Song, by Toad

[Welcome back to Euan's monthly column on Song, by Toad.  After (sort of, not really) telling me off for weaseling out of doing a Favourite Albums of the Decade list, here he presents his own.]

You know, I was planning to reveal my top 10 albums of 2009 on my own site, then I decided, where better a place to post my top 10 than on Matthew’s page. Given the indifference that my top 50 of the decade seemed to spark amongst his readers, I thought it would be worth doing my top 10 on Matthew’s page for one simple reason. I don’t think they will be 10 records that either Matthew or you as readers would choose. Maybe I’ll introduce you to something new. Maybe not. But I really do see a point to these lists. Just like I see a point to music journalism in general. As I said, to dismiss an exercise like this with comments like “I just don’t care” would seem foolish given the blog you are using in the first place. I care about Matthew’s top 10/20. And that applies to most lists. I even read, in its entirety, the NME top 50 of the decade.

Top 10 lists for a particular year perhaps have less significance? I don’t know. I was just thinking the other day that what’s so appealing about a top 50 or 100 of the past decade are the personal reasons for the choices. Why was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot my number 1? Why will it not be Matthew’s? It’s fascinating. And something I really do enjoy at this time of year.

Anyways, you can check out my top 50 of the past decade over at www.thesteinbergprinciple.wordpress.com if you can be bothered. In the meantime, my top 10 records of 2009 would be, in no particular order:

Withered Hand – Good News
J Tillman – A Year In The Kingdom
Fieldhead – They Shook Hands For Hours
The Antlers – Hospice
My Latest Novel – Deaths and Entrances
Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
The Builders and The Butchers – Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well
Sufjan Stevens – The BQE
Wilco – The Album
Peter Broderick – Music For Falling From Trees

Oh thank fuck it’s Christmas. Or, any holiday really. I am so fucking incredibly tired I could pitch face first on the tarmac and sleep for six months without so much as coming up for air.

I have been reading, with some amusement, the bickering over the religious nature of Christmas which seems to take place in the American press with monotonous regularity. Apparently the Christians are adamant that we remember the religious nature of a pagan festival, which seems a little odd considering that the Christianisation of Christmas itself was basically the Christian colonists’ acceptance that they could never defeat local pagan religions. So basically they adopted Yuletide and tried to wedge their amusing Biblical myths into a story that their conquered people would never give up, and then waited a few years for it to degrade into some sort of carnival of aquisitiveness which they could have a tantrum about.

So it’s a pagan festival which has turned into an unbridled celebration of Western consumerist greed… erm, which part of this came up in the Bible again?

Personally, as an atheist, I love Christmas. It’s got nothing to do with that Jeebus character, it’s closer akin to the the pagan celebration of light and life in the middle of the darkest part of the year. As a family we have always come together and spent peaceful time together at this time of year. We play music, we read books, we cook together, but above all we rest. We get together and enjoy one another’s company. Mrs. Toad and I will, this year, be doing nothing more than snuggling up on the couch and wasting time. And that time wasting together is oddly one of the most important things you can do to forge a strong relationship. Just taking time to be together and enjoy one another’s company is, after the year we’ve had, going to be a rare treat, and one which I intend to enjoy immensely.

Toadcast #51 – The Yulecast

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01. Yo La Tengo – On Our Way to Fall (03.12)
02. Tom Waits – Soldier’s Things (07.21)
03. Pale Young Gentlemen – We Will Meet (15.23)
04. The Felice Brothers – Greatest Show on Earth (19.15)
05. Eels – Beautiful Freak (27.27)
06. Clem Snide – The Dairy Queen (35.25)
07. Bob Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue (43.13)
08. A.A. Bondy – Black Rain, Black Rain (48.45)
09. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Brompton Oratory (54.19)
10. Sufjan Stevens – Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother (60.06)