After a week spent debating it, how about a podcast embodying the discussions we’ve been having about production values I thought a podcast which sort of pulls all the disagreements and moans and whingeing and so on into one big mp3 of joy would be a good idea.

So we’ve got some Big Production, some demo scratchy stuff and a few bands who have dabbled with both.  I fart on about production values as if I have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, which of course I don’t.

I’m not sure how well it works as a playlist – it might be a bit disjointed – but in general I like it.  I like the debate in general, I like the thought process we’ve all gone through together this week, and in general, by association, I like this podcast.

Toadcast #57 – Production Values

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA (Original Nebraska Sessions Demo Version) (04.31)
02. Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place (11.13)
03. Enfant Bastard – Vessel (20.19)
04. Half Man Half Biscuit – 1966 and All That (22.37)
05. U2 – Red Hill Mining Town (29.56)
06. Snow Patrol – Last Ever Lone Gunman (37.40)
07. The Divine Comedy – Life on Earth (42.10)
08. Yann Tiersen – Geronimo (Black Session w. Neil Hannon) (46.07 )
09. The Wave Pictures – A Long Way Away From Me (53.34)
10. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) (Live at Hammersmith Odeon, 1975) (57.35)

Alright, the Alela Diane thread has been one of the most interesting on this site for a while, so it’s time to destroy all that mature and considered debate and return to the sort of trivial internet white noise which, if we’re being honest with ourselves, is really what we do best, here at Song, by Toad.

This weekend holds a trip to Manchester and a discussion with a pal of mine about possibly putting some design thinking into this site.  I am not happy with it, but I decided to stop buggering about and just accept it for the time being, until I was well and truly ready to design it properly, once and for all.

Now, seeing as we had such a splendid discussion about production values this week, and seeing as last week’s five was so racy as to terrify the living shit out of a large number of people and hence curtail participation, here’s a fitting and much more family fucking friendly Five For Friday.  Emerge, join in, release yourselves from the travails of skulking lurkitude.  Then get absolutely cabbaged, fuck someone wildly inappropriate and wake up in and empty house in a bath full of ice with a suspiciously angry scar across your abdomen. And have a splendid weekend in the process.

1. Favourite song or band which is as rough and ready as fuck.
2. Favourite song or band which is Big!  Big Sound, Big Production, the works.
3. Which ultra-low-fi band could you imagine doing really well with a bit of shiny recording and production?
4. Which big shiny band would you like to hear record a rough-as-a-bear’s-arse demo?
5. Your biggest culture shock when a band you love went glossy.

Maxwell Panther – Rewire

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Nicole Atkins – The Way It Is

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Enfant Bastard – Plastic Bag

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Bruce Springsteen – I’m on Fire

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Wave Pictures – Kiss Me

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

Now, I know I played nicey-nicey with the previous parts of this list, and it is certainly true to say that there is barely any real difference between places fourteen and twenty-eight, but at the business end I think that some of it is a bit more definite.  Certainly, having thought it over, I think that Now You Are Pregnant is my favourite song of the year.  How or why it edges out the superb Wonderful Life I couldn’t quite tell you, but I know it would feel wrong to have put them the other way round.

The other rather obvious point that needs to be made is that, of course, I have no objectivity left whatsoever as regards the Meursault album or any of the songs on it.  I didn’t have anything to do with making the thing, of course, but I’ve worked so closely with that album over the course of the last six months or so, since it became a part of Song, by Toad Records, that my relationship with it is totally different to anything else I’ve been listening to.  So I am being honest when I feature Meursault stuff so highly, I’m not lying to you of course, but there’s no way I could be objective anymore.

So here’s the final installment of the Toad Festive Fifty.  DC will be posting his Christmas extravaganza tomorrow, and that will be the last you hear of Toad for a few days.  In between Christmas and New Year I will be going through my album of the year countdown and trying to move Toad over the self-hosting in order to avoid the horrors of DMCA harrassment.  This way I can host the fucking thing in China if need be, and they can all just fuck off.  So Happy Christmas all, and we’ll try and get things up and running as normally as possible right after the changeover. Read the rest of this entry »

By the time this is published I will be lying in bed in Toad Hall with a hangover like a nasty case of death warmed up.  The Song, by Toad Christmas Party was on Friday 5th December, and given how exhausted I am at the moment I would imagine that about two or three gins into the evening I will be whistling Waltzing Matilda out my fucking ears.

Still, the Meursault album will be out, the party will be sorted, the Song, by Toad Records publicity juggernaut will be chuntering along comfortably and I will be able to begin the gentle slide into Christmas relaxation.  Finally finally finally.  I am so fucking exhausted from all the bloody time I’ve thrown into this since the Summer, and over Christmas there will be two weeks off with little to do but move this site all over to self-hosting and tinker a little with the design.

I’ll be trying to make the sessions and Toad Records things a little more prominent, and generally poking about in general.  The problem is that my CSS is so piss-poor that I really am limited in what I can do, so I’ll just have to hope it turns out okay.  I am loath to pay someone to redesign the thing for me though, because that seems to be somewhat contrary to the Spirit of All Things Toad.

The Spirit of All Things Toad, of course, being gin.

Toadcast #49 – Hangovers

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. The National – Fake Empire (01.30)
02. Doveman – Teacup (06.05)
03. Samamidon – Wild Bill Jones (12.53)
04. Phil & the Osophers – High Art (22.43)
05. Miracles of Modern Science – MR2 (26.15)
06. Radiohead – Idioteque (32.49)
07. Chopps Derby – Down the Dogs (41.22)
08. The 1900s – Age of Metals (47.01)
09. Alela Diane – White as Diamonds (50.12)
10. The Wave Pictures – Leave the Scene Behind (58.07)

“I don’t think we’ll ever feel cool.” reckons David Tatersall of the Wave Pictures, despite their being recently signed to one of the hippest labels around: Moshi Moshi. Nevertheless, they’ve just played the main stage at the End of the Road Festival and had people bellowing requests at them left, right and centre. So cool, maybe not, but something is certainly bubbling away in the land of the Wave Pictures. It was the same last year at their show in the considerably smaller venue, The Local. They could have virtually played a whole show of requests.

“That was really strange,” admits David, “and again today, I don’t know how they get this crowd, they do such a good job. For all our friends as well, all our friends play bigger gigs here. Like Darren Hayman, say, and Jeff Lewis, and I don’t know where they all come from because most of the time we play in bars and nobody knows us and every gig is their first time hearing it. It does seem like End of the Road really know what they’re doing and really get an audience that’s into it. Like last year in the tent we had no idea what happened. There was lots of people and they knew songs from CD-Rs that I’d forgotten that we’d done, and it was really, really fun. These are CD-Rs that maybe 50 people in the country have, maybe 100 people at most, but it seemed like everyone who had them was there.”

The video is taken from our interview, and cut in with some footage of their live performance. The sound for the live show is appalling because the sound system overwhelmed the mics on our wee camera, but we’ve learned our lesson and won’t make that mistake again. The wavering crackle of their early CD-R recordings is replaced by a more strident, polished sound on stage. Simply put, they make a racket.

I think I got into The Wave Pictures, about a year ago or so, at the very end of their status as a CD-R band. I obviously caught something of a wave of interest, because within a month or two of my noticing them they had been signed to Moshi Moshi, and vinyl singles and shiny new albums were being discussed. I couldn’t help but wonder exactly what it was that finally made a band that had actually been around for a while seem so suddenly palatable to a record label. Partly, it must be said, it’s unfair to blame labels for not signing a band they probably just hadn’t heard. Read the rest of this entry »

I really have made you wait for this haven’t I. Ah well, no matter. So, another year, another End of the Road Festival. We drove down again, specifically renting a hippy VW camper for the journey, and Christ almighty what a fucking death-trap that thing was. As I wrote in the intro to the podcast about this festival, the thing steered like a bathtub full of water. Honestly, if you ever needed to react to anything unexpected turning the steering wheel was like trying haul a bucket of water out of a well. Throw in the rubbish high beams and the teeny-tiny windscreen wipers and we can count ourselves lucky we got there at all.

But get there we did, to be welcomed by pissing rain. Splendid. I’ve led a charmed life so far, as far as festivals are concerned, having encountered no more that the slightest of sprinkles in the five or six I’ve attended so far. Spoiled, you might say. Well no such luck here. I had the interview lined up with Micah P. Hinson and it was pissing down and they wouldn’t even let us into the photography pit at the front, as had been promised beforehand. I was struggling just a little to stay cheerful. Anyhow, Micah’s set was outstanding – his recorded music may be quite beautiful at times, but when he plays live he puts some real snarl into it.

The lineup is pretty basic – Micah on guitar supported by Nick on drums who plays occasional banjo, and Ashley, his wife, on keyboards – but they manage to dredge some racket out of it when they want to. During the set the sun finally broke through, and the rain stopped falling, and suddenly everything was good. Hinson’s slower songs get a bare and lovely outing with just a guitar, and his sightly abrasive on-stage manner never seems to strike a dubious chord with the audience. The interview went well, and will be posted here shortly, but safe to say that this gig seemed to be the turning point of the End of the Road Festival as far as I am concerned. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, another podcast dedicated entirely to the End of the Road Festival. I did the very same last year because I do rather love this festival, and the sheer quality of the lineup easily merits a podcast to itself.

Unlike last year, Mrs. Toad actually came with me this time around. We drove this stupid old 1960s VW camper van down there, and Christ knows how we didn’t die in the process. The fucking thing steered like a bathtub full of water, there were no brakes at all and the only crumple zone was us. The other disconcerting thing is the fact that VW campers are something of a community, so everyone who passed us in one would flash their lights and wave with the sort of sincere enthusiasm that made us mortally ashamed to be mere renters – mere passengers in a club full of such obviously devoted members, Christ we felt like charlatans.

Anyway, ignore our guilt and enjoy the podcast. There’s some fucking great music on this one. And why is it called the Deathcast? Because that blasted camper van we drove down in was an absolute death trap. Honestly, want to die in a nasty accident? Try driving a 60s VW camper van around the English countryside in the middle of the night in the pissing rain.

Toadcast #38 – The Deathcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Micah P. Hinson – Patience (03.17)
02. Nick Cave & the Dirty Three – Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum (09.41)
03. The Young Republic – Shiloh (20.19)
04. Over the Wall – Thurso (23.22)
05. British Sea Power – Carrion (29.40)
06. The Pictish Trail – All I Own (36.50)
07. Shearwater – Levithan, Bound (41.31)
08. Jeffrey Lewis – Do They Owe (45.50)
09. The Wave Pictures – Leave That Scene Behind (50.39)
10. Richard Hawley – Coming Home (53.21)
11. Calexico – Minas de Cobre (For Better Metal) (59.55)

Moshi Moshi Records do indeed seem to be Record Label du Jour in the UK at the moment, which is no bad thing.  This month’s Welcome to Our TV Show is a Moshi Moshi special, with Slow Club, Hot Club de Paris and the superlative Wave Pictures turning up to play some stuff and do some interviews and such like.

I love the Our TV Show project – the production values are easily good enough, the music is phenomenally good and the atmosphere of the whole thing is excellent.  It just feels like the right way to go about music.  You can watch the whole lot on their YouTube page here, if you like, and here are a couple of mp3s as well:

The Wave Pictures – Now You Are Pregnant (Live on WtOTVS)
Hot Club de Paris – This Thing Forever (Live on WtOTVS)
Slow Club – When I Go (Live on WtOTVS)

Am I going to get lynched if I say that I found this album a little disappointing?  I love the Wave Pictures, and I haven’t seen this stuff live yet, so maybe I should hold fire a little, but the songwriting on this record is a bit thin in places, I find.  I mean this musically – Tatersall’s lyrics are always brilliant – but some of the songs just seem a bit weak, with Avocado Baby and Just Like a Drummer being the worst offenders.  What is there to get excited about in these songs?  In fact I would go so far as to say that the middle of the album is just a little bit stodgy.

Churlish whingeing?  Well yes, if I’m being honest.  I basically wanted this to be the best album the universe has ever heard and it’s fallen short of that: it’s merely bloody excellent.  Strange Fruit For David is brilliant, as is the storming opener Leave That Scene Behind.  Friday Night in Loughborough is also fantastic.  I think what it comes down to is that they used to occasionally do songs where David Tatersall screeched ‘I like my girlfriend better than your girlfriend’.  It was tuneless, irritating and strangely comforting.  I didn’t enjoy it when he did it, but I enjoyed it that he did it, does that make sense?  In amongst some frankly bizarre moments were some of the best songs I’d heard for years, and that made it special.  Like you’d entered a weird, slightly unnerving world and whilst you were feeling slightly disorientated and a little threatened you discovered a little gem of joy to anchor to whilst you got your bearings.

Now, that disorientation has gone.  There’s nothing prickly or bizarre about this album – it’s just an excellent pop record – which means that I have had to learn to relate to the songs a little differently and to be frank I’ve struggled to adjust.  So it’s less uneven, slightly smoother, and hence the sudden moments where the slightly atonal delivery, just on the verge of losing it altogether, twists itself into something beautiful is lost a little bit.

But don’t for a second think that I don’t really enjoy this album, because I do.  And if you don’t know the Wave Pictures then it’s only yourself you’re cheating.

The Wave Pictures – Leave the Scene Behind
The Wave Pictures – Friday Night in Loughborough

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Moshi Moshi | Buy old albums from The Wave Pictures direct

It’s a jam-packed fucker of a week in Edinburgh this week.  On Wednesday there are no less than three gigs that I want to attend, and we even have some sold-out cutting edgeyness to boot – unheard of for the unofficial Least Rock ‘n’ Roll City in the Universe, Including Bath.  The Kills and The Courteeners are both playing here this week, but seeing as the latter is sold out and I had no intention of going to see either I am not sure this merits further mention.

Monday 14th April: The Radar Brothers at Cabaret Voltaire.
They’re signed to Chemikal Underground and sound a little bit like early Grandaddy did in their gentler, more reflective moments.  Every reason to take a chance and go along.
The Radar Brothers – Hearts of Crows

Wednesday 16th April is where it all gets messy.  There are  three gigs to attend tonight, much to my frustration:
Hollow Heart Parlour at Henry’s Cellar Bar.
This is a folk night, with the excellently-named My Kappa Roots headlining this week.

Y’All is Fantasy Island, Gasgiant & Rob St. John at the Wee Red Bar.
Euan at Trampoline has put together another brilliant lineup, with Gasgiant (I know nothing, sorry) and very well-regarded indie-popsters Y’All is etc etc.. joining the brilliant hush-folkster Rob St. John for what should be a brilliant night of upcoming tunesmithery.
Y’All is Fantasy Island – With Handclaps

Broken Records Single Launch Party at The Bongo Club.
The fact that this feels like partly my party too perhaps helps explain the culture of liggers and groupies that grows up in the music industry, but a combination of being one of the first to spot these guys, the fact that they did the first Toad Session and of course the fact that a combination of beer and their live show is the reason Song, by Toad Records exists makes this one more personal than most.  Congratulations lads, I’m really looking forward to getting irredeemably pickled in celebration.

Wednesday’s Conundrum: Euan at Trampoline and the lads from Broken Records have tried to come to a compromise so people can see everything.  The last band at the Wee Red Bar will be over in time for people to high-tail it down to the Bongo Club to catch the Broken Records set and any Broken Records ticket-holders will get a deal on the door at the Wee Red as well.  Myself, I have really thought about it and I am going to be at the Bongo Club all night.  The reasoning?  Well this is a really special night for a group of lads I consider friends, so as much as I would like to catch YiFI and Gasgiant, I will get a chance to see them again, and I saw Rob at Homegame quite recently.  So apologies to Euan for not supporting his excellent Trampoline night this time, but it wouldn’t really feel right somehow.

Friday 18th April: The Mystery Jets at The Hive.
I’ve never been to the Hive before, and this gig is just a little pricey, but I’ve been rather enjoying the new Mystery Jets songs, so I might pop along to see what they’re like.
The Mystery Jets – Flakes

Sunday 20th April: The Wave Pictures at Cabaret Voltaire.
Yes, the fucking Wave Pictures!  Oh yes, yippee, hooroar!  I can’t believe these lads are playing here, but fuck me I’m delighted.  Free oral sex for whichever genius booked them – male or female!  You have got to get your arses down to this gig in the name of all that is rough, scratchy and faintly out of tune.  And to make matters even better, support comes in the form of an acoustic (well, bassless and drumless) set from The Kays Lavelle.
The Wave Pictures – My Kiss