Here we are at the penultimate podcast of the year, and the one immediately preceding Christmas.  I really don’t like 99% of Christmas music so there’s pretty close to none of it at all on here, although I have made a couple of exceptions as a lazy sort of nod to the season.  Let’s face it, if the druids can be arsed dancing about like idiots around Stonehenge and people can fall out over half-defrosted turkeys then I can probably make the effort to shove a couple of token musical nods onto a single podcast, can’t I.

I actually take a lot of this podcast from my recently-published albums of the year list, and from my as-yet-unpublished Festive Fifty, so it’s a bit of a yearly roundup as well.

And in fact, seeing as Christmas is a Sunday, I won’t actually be posting until Boxing Day now, so this will be the last post before Christmas so umm, in the off-chance I don’t bump into you on Facebook, Twitter or down the pub, I better wish you Happy Christmas now, hadn’t I.

Direct download: Toadcast #206 – The Scroogecast

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01. Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol (00.23)
02. The Black Tambourines – Bad Days (05.09)
03. The Low Anthem – Boeing 737 (10.42)
04. Timber Timbre – Woman (13.31)
05. Sons of Joy – Pig (20.25)
06. The Japanese War Effort – Our Land Could be Your Life (24.51)
07. Jonnie Common – Hand-Hand (31.37)
08. Earth Girl Helen Brown – Girls of My Dreams (35.39)
09. Weird Era – Garage Honeymoon (41.37)
10. The War on Drugs – Your Love is Calling My Name (47.46)
11. Sons of Joy – In the Bleak Midwinter (58.07)
12. Sons of Joy – Coventry Carol (60.00)

 Well cock and balls this is brilliant.  Really fucking brilliant.  Generally I hate Christmas music, as you probably know by now.  It either sounds schmalzy and lame coming from indie bands when they play it straight or, if they don’t, it tends to sound too self-consciously anti-Christmas instead, and hence forced and awkward.

There are some notable exceptions of course, but this might be the best one yet.  I think.  I’m not sure.  It sets about Christmas music with such gleeful malice that I doubt you can really get away with calling it Christmas music by the end.  You certainly couldn’t play this at dinner.  Or indeed with other people in the house, most of the time.  But it’s fucking awesome.

Recorded without rehearsal in the space of a few hours, and presented on Bandcamp for the price of a donation to East Anglian Children’s Hospices, this takes a raucous shriek and a sawing violin and beats the living shit out of festive tunes for about half an hour in the best style possible.  I reviewed their recent EP a little while back, and this has a similarly joyously over the top approach.

Some is played with a straight face, however.  A couple of the tracks are actually rather lovely violin renditions of traditional carols which, robbed of their annoyingly religious lyrics, are really bloody lovely. Other tracks, however, like Go Tell it on the Mountain, are torn to such shreds and performed with such gusto that you have to assume they really are having a laugh.

Never mind though, this is by far the best Christmas album I have heard.  Fuck Low, this is better.

Sons of Joy – Go Tell it On the Mountain

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 Morning.  Fucking brilliantly awesome get tae fuck good fucking morning to you all.  Grrrmpf.  You know those days which start out fucking shite from the very get go and before you answer a single email or deal with a single individual you’re already within a whisker of just telling everyone to piss off because you just can’t be fucking arsed with them?  Yep, one of those I’m afraid.  Hopefully El and Brian will cheer me up on Fresh Air this afternoon.

This is the last show on Fresh Air this entire term, I think, so we’ll be playing a combination of Christmas tat and end-of-year favourites, I believe.  And after that I shall be scuttling off for a much-deserved pint.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here

In the meantime, after the hugely successful song of the year vote, we are at that time of year, where I ask you to tell us all which albums you have loved the most this year.  I’ll add them up as we go along and on Monday I will announce the winner.

This is of course the perfect opportunity to de-lurk and say hello.  It’s always nice to hear from people I had no idea were reading, and of course our readership is orders of magnitude larger than our commentership* so I am forever wondering who these shadowy thousands are who read the site regularly but hang about in the shadows saying nothing.  Make today the day!

So, simply, just list your five favourite albums, in no particular order, preferably in the format band – album so I can tally them easier, and we’ll see who everyone’s been enjoying the most in 2011.  And the tracklisting for the radio show will appear live below as we go along, once the show starts at half three.

1. Ian Humberstone – The House on the Hill
2. Seth Faergolzia – Weird Old Toad
3. The Leg – Witch on the Speakers
4. Jesus H. Foxx – So Much Water
5. Louis Barabbas & the Bedlam Six – Away in a Manger
6. Meursault – Christmas in Kirkcaldy
7. Warpaint – Billie Holiday
8. Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol
9. Yusuf Azak – Swim
10. Plastic Animals – Post-Rapture Blues
11. Trapped Mice – Just Like Christmas (Low cover)
12. Waiters – Tomorrowland
13. Battles – Ice Cream
14. Easter – Damp Patch
15. Hookworms – Teen Dreams
16. Dead Rabbits – All You Need
17. Sons of Joy – Go Tell it on the Mountain

*My sincere apologies to the English language.

The Clamcast is so-called not because of seafood, but because it all of a sudden became rather clammy here this week.  An unseasonable warm spell descended and I didn’t personally adjust my clothing habits fast enough, meaning absolutely everywhere I went I ended up being uncomfortably warm.

So there you go, the Clamcast.

Anyhow, I am off to Glasgow to set up the Independent Record Fair, before scooting back through to Edinburgh to get the John Knox Sex Club, Easter and Fuzzystar Ides of Toad night sorted out at Henry’s.  Actually, I say sorted out, but it’s not me who sorts things out at this stage, it’s really just down to the bands and the venue.  Still, I have to be there and look willing, just in case!

Direct download: Toadcast #194 – The Clamcast

01. Thee Ludds – Parabolic Reflector (00.16)
02. Pregnant- I Wasn’t Getting Paid (05.49)
03. Death Songs – Let This Body Go (10.58)
04. Fat History Month – Gorilla (15.00)
05. Aidan John Moffat – I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher Cover) (21.57)
06. King’s Daughters & Sons – Volunteer (25.42)
07. Sons of Joy – It Was a Dirty Lie (34.32)
08. Ba Babes – Avon (Extended) (44.04)
09. Yalls – Our Place 1 (50.52)
10. Sic Alps – Cambridge Vagina (52.27)
11. Easter – Somethin’ American (57.16)

I was alerted to this on Twitter the other day by Rich from The Line of Best Fit, I think.  Well, either that or it was the other Rich, formerly of The Line of Best Fit and now of The Quietus.  One of them anyway, and apologies to whichever it wasn’t, I never should have brought you into this.

Anyhow, the release in question is by a band called Sons of Joy, who have a three-song EP on their Bandcamp page for as much or as little as you care to pay for it.

The three songs are accompanied by a slightly mental manifesto, whose first point is simply “We hereby reclaim folk music.”  Umm, good, I think. It also includes a clause rejecting the copyrighting of music, or at least that’s how it reads, and another stating the following: “We reject the falsification of musical truths through multitracking or use of multiple microphones”.

I wonder how they feel about adding shitloads of distortion to, say, a violin track.  Because it kind of sounds to my (admittedly rather uneducated ears) like that’s what they’ve done here. Is that not ‘falsification of musical truths‘ then?

You all probably know how I feel about distortion by now, so that’s most certainly not a complaint.  In fact, it gives the music a belligerent demand for attention, which is only exacerbated by the rough screech of the vocal and the slow but angry thumping of the drums.  It’s not frantic music, but there is so much pent-up fury in it that it feels like a massive dam about to burst.

They are true to their word in the sense that this music seems to be pretty much just guitar, fiddle and drums, without overdubs, and it is indeed folk music.  But it’s screeching, sawing, tortured folk music of the best kind.  Of the kind, in fact, that would happily tear the still-beating heart from the shattered ribcage of the jelly-spined folk pop which sullies the name these days, and eat it in front of its grieving family. Awesome.

Sons of Joy – I Wouldn’t Mind Dying

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Rev. I.B. Ware with Wife and Son – I Wouldn’t Mind Dying (But I Gotta Go By Myself)

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The Honorable Worm – Wouldn’t Mind Dying

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