Yoshimi! – Song For Suzy (Demo) (94.34)
16. Frank Turner – The Outdoor Type (100.34)

I was talking to JC from the Vinyl Villain about this album and said ‘You know, they’re starting to remind me just a little bit of Snow Patrol’ and instead of punching me then and there, he enthusiastically replied in the affirmative.  Now Snow Patrol weren’t always shit: Songs For Polar Bears was patchy, but a really interesting album, and When It’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up was just excellent.  Nevertheless I kind of expected howls of outrage – being compared to Snow Patrol?  Not an insult?  When did that happen?

To be clear, despite knowing that Snow Patrol weren’t always crap, I can’t think of a nice way to be compared to them at the moment.  This is not a compliment.  What Midnight Organ Fight sounds like to me is a band warming up for their massive stadium rock record, and ascension to Radio 1 royalty.

Basically, this is a bigger, smoother, softer, rounder sound and what I was drawn to on the first album was the choppiness, the atonality and the idiosyncrasy. A lot of this has been comprehensively rubbed off this time around the block, and I think the album suffers for it.  Not to say for a second that they have lost their ability to write a good tune, nor a rousing indie anthem, because they haven’t.

The Midnight Organ Fight is still chock-full of really good songs, so don’t let me pretend that I think it’s crap, because I don’t.  But what it isn’t as far as I’m concerned is compelling, unlike Sing the Greys.  I am listening to it as we speak, and fuck me, it is Snow Patrol, it really is.

In terms of the changes it reminds me a little of The Futureheads actually, whose second album had all the rough edges smoothed off and was only rescued by the quality of the tunes.  A lot of this is musically just not that interesting, but fortunately the songs are decent so it’s okay. It feels strange to be criticising an album where I don’t actually dislike any of the songs, but I listen to this and enjoy it, and I wonder whether or not in six months’ time I will feel the urge to rush and put this album on the stereo and I am pretty much certain that I won’t.

Frightened Rabbit – Poke (This one’s a bit special)
Frightened Rabbit – The Modern Leper
Frightened Rabbit – Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

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