Song, by Toad

Hello.  Sorry for the lack of preparation here, but Homegame rather fucked with my ability to get anything done in an orderly and organised fashion this week.

Listen Live Here

Listen to us! We’re super duper and we have the very very lovely Love. Stop.Repeat with us for some post Homegame fun….

1.  Matthew and The Atlas – Deadwood
2.  Trips and Falls – We Were Like Strangers Today
3.  Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now
4.  Love.Stop.Repeat – Song For Mary (live in session)
5.  Mimicking Birds – Cabin Fever
6.  Love.Stop.Repeat – Tail Lights (live in session)
7.  Au Revoir Simone – We Are Here
8.  Love.Stop.Repeat – Storm Song (live in session)
9.  Jonnie Common – hand-to-hand
10.  Fanfarlo – Finish Line
11.  Sparklehorse – Maria’s Little Elbows
12.  Love.Stop.Repeat – Pillow (live in session)
13.  Cold Seeds – Perfume of Mexican Birds

Welcome back to the Song, by Toad Fresh Air show, with the lovely Ruth.  This week we have Russell from Mammoeth live in session, although the poor bugger’s already done a brilliant session for us before Christmas which was unfortunately swallowed by the Fresh Air computers, which are a bit like a suspiciously special needs version of Hal most of the time.

Last week’s Session with The Last Battle can be found at the bottom of the page, in the form of downloadable session tracks, a podcast of the interview and session videos.  The sound is really nice considering there were six of them and we only have two microphones.

Live on Air 8pm-9.30pm – Listen live here.

I’ll fill in the playlist live below from 8pm onwards, so please come and say hello, shout mindless abuse or whatever else it is you internet people spend your time doing.

1. The Besnard Lakes – Chicago Train
2. Liars – Scarecrow On A Killer Slant
3. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse – Revenge
4. Bjork – Generous Palmstroke (Live)
5. Mammoeth- Scrambled Eggs (Live in Session)
6. Dirty Projectors – Two Doves
7. Mammoeth – Trigonometry (Live in Session)
8. Berzilla Wallin – Conversation with Death (Oh Death)
9. Sparklehorse – Heart of Darkness
10. Mammoeth – I’m Glad That I Died Today (Live in Session)
11. Mammoeth – Lap Dog
12. Fleetwood Mac – Honey Hi
13. Mammoeth – Wendy House (Live in Session)
14. Blur – Out of Time
15. Joanna Newsom – ‘81

Last week’s session can be found after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

I recorded this podcast marooned in the middle of France at my parents’ house, with no more musical resources than the compilation CDs I’ve been taking them constantly since I left home. It was quite weird to poke through all the old songs I’ve sent home over the years, actually.

There’s something unavoidably honest about the mixes you make for other people. Look back on the year or the decade yourself and you apply hindsight, selective memory and all sorts, but if you look at the stuff you send to other people then you don’t get the chance to quietly forget the shite because it looks a little unfashionable in hindsight.

Of course, due the benefits of hindsight and making sure I save face I am not playing you any of the shite because my ego is fragile and couldn’t stand the mockery if I told you the absolute and honest truth. So here is a version of the music I used to send to my parents, handily sanitised so I don’t make a total tit out of myself.

Right, happy Christmas, I’m off to watch Back to the Future…

Toadcast #101 – Boxing Day

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01. Sparklehorse – Eyepennies (02.48)
02. Evan Dando – Hard Drive (11.57)
03. Jay Farrar – Fool King’s Crown (14.57)
04. Lucky Jim – You Stole My Heart Away (21.31)
05. Mark Lanegan – Wedding Dress (29.39)
06. Grand National – Boner (32.34)
07. Arizona Amp & Alternator – Baby, it’s Cold Outside (41.29)
08. The Zincs – Finished in This Business (46.50)
09. Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel (54.10)
10. Tom Waits – The Part You Throw Away (61.23)

The In the Fishtank series is something I think is great, something I wish I could emulate and yet nevertheless, and rather oddly, something I rarely like the results of all that much. Dutch label Konkurrent book out a studio for a couple of days and invite two bands who happen to be around to take advantage of the time to record… well, whatever they want, really.

There are a lot of things I hugely admire about this project. Firstly, I generally do not like covers at all, but I love collaborations for some reason. Not rubbish like Monsters of Folk (that’s getting a review this week, and it’s fucking awful), but musicians getting together and genuinely experimenting together in a loose sort of manner like this. They only have two days after all.

Secondly, I love the attitude the label take – we’ll bring you together, you guys do what you want. No pressure to record pop songs, singles, skew the collaboration towards certain styles, divvy the writing up equally, or even to produce anything listenable at all. The results may not always work, but projects like this, at the edge of what we’d call pop music, are important for pushing everyone forward, be it labels, the audience or musicians themselves.

Sparklehorse are one of my favourite bands, but I don’t really know much about Fennesz. Listening to this there’s none of the fairly traditional song structure I am used to on a Sparklehorse record, so I assume a lot of that came from Fennesz, but you can certainly hear an awful lot of familiar sounds so Linkous’ involvement is clear enough.

The experimental nature of a lot of this – Shai-Hulud is, er, a little much for me – means that this is another of those collaborations which I love to hear of but at times don’t exactly like to listen to. I am, for all the readers of this site make fun of my taste for low-fi noise, still pretty much a song-based music fan and there’s a fair bit of this collaboration which is simply too lacking in traditional song structure for me to be able to really relate to it.

Nevertheless, there are a few gems, and when Fennesz fuck with Linkous’ songs, bringing all sorts of mess to the recording, then I really do enjoy it. Some of this is really, really good. It’s another In the Fishtank record I guess I would classify as something I admire and something I find interesting rather than something I necessarily would always listen to for pleasure. But then, that’s how I’d describe Joseph Conrad’s books as well, so it’s no insult.

Sparklehorse + Fennesz – Goodnight Sweetheart

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Sparklehorse + Fennesz – Shai – Hulud

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Fennesz website | Sparklehorse website | In the Fishtank website | Buy from Boomkat

Well this podcast has been recorded from my sick bed, given my current immobility.  Actually, recording the Toadcast from bed was quite pleasant, once I got over the slightly unusual surroundings.  Imagine me in my pants and scratching my balls whilst talking to you and you’ll pretty much have the ambience down pat.

I sort of intended this to be a selection of poppy little tunes from my inbox, because all the last podcasts have been so heavily themed, but instead it’s ended up a little bit on the experimental side, through no real intent of my own.  Nevertheless, if you’re happy to listen to the growl of Polvo, the monologues of George Pringle and the peculiar electro-experimentalism of Mark Linkous and Fennesz all in one podcast then, fuck it, you’re in the right place.

Toadcast #86 – The Paincast

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01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You But Goodbye (03.11)
02. Cast Spells – Glamorous Glowing (07.39)
03. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (13.02)
04. The Leg – A Rat’s Health (17.04)
05. Polvo – Fractured (Like Chandeliers) (22.40)
06. Vandaveer – A Might Leviathan of Old (29.22)
07. Sparklehorse & Fennesz – If My Heart (from In the Fishtank #13) (40.13)
08. George Pringle – SW10 (45.03)
09. X Lion Tamer – Tugboat (52.40)
10. Kurt Vile – Blackberry Song (59.54)

Oh Christ I’m fucking tired.  The videos from the Broken Records gig at the Bedlam Theatre ended up just kind of  hijacking my attention and I couldn’t bring myself to stop tinkering until some time around four o’clock this morning.  Consequently wit and entertainment will be in very short supply indeed on Toad today, and if you want to be entertained then you will have to do so yourselves.  I will try my best to be funny, but the chances of it working would appear to be slim, to say the least.

We got onto the topic of food snobbery a little while back, so this is what I would like to make the subject of this week’s five – except backwards.  None of your shaved truffles marinaded in larks’ tears this time, me hearties.  It’s all about the shite.  Yup, junk food, shit food, dismal food, boring food, all to be celebrated and enjoyed and written down in lists.  Because for all I can certainly come across as a food snob, in many ways quite rightly, I am also as prone as everyone else to hangover munchies where pretty much anything goes, and sitting around the house watching movies eating a bizarre assortment of supermarket oddities simply because they all for various reasons struck my fancy at the time.

Last week’s five was a superlative success, with all sorts of black belt de-lurking going on and lots of new victims people joining in the fun, so lets see more of that please, that was splendid.  And as soon as I get a picture of a mouse foetus brain spoon there will be a new t-shirt available, that I promise!

1. Most bizarre hangover item/combo you’ve ever enjoyed.
2. Favourite pickled thing (‘me’ – ha ha, yes, very funny).
3. Nastiest junk food for which you just fucking love anyway.
4. Oddest junk food you’ve spotted in exotic parts.
5. Really bland, unimaginative meal you find kind of satisfying.

Sparklehorse – Little Fat Baby

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James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

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Ben Folds – All U Can Eat

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Morcheeba – Women Lose Weight

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Rich Amino – Chicken ‘n’ Chips

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This may be the limpest of all excuses I’ve ever had for naming a podcast.  You know why it’s called the Jeffcast?  Because I kinda mention Jeffrey Lewis a couple of times.  Oooh, yes, that makes sense.  Still, sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else really, off the top of my head.

I suppose I am off to see Jeffrey Lewis directly after recording this, so I guess it sort of counts.  He is playing a secret gig at Henry’s Cellar Bar after sneaking out of the Beggars Banquet Christmas Party at the Picture House over the road.  It’s one of the things I love about the anti-folk crowd: you genuinely get the impression that they’d rather be playing to an appreciative crowd of their mates, rather than a bigger crowd of anonymous punters who may stand there and demand entertainment.

So there you go, that’s the deal for tonight.  For the rest of the weekend we’re putting together Meursault albums, ready for the official (re)launch of their record next Friday at the Song, by Toad Christmas Party.  So, after folding and screen-printing a thousand of the bastards we’ll all be well ready for Gimme Shelter in the Caves on Saturday and a spot of Candythief action in the Jazz Bar on Sunday.  Enjoy the 48th Toadcast.

Toadcast #48 – The Jeffcast

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01. Yo La Tengo – Double Dare (04.12)
02. Wolf Parade – Call it a Ritual (07.29)
03. Modey Lemon – Loch Ness Monster (11.25)
04. Sly & the Family Stone – Life (17.09)
05. The Velcro Quartet – The Love Song of Little Cosmo Nostradamus (20.03)
06. The Pernice Brothers – The Ballad of Bjorn Borg (25.57)
07. Caramel Jack – The Lincoln Jackson Incident (34.37)
08. The Magnetic Fields – All the Umbrellas in London (38.29)
09. Sparklehorse – Happy Man (Memphis Version) (44.46)
10. The Veils – Birthday Present (49.44)
11. Grandaddy – Miner at the Dial-A-View (54.24)

Christ, what a fat bastard. It’s lunch time and I am still full from last night. And it’s all Mrs. Toad’s bloody fault. She’s away for a week being important in God Bless America and, despite being the least domesticated woman in the universe, she always fears that on these occasions I won’t eat well. It’s an amazingly uncharacteristic instinct for her, and hence I find it really rather touching.

She may have a point, too. I eat just fine, but my diet tends to consist entirely of raw carrots and peppers because I can’t be arsed cooking, along with tins of sardines, pots of Middle Eastern yoghurt and jars of rollmops. See – that’s a balanced diet! Sort of.

Anyway, before she goes away for an extended period of time she tends to cook a big pot of one of her rather excellent stews, and I just graze on it through the week. I love this, because she is an extremely good cook, and they tend to be excellent. This week, however, she made a fantastic tortilla with loads of garlic and stuffed full of some wonderfully squishy Spanish black pudding. Fuck me it’s gorgeous. So needless to say, when I got home last night I started munching. And then went back for seconds. And then thirds. And Christ, I’m full – still. Mmm, but it was good though. And there’s still just a little bit left for tonight…

Sparklehorse – Little Fat Baby
Ben Folds – All U Can Eat

My latest excursion into the murky waters of The Waiting Room saw me praising big famous bands for a change, really rather ironic given the hassle talking about those same bands has caused around here recently.  Would I have done the same segment in hindsight?  Would I fucking bollocks!

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 16th April 2008

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It’s weird, I feel something of a tit now for bigging up the bands that then bring down teh haterz, even though I know it’s nothing to do with the actual bands themselves.  Or at least I should bloody well hope it’s nothing to do with the bands.  Odd how the behaviour of someone employed by someone who employs someone to look after a group can make a band look quite so bad, really.  Guilt by association.  I know the band could quite easily order off the attack dogs (would a really big label even pretend to listen?) or publically condemn this sort of bollocks, but why would they?  They make music, not politics.  Although REM are pretty politically involved so you would expect them to have a stance on all this web madness one way or another.

Hmm, well that’s another ramble for another day.

It’s a pig themed week for some reason, so I thought I’d lob these little gems into the mix just for fun.  The Sparklehorse song in particular is something of an enormously noisy, fuzzy masterpiece.

The Beatles – Piggies
Sparklehorse – Pig