Yes, we’re back on the air with a somewhat hastily arranged programme.  I somehow managed to only realise on Monday that this show would be going out today, so we haven’t been all that big on preparation this week, I’m afraid.

There’s a slightly new format to the show this year, in that I will be joined on every broadcast by Ruth from the Bowery, and that there will be a live session performance from a band of our choice every week as well, with the video of this performance going up in the post for the following week’s show.

On air 7pm-8.30pm GMT – listen here.

This week we will be joined by Edinburgh newcomer Thomas Western, who has only just moved up here and is just starting to introduce himself to the local music scene.  He’ll be playing a few songs – maybe three or so, depending on time – picking some tunes and talking pish with Ruth and myself.

The tracklisting will appear below and be updated live during the show, so feel free to add abuse and nonsense in the comments.  Like you ever need asking…

1. The Walkmen – The New Year
2. Thomas Western – Live session track so new it’s not been named yet!
3. Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy For the Good Times
4. The Builders & the Butchers – Down to the River
5. Bonnie Prince Billy – The World’s Greatest
6. Thomas Western – The Worm Forgives the Plough (Live in Session)
7. Diamond Rings – All Yr Songs
8. The National – Fake Empire
9. The Douglas Firs – Grow Old and Go Home
10. Daniel Johnston – Walking the Cow
11. Thomas Western – Don’t Talk (Put Your Hand On My Shoulder) (Live in Session)
12. The Oldham Brothers – Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Beach Boys Cover)
13. Thomas Western – Your Front Door (Live in Session)
14. Meursault – William Henry Miller Pt. 2 (Vinyl Version)

Yes, I know it’s early for you, but it’s late for me and a massive greasy great kebab is calling to me like the siren song of a thousand virgins who just might be persuadable that hours spent in one’s bedroom listening to sincere young men complain about how unfulfilling their tediously middle class life is constitutes some sort of social protest.

I remember living in Cambridge and having a kebab at the sterling Gardenia.  Crikey that was good stuff.  In Manchester Abduls was always the place, although admittedly that was something like fifteen years ago, and things have probably changed since then.  In general though, this Friday Five is going to be more cheese related than kebab related.  Although I am admittedly a massive music snob, there were times before the global internetosphere made all my fashion choices for me, and so I thought it might be time to celebrate those times.  Were you a stupid sappy cunt once?  Yes, me too.

Since pretty much everyone reading this was a bit of a pillock at some point in their past I think that the idea of commenting for the first time should probably pale into insignificance.  Generally speaking this site can be more than a little cliquey, but on Fridays absolutely everyone, from Kim Jong Il to Kim Basinger is encouraged to chip in have their say.  What, after all, is the point of a website if people don’t come along and tell me what a tit I am on the comments page.

So to encourage you, I have come up with the silliest moments in my life, set them to music, and asked you to do the same.  Enjoy, Toadlings.

1. Cheesiest song you’ve ever bawled your eyes out to because of some lost lover.
2. You’re at a disco, the songs are shit, the crowd is shit, and suddenly some contemptibly populist nonsense comes on the stereo and you find yourself boogying away like a muppet anyway.  What’s the song?
3. Yes it’s shit, but which song gets you fist-pumping like Song 2 by Blur?
4. I’m alone, I’m miserable, but I’M GONNA BE OKAY dammit!
5. Let’s get pished!

Bruce Hornsby & the Range – The Road not Taken (I was a very sensitive child.  Stop laughing – very sensitive.)

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Erasure – Sometimes (I know, I know, I know, but it’s just so… catchy, I guess.  Oh, the shame.)

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Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Fare Thee Well

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The Walkmen – The Rat

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Sorry this has been so late coming, but we have spent the day recording the sixth Toad Session with the Pictish Trail.  And now I am off to London to see some friends and speak to people about getting Meursault onto some bills down South.  We’re also going to be talking to Pure Groove and Rough Trade about stocking the record, which should hopefully go alright.

So yes, I’m going to be sitting on a train down to London as you read this, leafing through magazines and trying to find people who might be interested in reviewing future Toad releases.  There’s no rest for the wicked and I don’t even have time to write any more on this post either.  DC will be posting his show tomorrow in place of the Toadcast, and I will be back properly functioning on Monday or Tuesday with a bit of luck.  This week’s five and five songs have been chosen by Johnny Pictish, Fee, Gavin, myself and Dylan at the end of the Toad Session.  I am now going to get pissed and fuck off down South.  Have a good weekend Toadlings.

1. Who put the Ram in a a-ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?
2. Ideal next Toad Session.
3. Whis is Irn-Bru orange?
4. Favourite daytime TV show for when you have a day off during the week.
5. Chicken or fish?

Grandaddy – Jeez Louise

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The Pictish Trail – I Don’t Know Where to Begin

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The Walkmen – The Rat

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Ryan Adams – To Be Young

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Mercury Rev – Opus 40

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Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Patt 4: 37-50

And so we stumble on to the penultimate post in the countdown to the Toad’s favourite song of the year.  At this point the idea of some sort of hierarchy of love is becoming rather ridiculous.  Do I genuinely prefer Make Another Tree to Frankie’s Gun?  No, of course I don’t.  Do I really get more goose bumps or feel more lightheaded with glee when Out on the Water comes on the stereo, compared to, say, Restless?  No, not in the slightest so what am I going on, here?  Well I don’t know, it’s just a gut reaction I suppose, largely dependent on my mood at the time at which I finally turned a ‘bunch of songs’ into some sort of list.

So don’t take it too seriously, just enjoy that fact that there have been this many brilliant songs released this year. Read the rest of this entry »

This is an oddly difficult review to write, not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because it seems to be a slightly silly statement to make in the first place. Basically, for all there are a lot of songs I love on this record I find myself not quite clicking with the album for some reason. No idea why.

Maybe the pace is a little more homogeneous their inspired Bows + Arrows from a few years back, maybe the raw bite of that record has been slightly dulled by slicker production and slightly gentler arrangements Donde Esta la Playa is brilliant, On the Water and In the New Year are just superb and then, just as you think the album’s tailing off, New Country and I Lost You make an appearance.

Maybe this is just indicative of being in the process of learning to appreciate an album. When I first heard this I heard a couple of good songs and precious little else. As I’ve listened to it more and more, however, more and more of the songs have slowly made themselves known – Red Moon is bloody gorgeous by the way – so maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll suddenly realise that I love the album as a whole, but for now it seems oddly less than the sum of its parts.

Leithauser’s voice is strained, but a thing of beauty nonetheless, and the low-fi, de-tuned sound The Walkmen seem to favour is frankly fucking brilliant, as far as I’m concerned. There may not be a venomous equivalent to The Rat on this record, but it is packed full of excellent nonentheless.

The Walkmen – On the Water
The Walkmen – In the New Year

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon (There appears to be some discrepancy between the US and the global release dates, which is fucking silly frankly because all that will do is drive people to torrent sites and cost sales. Clap clap clap.)

The missus and I got pished and did a podcast! Huzzah! It was a lovely Summery day on Wednesday and we sat out and had a meal in the back garden and then when it got chilly we came inside and did a podcast.

There’s not much of a theme this week because I can get a little bored of them, and from time to time it’s nice to just throw some tracks together that you like. And then get hammered and ramble on about them at interminable length. Sorry about that.

Toadcast #29 – The Summercast

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01. Lemonjelly – Nice Weather For Ducks (01.47)
02. Elbow – Station Approach (10.47)
03. The Eighteenth Day of May – Cold Early Morning (19.07)
04. Aberfeldy – Tom Weir (25.56)
05. Tiny Tim – Tiptoe Through the Tulips (27.47)
06. Uncle Moon – Pepper (34.41)
07. Lo-Fidelity Allstars – On the Pier (41.32)
08. The Boo Radleys – Find the Answer Within (48.17)
09. The Libertines – The Good Old Days (56.41)
10. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks (65.51)
11. The Von Bondies – C’Mon C’Mon (68.11)
12. The Builders & the Butchers – Spanish Death Song (76.41)
13. The Walkmen – The Rat (82.59)
14. Calexico – Corona (93.33)
15. Lloyd Cole – You’re a Big Girl Now (106.46)

Ladies and gentlemen there were some issues with this week’s appearance on The Waiting Room – DC’s 10pm-midnight slot on Error FM. Firstly, I was away and hugely disorganised, so DC had to record his bits in my absence and then sellotape my segment in later. This wasn’t so much of a problem of course, as it prevented him and that Fisk character from moaning about my song choices, which has its benefits.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 2nd April, 2008

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Unfortunately it means I have no idea if I answered the question properly at all. I mean, indie dance? What? I tried to get information out of the lads beforehand but they weren’t very specific, so I just kind of winged it. Whenever I’ve been to indie clubs in the past they haven’t played a type of music I would have been able to identify as ‘indie disco’ as such, they’ve just played indie songs with a bit of a consistent, bouncy rhythm so that you can dance to them. Even The Smiths wrote a good few songs you can dance to, and if ‘hang the DJ’ wasn’t designed to be an end-of-night dance hall sing-along then I don’t know what was.

Supergrass – Caught By the Fuzz
The Smiths – Panic
The Smiths – This Charming Man

That said, there are a few dancey bands who I guess I would call indie – it just depends on how loosely you apply your category terms I guess. Personally I throw these terms about pretty carelessly because let’s face it, who really cares what specific type of music it is that you’re listening to, so yeah okay, indie disco I guess. Fisk played Stereolab, who are a group I really like, but didn’t play the likes of Saint Etienne, who I would have thought fit that category pretty well, as do groups like Goldfrapp, Blondie and The Long Blondes (the new album really is just dance floor indie – it’s not great, but it’s dancey stuff).

Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us

That said, I’ve been in clubs where they’ve even played stuff like The Rat by The Walkmen, which is based around the band battering shite out of their guitars for most of the song, and people, myself included, leapt around like maniacs. That wasn’t even remotely dance music by any genre definition, but it proved to be a hugely popular song to dance to at the time. So there you go. Come to think of it, this would probably have made a much better, more considered response to the question at hand, but I had to rush it and given my 20 minute slot I’d never have had time to get all that rambling in there anyway. So sorry DC, not sure I hit the nail on the head with that one, but I’ll do better next week, promise.

The Walkmen – The Rat

And tell Fisk that Orbital are bloody awful.

Greetings and Happy Valentine’s day my little Toadlings. Wait, what’s that? You hate Valentine’s Day? Loathe it in fact? Would dearly love to nuke fucking Hallmark and every last shitty little shop peddling their tawdry baubles and meaningless rubbish that serve no purpose other than to defile the pure concept of true love and disrespect the dignity of the un-mated?

Good. Me too. In fact, us too, for the wildly popular (grumble, sulk) Mrs. Toad is back to do the great Valentine’s anti-podcast with me. To bitch and moan, to get side-tracked, to ramble and to poke pointed sticks in the side of the great marketing behemoth that the most shallow and meaningless of public celebrations has become. If you do not like Valentine’s Day very much, then this is the place to be.

Toadcast #21 – The Lurvecast

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01. Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (00.23)
02. The Velvet Underground – Femme Fatale (08.06)
03. The Raveonettes – Little Animal (10.57)
04. R.E.M. – The One I Love (13.57)
05. Half-Man Half-Biscuit – Paintball’s Coming Home (20.54)
06. The Pierces – Boring (25.43)
07. (The Real) Tuesday Weld – Terminally Ambivalent Over You (31.03)
08. Shane MacGowan & the Popes – Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway (34.41)
09. The Wave Pictures – When I Leave You For Somebody Else (38.30)
10. Pulp – Pink Glove (45.33)
11. The Raincoats – Don’t Be Mean (50.15)
12. Rufus Wainright – One Man Guy (59.34)
13. William Shatner – Ideal Woman (66.34)
14. The Sequins – Nobody Dreams About Me (71.45)
15. The Smiths – Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (77.31)
16. The Walkmen – Don’t Forget Me (82.58)
Feeding BritCaster.com

One of the almighty perils of mp3 blogging (it’s a perilous business I tell you – fraught with danger…. now where was I? Ah yes, forgot to even close my brackets didn’t I. What a muppet… here you go:) So erm, anyway, one of the side-effects of mp3 blogging is that you get so utterly swamped with new music, by zealous promoters, eager bands and your own enthusiasm, that it can be hard to actually remember to listen to old stuff. Not so much the old classics, just the really excellent albums from about two or three years ago which you still love, but which are neither new enough to warrant urgent attention nor legendary enough to have indelibly permeated into your consciousness.

So today I am going to have a little look at my first ever internet Best Of list. I started regularly writing about music back in 2004, long before I even knew what blogs were, and 2004 was my first ever Official List. That was the year Wilco released their masterpiece A Ghost is Born, which was narrowly pipped to the top spot by Nick Cave’s equally stupendous double album The Lyre of Orpheus and Abbatoir Blues. Even Tom Waits released one that year. Real Gone may not have captured me at the time, but it’s one that has a surprising number of excellent songs on it when I take the time to look back.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Cannibal’s Hymn
Wilco – The Late Greats
Tom Waits – Trampled Rose

Looking back at the reviews themselves from that year, I am actually surprised by how steadfast my opinions have been. I can’t say I seriously disagree with anything much I said about those 2004 releases. The Walkmen is still a storming album of fuzzy, guitar and chiming piano-driven brilliance. That Killers album is still an indie-pop classic which, despite whatever failings they might have, caught the mood of the nation perfectly that Summer. And The Dears were one of the first in a new wave of superb Canadian music who, in the track I have chosen, married indie with cabaret, somewhat oddly.

Marianne Faithfull released a record in 2004 too. It wasn’t great, largely because most of it was penned by the dismal PJ Harvey, but Nick Cave wrote a couple of decent tracks for her. The best of the lot though was Last Song, which was written by Damon Albarn who himself recorded a version for last year’s The Good, the Bad & the Queen record. I think I might prefer Marianne’s version, actually. So yes, that’s how I started. It all shifted over to Song, by Toad a year and a bit ago, then I migrated to WordPress in about May and here we are. Let no more albums get lost in the avalanche of newness! I sometimes need to remind myself that I am a fan, not a machine.

The Walkmen – Little House of Savages
The Dears – The Death of All the Romance
Marianne Faithfull – Last Song