THIS WEEK IS THE MOTHERFUCKING SONG. BY TOAD CHRISTMAS PARTY!  OH YES IT IS! And isn’t that jolly exciting.  You’d best all be very excited indeed or I will be most upset – I’m a sensitive soul after all! I’ve also just realised that although I ordered tickets, I forgot to take them down to Avalanche, because I am a fool, so I will do that today.  And you can buy them online too remember.

However, firstly, a spot of boasting, if that’s okay.  I know I just did this last week but a couple of things have come up which are rather good, so umm… well, I’ll keep it brief.

Firstly, Song, by Toad has been voted joint third favourite music blog, along with Gorilla vs Bear, in the music bloggers’ favourite music blogs poll 2011, as conducted by the Recommender.  Strangely enough, I finished level with GvB last year as well, although we were joint fourth, but we were also behind a second-placed Pigeons & Planes too, which gives this year’s list an oddly familiar look.

And Secondly, The Scotsman asked me to write an article for them about ‘A Year in Toad’, or something like that, this weekend, and the results can be read here.  It’s odd how editing the writing as brutally as I had to to fit it into the 900 word limit changes the feel of it.  I am not sure if I didn’t try and cram too much stuff in there, at the expense of that friendly, readable style I generally aim for.  Still, not a bad discipline to engage in every once in a while.

It’s odd though, because they barely changed what I submitted, albeit a couple of changes which seem oddly meaningless. In the first paragraph ‘in our living room’ was changed to ‘in the living room of my Edinburgh home’ which, despite sounding somewhat constipated and wrong when those particular words are put in my mouth, also seems like an oddly inefficient way to get the information across when they could have just added the word ‘Edinburgh’ before ‘indie label’ in the intro bit they put at the top.

So it was nice that they changed so little, but the changes they made were a little baffling. In almost every case it was just a marginally different way of saying what I had already said.  So none of it was at all bad – the changes weren’t really better or worse – but it was a little odd, because it mostly seemed needless. The only reason I even mention it is because I don’t exactly write for grown up publications a lot, so I am still kind of fascinated by the process.

Anyway, the ramping up of the Christmas boozemageddon continues this week, with plenty of gigs and far too many opportunities to get yourself into a drunken mess.

Monday 5th Dec: Franz Nicolay, Chris T-T & Billy Liar at the Banshee Labyrinth.

I don’t know much about this, but it looks like it might be rather interesting. Nicolay used to play piano in The Hold Steady, and you can still hear a lot of that kind of stuff in his solo material.  Nevertheless, it clearly has its own character, maybe a little more frenzied and tangential than the conversational realism of Hold Steady stuff, so this could be a really interesting gig.

Tuesday 6th Dec: Broken Records, The Douglas Firs & R.M. Hubbert at Cabaret Voltaire.

Broken Records will be test driving some new songs, which is exciting enough, and with The Douglas Firs and R.M. Hubbert also booked, this bill is an absolute corker.

Broken Records – Modern Worksong

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Friday 9th Dec: John Knox Sex Club at the National Portrait Gallery.

The John Knox Sex Club were described to me as the best live band in Scotland, and after their Ides of Toad gig with Easter and Fuzzystar, I can’t disagree.  It was brilliant, and they are in Edinburgh again on Friday at the National Portrait Gallery, playing at the launch for a book called Rough Cut Nation.

Saturday 10th Dec: Song, by Toad Records Christmas Party at the St. Stephen’s Centre.

With a couple of exceptions we will have every band on the label playing on Saturday. Lil Daggers and Trips and Falls are across the pond, The Savings and Loan don’t really play live, particularly, and Charlie from King Post Kitsch has had to go down to London for work-related reasons.  Other than that, we are all present and accounted for, so please join us for a day (and evening) spent celebrating our year’s work with increasing levels of drunkenness.

I keep fretting about over-pimping my commercial enterprises on this blog, but I really should just stop worrying.  Putting on live shows is not much more than an extension of me insisting on telling you what sort of music to listen to, so really there’s not much difference between haranguing you about your buying habits and haranguing you about what you do in your free time really, is there.

So, after a fantastic gig with The Last Battle, Dad Rocks! and Shoes and Socks Off, and a brilliant day in Anstruther with Hott Toadzzz! it’s probably time to give you a wee nudge about our last five gigs of 2011.  Yes, you heard that right, five more still to come before that Post Alcoholic Stress Disorder sleep prescription taken by all Scots on the 1st and 2nd of January every year.

For those of you who want tickets in advance, which would be nice, you can get them at Avalanche Records on the Grassmarket or online from Brown Paper Tickets.

Saturday 19th November 2011: Gummy Stumps, Weird Era & Battery Face at the Wee Red Bar.

This will be a noisy one, and it also just happens to be my birthday so I warn you, I will be getting fucking shitfaced.  Weird Era are travelling up from Manchester, and will be joined by Gummy Stumps, who I thought were amazing at Retreat! this year, and Battery Face, who I was introduced to by Alastair from the excellent Deathpodal.

Weird Era – Summer Heights

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Sunday 27th November 2011: Withered Hand (solo), Samantha Crain & Mike MacFarlane at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

Samantha Crain was originally introduced to me by Campfires and Battlefields, and I interviewed her at Pickathon back in 2008, back when I was embarrassingly new to interviewing. Since then she’s continued to release amazing stuff, and is finally able to make it to Edinburgh for a gig.  She’ll be joined by local favourite Withered Hand, and the fella who caught my, umm, ear the most at this year’s Antihoot – Mike MacFarlane.

Samantha Crain – We Are the Same

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Mike MacFarlane – Waltz

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Saturday 10th December 2011: Song, by Toad Records Christmas Party at the St. Stephens Centre.

I don’t have to tell you that this will just be a big, warm and fuzzy celebration of another year of sweary fun and generally releasing commercially inviable and eye-wateringly amazing records. Take that, music! Oh, and it will be both BYOB and child friendly, although I suspect the latter part will become progressively less true as the night goes on and I get more and more plastered.

Sunday 18th December 2011: The Black Tambourines, Joanna Gruesome & Dolfinz at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This will be loud and messy and awesome. Three young bands who make a racket and write bloody great pop songs. It’s on a Sunday, I know, but let’s face absolutely no-one is going to be doing any serious work that week are they?

The Black Tambourines – A Lot of Friends

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Joanna Gruesome – Sugarcrush

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Dolfinz – Coral Reefer

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Saturday 31st December 2011: Song, by Toad New Year’s House Gig at umm… our house.

We don’t have tickets available for this yet, and the lineup is unconfirmed, but well, I just thought I’d let you know that it would be happening. We’ll get two sets of live music, wander into Inverleith Park with some champagne to watch the fireworks, and then get drunk and play loud music until the last person gives in.

I have to confess I wasn’t exactly planning this, but it looks like we have a new member of the team here at Song, by Toad Records.

Ian Greenhill used to write Have Fun at Dinner, as well as reviews for plenty of respectable publications too.

On a personal level, despite the fact he was clearly as mad as a sack of spanners, I always thought Ian was one of the best writers knocking around the Scottish blogosphere, and when he started writing features where he took local musicians shopping for secondhand records, and then discussed their purchases afterwards, I became downright envious that I had never thought to do something like that myself.

Anyhow, given his skills are being exploited by no-one more worthy than high street retail at the moment, a short pub conversation has resulted in him coming on board here at Song, by Toad Records.  The idea is that he will start writing for the site as and when he feels inclined, as well as helping us with radio plugging, PR work, and distribution.

I’m also hoping he can get involved in improving the blog, allowing us to do more interviews, writing about a slightly different kind of music, and stuff like that.  Basically I am at the limit of what I personally can do at the moment, but for all I have always been very wary of taking someone on, Ian is someone I genuinely trust to write well, to approach people the right way, to dig up interesting music, and basically to represent the label and the blog the way I personally feel it should be represented.

I also think he’ll be able to perform that incredibly tricky balancing act of bringing his own personality to what we’re doing here, whilst not making anything feel all that different, which is a bit of a challenge. So yes, please make the lad welcome and so on and so forth, because I am delighted to have him on board.

 As a record label, your relationships with your bands are a near infinite source of puzzlement, frustration, affection, admiration, and exhaustion.

What amazes me as much as anything is that no matter how well you think you know someone, when you offer to release their records you realise very quickly that you really were only just scratching the surface.  Aspects to people’s characters come out so strongly when you effectively take their baby off them, and try your best to pimp it to the indifferent public and the scurrilous press.

Every band seems to secretly suspect that they might be shit at the same time they think they might have possibly made the best album ever.  This polarised we’re awful/we’re awesome self-image is pretty standard for most artists I think, but it can make people somewhat challenging to actually work with efficiently.

One of the first things I try and do as soon as the possibility of working with a new artist arises is go through absolutely everything we do, and show them the entire process for releasing records, so there is as little mystery in it as possible.  Then, to paraphrase Al from (the awesome) Armellodie Records, I tell them that all they can really expect from us in terms of PR results will be “quite a few blogs, probably The List and The Skinny, a few plays on 6Music and a review in Mojo if we’re lucky”.  In my previous life as a design engineer expectation management was absolutely crucial to the client/consultant relationship and it’s something I have tried my best to bring with me into the world of music.

Nevertheless, people continue to make me laugh and cry in equal measure.  Band A might want to approve every last aspect of every last item of their press pack, for example, but because Band B basically had no idea or interest in how that side of things worked I could easily have just gone ahead and done all sorts of things Band A might not want, just because I am used to being left to get on with it.

Band N might be so shy of talking about themselves that all I can get out of them for the press release is an awkward sentence or two about who in the band plays what instruments, whereas Band O might inundate me with reams of prose which I have to somehow hack down into a single page for easy journalistic consumption.

Because Band Y only signed with us in the first place because they liked the full roster of bands we worked with and were really pleased to be part of it, I might end up annoying Band X by talking about all our other projects all the time.

Because Band S didn’t really know anything about the process of releasing a record, I might slip into the habit of simply going away and doing everything by myself as soon as they hand over the finished album, but that might utterly infuriate Band R, who want to learn and make a contribution and feel like they are part of the whole process.

I might horrify Band A by taking liberties with their artwork, but often that’s because Bands B and C didn’t really care about the artwork as long as it looked nice – their job is simply the music, after all, isn’t it?

I have bands who have been quietly unimpressed with the results of their PR campaigns, and bands who have been thrilled with the same results.  Bands who are always looking to achieve more, and bands who are happy enough simply pottering along and making some music as and when they feel like it without me putting them under pressure to be commercially successful.

I have bands who want to make a career out of it, bands who want to just show up every once in a while with some recordings and let me get on with releasing them, bands who would like to make a career out of it but aren’t even slightly willing to make any of the compromises needed in order to do so, bands who want to see the whole project as a work of art in itself and yet still want to sell it for less than a tenner, bands who want to play every gig going, bands who will never play, bands who want to play every festival one year and then realise they hate it and wonder why they’re being asked to play all these festivals, bands who secretly want to make pop music, and bands who delight in absolutely confounding their listeners.

You name it, we have pretty much one of everything here at Song, by Toad Records.  It’s an often hilarious, and often utterly baffling game of cat-herding, and try as I might I can’t really find many unifying qualities between the bands or the people on our label.  I suppose they’re almost all stubborn fuckers who are absolutely determined that they want to quietly and awkwardly go about things in their own way, and fuck everything else, but that might be the only thing that this motley crew of weird characters has in common at all.

So yes, whilst the practical side of being a label is relatively straighforward, and can be done well by more or less anyone who is organised, hard-working and persistent, the human side of it is hilariously chaotic.  See that picture of Arnold in Kindergarten Cop up the top there?  Pretty much like that, except at least there’s some hope the kids in that picture will grow up some day.  As Mrs. Toad says whenever anyone asks us if, being in our mid-thirties and having been married for five years, we’re considering having children:

“Kids?  Why would we need kids; we’ve got bands!”

This is a bit of a multi-nepotism full house plug-o-rama, so apologies but um… well, just tough shit really.  Sorry.

Location Music is a new online music video thing, much like Off the Beaten Tracks and many other similar enterprises, and has been started by a couple of pals of mine here in Edinburgh.  Given they’ve kicked things off with a couple of bands I rate very highly indeed I thought I’d take the opportunity to say hello and let you know they are there.

The first, above, obviously includes a degree of self-interest due to Meursault being on Song, by Toad Records.  I believe Settling is going to be on the new album, but you never know with that lot, and I doubt it will sound anything like the rather nice acoustic version above if it does end up making the cut.

Secondly, below, we have the rather awesome Glasgow face-melters Paws.  I have only seen them once, and I was a little drunk, so I’ll be a little circumspect for now, but from what I saw I was rather excited.  And Teenage Breeding translates surprisingly well to the acoustic format, don’t you reckon?

Our Portland pals Loch Lomond have a couple of new releases coming up, so I thought it was time we featured them again on Song, by Toad because it’s been a while.

The first is the split 12″ which is out on Song, by Toad Records this coming Monday, and the second is their brand new EP – their first new material for a couple of years.

The split 12″ was recorded in conjunction with the Builders & the Butchers – another considerable Toad favourite – and is being given a UK release by us in partnership with Bladen County Records in Portland.  The artwork is from a hand-drawn biro sketch by my good self, and printed onto nice tactile paper so it should be nice and touchy-feely to handle, which is how all physical releases should be.

The new EP is out in early November, and will be properly reviewed at the time, but they are clearly going for a more swoonsome, poppier sound after the slight undercurrent of unease which brought an intangible darkness to their earlier recordings.  The EP has four new songs, and a re-recording of Spine, from their gorgeous Lament For Children EP, which is a good few years old now.  Their PR chappies have sent out Wax & Wire as a taster for now, and I’ve included the old version of Spine, just for fun.  The sound is definitely moving on, but I really like the sound of the new stuff, so that can only be a good thing.

Loch Lomond – Wax & Wire

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Loch Lomond – Spine (The old version)

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Loch Lomond MySpace

It’s been a while since we had an update on exactly what on Earth is going on at Song, by Toad Records, so I thought I might let you all know what our plans are for the rest of the year.  Partly for shits and giggles, partly because I am really excited, and partly as a desperate marketing ploy to wear you down by constant repetition into accepting that everything we ever release will be the best thing you have ever heard in the world.

It will be, you know.

So, in chronological order, here’s an brief outline of our release schedule for the rest of the year, although some of it is still a little undefined and a couple of things are still being negotiated.  We’ll be popping a label sampler in the Avalanche album club soon, so anyone subscribed to that will get a nice CD taster of what we’re planning to get up to between now and Christmas.  For the rest of you, that taste will come in digital form, below:

Jesus H. Foxx – Matter

We are planning a release party for their Matter EP on the re-opening of the Bowery in mid-September, but I told you all about this quite recently, so that’s all I’ll put in here.
Jesus H. Foxx – Trying to Be Good.mp3

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Loch Lomond & The Builders and the Butchers – Split 12″

This is being released in partnership with Matt from Bladen County Records.  We love both these bands anyway, and they were the most amazingly lovely people to hang out with when we were in Portland last year, and even offered to allow us to release this over here.  The muppets never sent me the artwork though, so I’ve used one of my own drawings, which I also really like.  And it’s our first vinyl release, which is just fucking exciting in itself.  The vinyl itself is just being made now, so it will be out in a month or so.
Loch Lomond – Elephants & Little Girls

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Maxwell Panther – Do You Feel Different Yet?

Maxwell’s recordings are rough as hell, but his songwriting is bloody great.  I genuinely don’t know what people are going to make of this, but I love it, so I decided not to second-guess myself too much.  I like it, so it’s being released.
Maxwell Panther – Tip of the Tongue (The Quiet One)

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Meursault 7″ singles.

We’re releasing two double a-side singles on white vinyl in the Autumn, with William Henry Miller Parts 1 and 2 paired with The Furnace and The Dirt & the Roots respectively.  The band are just putting the finishing touches to the new versions of the Williams Henry Miller, and we’re looking at release dates in October for these.  Meursault vinyl.  Fucking yes!

The Savings and Loan

The Savings and Loan are my friend Martin Donnelly and former De Rosa pianist Andrew Bush, and they self-released an EP of gloomy Scottish Winter music last year.  Currently they’re fleshing it out into a full album, and have specifically decided to release it in mid-November as that’s the season they think it suits the best.  And I think they’re right.
The Savings and Loan – The Virgin’s Lullaby

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Inspector Tapehead – Duress Code

The band are still working on this, but Jonnie has news to deliver when he plays his Trampoline gig on Saturday – which is where I first heard Inspector Tapehead, funnily enough, and Meursault come to think of it.  They don’t exactly work at pace, these lads, but I love the results so I don’t really care how it all comes to pass.  I can’t tell you much about artwork or release dates or anything like that, but I reckon this should be out by the end of the year too, hopefully.
Inspector Tapehead – I am Your Pedigree (There are supposed to be naughty words in this song.  Where have they gone, boys, eh?)

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Trips & Falls – He Was Such a Quiet Boy

This is far from certain just yet, and I don’t want to jinx anything, but I am talking to Jacob and the band about a UK release for what is pretty much my favourite album of 2009 so far, give or take a best guess here and there.  We’ll see what they say, but I would be fucking chuffed if they wanted to release this on Song, by Toad because I think it’s weird and brilliant.
Trips & Falls – How Do You Do

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Enfant Bastard

Cammy is erratic, I suppose, and I don’t love everything he does, but I do love a fuck of a lot of it.  In general though I reckon the moments of clarity far outweigh the times it doesn’t quite come together, and anyone who’s prepared to let the times when they don’t quite get it pass them by and wait a little for it to click is going to be rewarded. As with Trips & Falls, this is hardly a done deal, but I’ve told Cammy I’d love to release the next album he wants to really put out there, so I just have to wait and hope he takes me up on it.
Enfant Bastard – Landscape Painting is Easy

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I am going to be a busy, busy boy, it appears.

It’s weird for me to be reviewing a record which is released on my own label, but inasmuch as it feels a little strange, it would in many ways be even stranger for me not to be reviewing Nothing Broke just because it’s on Song, by Toad Records.  So, erm, somewhat vested interests noted, let’s proceed.

For a lot of Meursault fans I think this EP will be most notable for the appearance of live favourite William Henry Miller Pt.1 – on an official release at long last.  For me, this is less the case for this song than it is for the title track itself.  The first four songs I ever heard by Meursault were demo versions of The Furnace, Lament for a Teenage Millionaire, Salt Pt.2 and Nothing Broke on their MySpace page just less than two years ago, roughly.  I specifically requested it when they performed their Toad Session almost a year ago – a sparse, lovely version itself – and I am thrilled to see it finally released into the wild, where it belongs.

Initially, this was supposed to be a mini-album including a lot of acoustic versions of songs from their album, but as it was recorded that concept receded somewhat.  According to the band it just seemed right to keep it all new material, although this does mean that there is a stunning version of Salt Pt.1 out there still waiting to be mixed.

Consequently, Nothing Broke ended up being far shorter than it was strictly intended to be, but this makes it lean as fuck: there is no flab on this whatsoever – not a whiff of filler anywhere.  In fact, although it might lack some of the thunderous noise which is apparently coming our way on the second album, it is an amazingly coherent, whole piece of work.  It works perfectly as a group of songs, some of which are the best I’ve heard in fucking years.

Red Candle Bulb is something of a Bear Scotland effort in that, for all it was largely written by Dan from Withered Hand, Neil from Meursault and Cammy from Enfant Bastard made their own contributions to the tune.  I’ve known of this recording of it – in my eyes the definitive one, although that opinion may be a little controversial – for some time and it’s another one I am glad to finally have see the light of day.  In fact, given how well-known W.H.M. Pt1 is as well, the only really new songs to me on hearing this were Love or Limb and the splendidly morose finale, William Henry Miller Pt.2.

How well these integrate into the better known stuff is impressive.  The emotional trajectory of the EP as a whole seems perfectly judged.  Love or Limb is the centre of the work, and the third in a surprisingly varied opening trio of rather dismal laments.  Nothing Broke, for all the band may insist it is a funny song, is nevertheless musically rather splendidly downbeat.  This mood shifts into the wryly humorous self-deprecation of Red Candle Bulb, and then the flirtation with country which flavours Love or Limb, before the dark cloud is brilliantly exploded by the jaunty clap-along of William Henry Miller Pt.1.  It’s perfectly judged – any more and it could all become a little depressing, but this song brings something of a release, allowing us to really wallow in the most miserable tune of the lot last of all.

Albums are by their nature often more sprawling, and now that there is expectation I would imagine the second record might be difficult to pull off with such ease, so to my mind I doubt there will be a more perfect, self-contained release for some time.  I really do think that this is an astoundingly good piece of work, dubious as that may sound coming from someone with a vested interest in its success.  That’s genuinely what I think, though.

Meursault – Nothing Broke

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Meursault – Nothing Broke (Demo)

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Meursault – Nothing Broke (Toad Session)

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Song, by Toad Records

Meursault recently went on a world tour of Northern England – well, actually, they played three dates over the course of a long weekend, but it was their first proper tour, so it counts.  I gave them the small camera we use for the Toad Sessions and asked them to make something of a tour diary, not really expecting all that much.  Realistically, I should have realised just how boring most of your time is when touring as a band, and perhaps expected the enormous amount of footage they ended up bringing back with them.  We’ve got all sorts, from crazy rants to bizarre days out in Blackpool and impromptu sessions performed in the back of the Toad Van.

So we made one main video of the tour itself, which is the first one, and then we’ve sprinkled in the individual song videos from the various sessions after that.  You can either watch everything through that little widget above, or alternatively I’ve embedded them all below the fold.  Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve not had a bloody good Toad Night for a while, so it really is about time one was on the immediate horizon.  And it is!  Next Thursday – a week tomorrow at time of writing – I have put together a lineup for Tigerfest which is sort of not really a Song, by Toad Records showcase.

Meursault, obviously, aren’t bad at all, but you know them already.  They have a new EP out, did you know that?  Available only from Avalanche Records, live shows and from the Song, by Toad Records site.

Meursault – Nothing Broke

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Inspector Tapehead are a band I rate very highly, and we are talking to them about releasing their album later this year, once they get it finished.  This isn’t definite yet, but I am very much up for it so fingers crossed and all that.

Inspector Tapehead – Listen With Your Ears, but Look Through a Telescope

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The Japanese War Effort are currently working with Fabrikant and have a new EP out called King of Poland but, erm, well I really like what they (he, really: Jamie Scott) are doing so bugger it.

Japanese War Effort – Winning Eleven

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The whole business is going to cost you a fiver, which is a fucking bargain, frankly, and will be happening at the Toad’s venue of choice: The Bowery on Roxburgh Place.  Doors are at about half seven, and the bar closes at eleven, so don’t be too tardy.  Hope to see you there.