So more sold-outy stuff this week, with Johnny Flynn already inaccessible at Cabaret Voltaire on Friday.  I am actually going to interview him for the site, but I think I might have forgotten to include a guestie on my request, so I may have to hide in the toilets after the interview to avoid being thrown out for lack of a ticket.

This is the last week for the Communion Compilation Competition as well.  By the end of the week I will pick the best pictures of hipsters being extremely hip and we shall have a public vote on the Friday Fives, with the winners getting their hand on a splendid twin vinyl 12″ compilation of performances from the Communion night, run by Ben from Mumford and Sons and Kevin from Cherbourg.  Just email me your extremely hip persons to songbytoad at hotmail.co.uk

Monday 22nd February 2010: Xiu Xiu, Meursault & the Foundling Wheel at Electric Circus.

I know more about this gig from the general excitement of the Meursault lads than any real knowledge I myself have of Xiu Xiu, which is minimal.  Still, they may well be playing a lot of new songs, so those of you wanting a taste of what’s to come on the new album could do a lot worse than pop along to the Electric Circus tonight.

Wednesday 24th February 2010: The Soft Pack, Banjo or Freakout & William Douglas at Cabaret Voltaire.

The Soft Pack first came to my attention as The Muslims a year or two ago, and I’ve been sort of lazily following them ever since.  This is basically old school, garagey indie-rock, but when they nail it with a killer melody, which they are capable of doing then it’s very good indeed.  They can be inconsistent, I have to confess, but I’m really looking forward to seeing them live.

The Soft Pack – Extinction

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 25th February 2010: Golden Ghost, Thomas Truax & George Thomas at the Wee Red Bar.

This is a really varied lineup, and well worth coming along to.  Golden Ghost is just plain lovely, and whilst I’ve never seen George Thomas with the Owls, I have seen him solo and he was one of these guys who seemed to make a virtue out of being quite shy, with self deprecating wit helping to put across the warm personality of his music.  Thomas Truax is an SL Records staple, and his self-made musical machines have to be seen to be believed – they’re pretty much worth the price of admission on their own.

Golden Ghost – Small Metal Objects

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Friday 26th February 2010: Forest Creatures, Cheer, Fordell Research Unit and King Rib at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I know pretty much nothing about this lineup, apart from what you can tell from a very quick skim of the respective MySpace pages.  Because a lot of this is quite slow-build stuff I can’t tell you much beyond the fact that Fordell Research Unit in particular sounded rather interesting, so if you’re looking for something slightly off the beaten track this week, this might be a good bet.

Spring makes a fucking colossal difference, doesn’t it.  People have been tripping around Edinburgh with a spring in their step for the last week, when the sun has come out and the air, whilst it may still be a little chilly, is notably warmer.  It’s gentler, I suppose, is the main difference.  There’s something of a release about Spring, as if all the uncomfortable restraint of Winter no longer has to be acknowledged.  Does anyone remember that episode of Northern Exposure when the ice melted?  Everyone went nuts, and the relieved exhalation we all express on the coming of the sunshine does remind me in many ways of a tame version of the exact same mania depicted in that episode of, erm, a serialised drama from the, er, mid ah nineties…  anyone still reading?  Never mind.

In any case, this is a purposeless but musically excellent podcast which is something of a lazy one, if I’m honest.  Frankly though, I think I deserve it after the effort put into the Pictish Session, so fuck you if you have an issue with that.  Tee hee.  There’s a lot of new release stuff on here, a couple of bands reviewed recently on the site, and a couple who are going to be reviewed later this week.  Next week I’ll think of a theme. Promise.

Toadcast #63 – Sprrring is Here!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. The Soft Pack – Right & Wrong (01.33)
02. Maxwell Panther – A Shade Away (08.24)
03. Phil & the Osophers – They Threw a Shoe at You (11.16)
04. The Felice Brothers – The Big Surprise (15.34)
05. The Empty Set – Alice & Bob (Forlorn Photo Love) (24.01)
06. The Van Allen Belt – The Revolution Will be Merchandised (27.24)
07. Meursault (no, not that Meursault) – Blindfolds (33.31)
08. Outlaw Con Bandana – Rainy Season (37.16)
09. Dame Satan – Ghost Dance (39.25)
10. Peter Doherty – 1939 Returning (49.30)

I enjoyed the video at the bottom of this page, although it’s a little long for most internet attention spans.  In it filmmaker Kevin Smith, of Clerks, Dogma and Chasing Amy fame, to name but a few, talks about how obsessively he used to read all his internet reviews, right down to the comments.  This is quite rare, or at least it was until recently, because most people still tended to treat internet criticism as a distant and very poor relation to its more salubrious and established cousins.

The problem with taking it seriously is of course, well, where do you stop?  It’s like being able to overhear every last pub conversation about your work that has ever taken place.  Not one single human being talks complete, considered sense all of the time and before you even get into whether or not you want to bother agreeing with someone or not just imagine how many times you yourself just don’t quite express yourself properly.  Instead of disappearing into the air, being re-stated slightly better, or just mitigated with a shrug of the shoulders this stuff now sits there in black and white for all eternity, staring you down on the screen.

The Soft Pack – Right and Wrong (How I wish these guys were still called The Muslims.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Then there’s whether or not you really want to bother.  As he sort of mentions, would you ever want to hear every last conversation about you which was had by anyone who’d ever met you, no matter how brief?  Christ, the number of people out there saying that I, for example, am a bit of a dick would be enormous.  Face it, most people don’t like you that much.  Think how many people you like, then subtract it from the five or six billion people in the world.  Think about how many bands, or films, you like and then subtract that from the total number of bands or films which have ever existed.

For some reason, because things are in black and white, including both the comments and the posts on this site, people seem to vest them with more importance than they merit, whereas they are the musical equivalent of a pub conversation.  The table might be a little bigger for those sites with a large audience, but how many of us would your average band or fan even bother to disagree with if they overhead us publically not liking their band in a bar somewhere?  Probably very few.  I know the internet has made these conversations much more public than they used to be, but they are still just ordinary conversations.

Kevin Smith: