The Let’s Get Lyrical campaign was born of a desire to combine Edinburgh’s status as an official City of Literature, with Glasgow’s as a City of Music.  There are events being held throughout February and it will come as no surprise to discover that they are a bit of a step up from the dreary indie pish I usually feature on these pages.

As you can imagine, there are an awful lot of scholarly things that can be written about this topic and, as you can probably also imagine, you aren’t going to read them here.  Nothing about all the value of oral traditions, the role of lyrics in folk music, or even the emotional impact of the details of the lyrics versus the more abstract emotions generated by the music – I have stuff to say about all of these things, but I am down visiting my folks in London at the moment, so settling in to write an essay would be considered somewhat uncouth, I suspect.

Instead, I have picked six fairly random songs by six of my favourite lyricists, and will write just a little bit about why they resonate with me so much.  I find it amazing how important I can find lyrics – to the extent that I would suggest that music can make you love a song, but only lyrics can make it a part of your soul – and yet there are vast swathes of my music collection where I am neither aware of, nor particularly interested in the lyrics.  A lot of the time they’re just plain indecipherable, and in the absence of liner notes in the digital age, tracking them down seems like an awful lot of work and I rarely do it; I doubt I am alone.

What it tends to take is a particular hook.  I hear a phrase which snags me, and then I am pulled in.  But for a lot of music I am happy enough for that not to happen, and just to enjoy the tunes.  When you really do connect with the lyrics, though, the impact of a song changes totally.

Eef Barzelay – The Ballad of Bitter Honey (Amazon)

Eef Barzelay, whether with Clem Snide or solo, has written some of the best, cleverest, wryest, most cutting lyrics I have ever heard.  This is the man responsible for the phrase ‘the root canal music of a prom night disaster’, but this song might just be his greatest.  Written from the point of view of a dancer whose ‘ass you saw bouncing next to Ludacris’ it manages to create the portrait of a sweet natured, shallow girl trying her very, very best to wring some sense of self-worth out of life, and failing.  Horribly.  It manages a particularly remarkable trick of being at once utterly excoriating in its description of the mores of the modern world, and yet tenderly sympathetic of the person who both embodies them and bears their burden.  So much sympathy and so much rage.  But that’s Eef Barzelay for you.

Eef Barzelay – The Ballad of Bitter Honey

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Barton Carroll – Shadowman (Amazon)

I don’t know how closely this song draws from real life, but this is a portrait of an over-shadowed, jealous and weak younger brother so well constructed and harrowing as to make me feel a little bit sick every time I hear it. As I have written many times before when describing this song, the absence of any shred of redemption is just plain merciless.  Very few people in pop music seem to have the sensitivity to construct such a believable relationship and such a real protagonist as this, and yet also the courage to eschew the mandatory happy ending.  It really is a brutally nasty, mean song.

Barton Carroll – Shadowman

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Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost (Amazon)

Songdog are a different kettle of fish.  Their lyrics are cryptic, clever and acerbic.  I remember listening to the start of this song, tum-te-tumming along, and suddenly doing a double-take.  ’What the fuck did they just say?’  I rewound the song and yes, they really did sing: “I’m nobody special, but I give pretty good head.” Songdog do this all the time.  They are dark, horribly (by which, of course, I mean awesomely) cynical and you always get the impression that you are a step or two behind what they are trying to tell you.  There’s such resignation to the music that this never seems pretentious or condescending however, just the work of a band who are woefully underappreciated and seem to have stopped expecting you to get it.

Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost

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Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy (Amazon)

I must be one of thousands of young men who heard this song and thought ‘Fucking hell, that was me!  I am the Saturday Boy!’ Billy Bragg does this all the time, particularly in his early work, and this is far from alone in its ability to absolutely and utterly nail what it feels like to be male and lacking in both sexual confidence and skills.  Almost every man I know has in his past a girl on whom they had the most unspeakable crush and who, for all she may have enjoyed our company as much as the attention, had about as much intention of going out with us as she did of flying to the moon.  The closing line sums it up so well: “While she was giving herself for free/ At a party to which I was never invited”.  People think of Bragg as a bit of a caricature of himself these days, but that’s massively unfair.  Political songs aside, his love songs show a writer more gifted than anyone I know at taking all sorts of complex emotions, and entanglements and distilling them into a single line, full of warmth, a bit of humour and, most of all, the knowledge that he absolutely, undoubtedly Got It.

Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy

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The Mountain Goats – Dance Music (Amazon)

I am not a particularly committed fan of Darnielle’s wider canon, but The Sunset Tree is a stone cold classic.  There are a lot of tender, heartwarming  and heartbreaking moments on the record, but one of those stop-dead-in-your-tracks moments occurs early in this short, perfect song.  Coming from a stable family background as I do, I would never be so stupid as to suggest that I can really grasp the kind of domestic horror described here: “I’m in the living room watching the Watergate hearings/ while my step father yells at my mother./ launches a glass across the room, straight at her head/ and I dash upstairs to take cover./ lean in close to my little record player on the floor./ so this is what the volume knob’s for.” It is short, direct, unflinching and does what all great writing should: finds not just details, but the one crucial detail.  I remember that one short verse bringing me so much clarity: the violence, the fear, the intense relationship with music.  I am sure I still don’t entirely grasp what this kind of life is really like, but this song has done more for my understanding than any advertising campaign or newspaper article I have ever come across.

The Mountain Goats – Dance Music

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Tom Waits – Fish and Bird (Amazon)

In this particular case, it is not so much just about the lyrics themselves, as the personal context.  I bought Alice just as Mrs. Toad and I were getting together and listened to it constantly.  She lived in Edinburgh, I in London, and we went back and forth every couple of weeks – it was a rather improbable romance in many ways, but a complete whirlwind nevertheless.  It was pretty obvious to both of us, I think, that this was something special, but as the months wore on it slowly became clearer and clearer that resolving our geographical problem was going to be a very, very significant challenge.  Mrs. Toad was a touch more spooked by this than I was and the relationship suddenly became very, very shaky indeed – you know when you can hear the tension in someone’s voice and you know that something is up, even if you can’t dig the details out of them. Anyway, after Christmas of the first year of our relationship she decided she couldn’t face it and packed it all in, putting an end to over a month of looming unease which had taken the shine off eight months of thrilled, giddy romance.  Fortunately for me (and her I suppose) she saw the error of her ways two or three months later and came crawling (hey, this is my story, so that’s how I’m telling it okay – so what if it wasn’t exactly crawling per se, but I digress…) back.  However, in those months before she saw sense I was trying to come to terms with the fact that it seemed I had lost the girl I was absolutely certain I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  And I drank gin and listened to this song.  A lot.

Tom Waits – Fish and Bird

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And now, drum roll please for the final installment of Song, by Toad’s Festive Fifty for 2010.  Woo hoo!  I am sure Liars, The National and Micah P. Hinson will be breaking out the champagne at the excellent news.  Ah well, at least The Japanese War Effort and Li’l Daggers might give a shit.

01. Liars – Scissor When this song breaks it is absolutely fucking fearsome, and it is absolutely all I can do to stop myself leaping around the room and breaking stuff, no matter when or where I am or what time of day it is.  And this is about all I need to say about the matter.

02. Micah P. Hinson – My God, My God Just utterly, utterly beautiful, with a carefree little string coda rendered completely heartbreaking by the content of the song.  Three albums of sheer genius and one that was pretty damn good – why is this man not infinitely more famous?

03. The National – England It’s not as obvious, but the piano opening of this track is every bit as emotionally gripping as Fake Empire, once it properly sinks in.  And the build is so, so slow that by the time the brass kicks in you feel like you’ve been waiting for an age.  It reminds me of Elbow’s glorious Station Approach in that sense: some of the most euphoric depressing music ever made!

04. The Japanese War Effort – Summer Sun Skateboard First the guitar is really good, then the harmony vocals are fucking lovely, then the massively scratchy lead vocal is fucking great, then the glockenspiel is fucking superb, and then half way through it peaks, and takes the rest of the song to slowly drift into a blissed out coma.

05. Micah P. Hinson – Seven Horses Seen It’s easy to explain this one: just listen to the lyrics.  Hinson can be unflinchingly fucking brutal in his writing, and this is just another example of it.  That it goes, again, hand in hand with some truly beautiful music makes it all the more poignant.

06. Jason Lytle – D.U.I. BBQ Checkpoint Officer number two is talking to the driver of the car who just pulled into the D.U.I. barbecue checkpoint. “Good evening sir, have you been drinking tonight?” “Hell yeah officer!  I cracked my first beer this morning at nine and I’m wasted right now.  Any of you fucking pigs wanna fight?’

07. Songdog – 3.30am (Small Talk) I could fill an entire review with Songdog lyrics which make me do a double-take, but let that not detract from the wry, laid back music, performed as if with one eyebrow raised and here rendered even more lovely by the conversational duet.

08. Liars – Scarecrows on a Killer Slant Erm, this is Liars again, and unlike Scissor, which makes you beg for it, this is just loud and feral.  I don’t really need to justify this choice any more than that, do I?

09. The Walkmen – Blue as Your Blood The rhythm which underpins this has you ready for the song to break, ages before they finally let it happen about two thirds of the way through.  Hamilton Leithauser has one of the most yearning voices I’ve heard, and this is my highlight from yet another great album by one of the more under-appreciated bands around.

10. Li’l Daggers – King Korpze I’ve been loving my scuzzy, garagey guitar pop this year and this four song EP is as good as I’ve heard. Picking this ahead of Ya Tu Sabe or Hungry may be a bit arbitrary, but something from here was always going on.

Click here to download all these songs in one zip file.

1-10 | 11-30 | 31-50

6. Jason Lytle – Music Meant to Accompany the Art of Ron Cameron

There are many reasons I love this album, not least of which the fact that I have been waiting for Jason Lytle to give us something weird and challenging for ages now.  In the end this isn’t an album written for purpose, more a cleaning out of the odder corners of his store cupboard, but nevertheless the result is an album bursting with ideas, be they entirely finished or not, and hence one I find more lively, engaging and enjoyable than any of the more sensible and polished work Lytle has worked on in the last six or seven years.

Jason Lytle – Liquid Hyper Tweeker Energy Drinks

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7. David Tattersall – Happy For a While

For an album released with so little fanfare (i.e. almost none at all), this is absolutely brilliant.  In my review I said that there is a part of me looking forward to the Wave Pictures dishing out a good solid beating to their guitars again, but this album, which is far more acoustic, shows that they (yes, I know, but Tattersall is the main songwriter, so it almost counts) can go the other way with perfect results as well.  It’s not just the strength of the songwriting, almost a given when Mr. Tattersall is involved, but the variety of the arrangements which make this album so briliant, in my view.  For an album with such sparse instrumentation the shifts in pace and feel across the whole record are really nicely executed.  All in all, brilliant.

David Tattersall – Between My Ear and the Cradle

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8. Male Bonding – Nothing Hurts

A large part of me is rather hoping that 2011 will be the year guitar music batters its way back into my listening habits.  I have always had a taste for aggressive, rough guitar music, even though I don’t really hear that much which really appeals to me at the moment.  This is quite poppy and polished actually, but it’s thirteen equally cracking songs, half an hour long, and a loud, boisterous joy.  Beneath the garage punk aesthetic is an unmistakable hint of that period of British guitar music where indie was in the process of turning into Britpop, but without a lot of the affectations.  It’s almost as if this rollicking reinterpretation has produced an interpretation of that kind of music the hipsters might finally find acceptable.

Male Bonding – All Things This Way

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9. Songdog – A Life Eroding

I’ve known of this band for bloody years, but only now have they released an album I have managed to properly click with, and one which has sent me digging back through their back catalogue to see why it never quite happened earlier. It tails off a little towards the end, which is the only reason it is not in the top one or two.  Generally they write pretty miserable, dysfunctional songs, but they do it with a very acid wit which they are not afraid to turn against themselves if things feel like they are getting too earnest.  A great album from a band who have been around for a very long time and never received the credit I think they are due.

Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost

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10. The Books – The Way Out

This is very much an album-lovers’ album, as I would suppose you might expect from The Books.  I recently realised I never actually reviewed this on Song, by Toad, with the only reason being this: I bought this on vinyl immediately and have never listened to it anywhere near my computer, so it just never popped into my head.  This is symptomatic of my listening habits all year, and not in a bad way I think I can confidently state.  It’s on beautiful multi-colour flecked vinyl, and I sit down, listen to the whole thing and absorb everything from the great bits to the strange bits to the bits which are suspiciously similar to early Lemonjelly.  Probably not my favourite Books album, but one I listen to all the time.

The Books – Beautiful People

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On the drive back from Glasgow yesterday, after the second of Yusuf Azak’s three album launch gigs, the snow started absolutely horsing it down, to the extent that all the traffic slowed to a sensible single file at about thirty miles an hour, and all you could see was little red tail-lights in the white.

It was, if I am being entirely honest, pretty cool. Although of course that’s easy to say when you’re no more than twenty miles from home and in no actual danger.

Anyway, this morning it’s all turned icy outside and Mrs. Toad is complaining about the heating not being up to the job, so I think we can safely say that the rituals of Winter have begun! Hence, the Coldcast.

Direct download: Toadcast #150 – The Coldcast

01. The Mountain Goats – You or Your Memory (00.28)
02. The 63 Crayons – Devils (07.02)
03. The Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant (15.50)
04. Brown Brogues – I Just Don’t Know (19.07)
05. The Beatles – Dear Prudence (25.16)
06. Girl Problems – Sancho (31.49)
07. Thirty Pounds of Bone – A Lesson in Talking (41.21)
08. Willy Mason – Carry On (44.33)
09. Y Niwl – Dau (52.42)
10. Songdog – A Life Eroding (So Much Sorrow) (61.26)

I managed to miss last week’s Fresh Air show because… well I somehow failed to realise that the bloody station was back on the air, which is spectacularly dumb. This week I present Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show With Toad and a Little Bit Less Ruth Than Usual, or indeed any Ruth at all because the lovely herself can’t make it tonight, so you will be treated to the wonderful pleasure of listening to me burble on to myself about tunes and stuff and stuff and some tunes and then probably some more stuff just to cap it off.

Live on Air 8.30pm-10pm – Listen live here.

01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You, But Goodbye
02. Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us Now
03. The Left Banke – Evening Gown
04. Bettye Swann – Don’t Look Back
05. Lee Dorsey – My Old Car
06. The Scottish Enlightenment – All Homemade Things
07. Super Adventure Club – Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle
08. Sam Amidon – Fiddle Mayhem (Toad Session)
09. The Shaggs – What Are Parents
10. Nico Muhly – The Only Tune
11. Phil & the Osophers – Uses of a Man
12. David Tattersall – The Old Family
13. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge
14. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden
15. Songdog – Obediah’s Waltz

Next week we have the splendid Loch Lomond live in session, and to tide you over until then the videos from Mammoeth’s session on the show are below the jump.  The tracklisting for tonight’s show will appear below live as we go along, and feel free to heckle in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bloody hell, this album is fucking gorgeous!  I’ve been aware of Songdog ever since I Love My Angel’s Plastic Wings appeared on an Uncut compilation CD something like eight or nine years ago, and I’ve tried to get into their albums a couple of times since and never quite succeeded.

They’ve always felt a bit ponderous, honestly, although they have also felt like the kind of albums which take a bit of time and attention to get into, and I must confess that I’ve never really given them what felt like enough of either. It’s weird that you can spend so long – nine years! – kinda flirting with a band, but never quite crossing the room and asking them to dance.

Songdog – I Love My Angel’s Plastic Wings

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This record, on the other hand was instantaneous.  The first time I listened to it my grin just broadened over the first three or four songs, and then settled down into a smug smile over the course of the rest of the album.  I have finally clicked with Songdog; back catalogue, here I come.

What’s the difference?  Well I don’t know, maybe it’s just my state of mind, but there is a wonderfully light touch to this record.  It’s got a shitload more going on than I remember with this band, but those richer arrangements have been applied in such a confident, well judged manner that it actually feels like there is less here – it’s less dense, less cloying, and much livelier.  It’s almost as if by adding something they’ve been able to take something away.

It’s the strings which really make an impression on this album.  Songdog have always produced pretty downtempo music, with a sort of indulgently slow pace and thick atmosphere, but the strings here are absolutely gorgeous, and seem to be able to lift the lighter moments, and bring a kind of solace to the moments of pathos which the band haven’t, to my scant knowledge, quite achieved before.  There are even trumpet solos; sad ones, I’ll grant you, but trumpet solos!

Then there’s the lyrics.  From the start Songdog have been adept at moaning away about how shit and ordinary life is, in the most maudlin possible manner, and then dropping in the kind of turn of phrase that stops you in your tracks.  I have not infrequently found myself rewinding their songs just to check that I really did hear what I think I just heard; did they really just sing “I’m nobody special, but I give pretty good head”?  Why yes, yes they fucking did.

These moments work like a ukulele strum, in that they are like a chink in the clouds, bringing necessary moments of levity to lyrics which are generally quite cynical and full of the woes of everyday ordinary lives.  With the more expansive arrangements they’ve been able to bring that same light touch to the music as well, and the result is an album which is an absolute joy, and makes me feel a bit stupid for not having made enough time for this band years ago.

Songdog – 3.30am (Small Talk)

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Songdog – An Old Man’s Love

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from One Little Indian

It’s been a very, very long time since we had a nice simple podcast of me just chattering about music without extraneous distractions of various drunken people babbling to one another over the top of it.

Last week was Ruth, Michael and Dylan, the week before that was Vic and Peej, then me and Mrs. Toad and then there was the one from Homegame, which was nuts, so this one is just calm and sensible and plain vanilla and basically just me playing some songs, wondering how to pronounce names like Borcherdt, and talking pish like usual.

Next week will be the Mumford & Sons Toad Session, which is nice.

Toadcast #116 – The Dead Calmcast

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01. The Van Allen Belt – The Way You Look (02:14)
02. Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost (08.50)
03. Over the Wall – Settle Down (16.56)
04. Deathpodal – Squirrel and the Fox (20.55)
05. Brian Borcherdt – While I was Asleep (28.27)
06. Emit Bloch – Dorothy (34.34)
07. David Thomas Broughton – Perfect Louse (40.49)
08. Mat Riviere – FYH (43.09)
09. Member of the Wedding – New Century (51.37)
10. The Sequins – Offside & Beautiful (57.09)