Song, by Toad

6.Elvis Perkins in Dearland
This album is greatly helped by kicking off with the best song I’ve heard for bloody ages, and actually that threw me off for a little, as did the subtle shift in emphasis since his brilliant debut Ash Wednesday.  Once songs like Hours Last Stand and Dresden settle into your head though you won’t hear an album with more intricately interwoven senses of both sadness and optimism for quite some time.

Elvis Perkins in Dearland – Hours Last Stand

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7.Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
I am perpetually surprised by just how much I like so many songs on this record.  I keep thinking of Wild Beasts as a band I alternately love and then really don’t like at all, but you’ll wait to the last couple of songs of this to find a track I’m even lukewarm on.  It’s all chiming guitars and yearning vocals and there’s just enough purpose to the rhythm to suggest that you could be dancing to it, and just enough woe to make you think, well, maybe not.

Wild Beasts – We Still Got the Taste Dancing on Our Tongues

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8.King Creosote – Flick the Vs
There is a sense in which Kenny Anderson can pretty  much write what he likes, because he wields one of my favourite singing voices of all time.  After the bombast of Bombshell and the sidestep of They Flock Like Vulcans, he seems to have combined a little pop from the former and a fair bit of bleeping from the latter and mixed them together to deliver another classic King Creosote record.  It has a really distinctive character, coupling his touching songwriting with just the right amount of weirdness.

King Creosote – No-one Had it Better

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9.Dame Satan – Beaches & Bridges
This is a bit of an out of the blue sort of placing really, given how little I know about the band and given that they are hardly well-known in general, but as I tired of other records or failed to find the excitement in them that some of my peers managed, this one simply sat there pretty much near the top of the pile and remained confidently there for the duration of the year.  It doesn’t slap you across the face with brilliance in the way that some do, just builds a steady, consistent relationship with your need for succour as the day ends.

Dame Satan – Ghost Dance

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10.Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
I still find this an infuriatingly inconsistent album.  There are at least three songs in the second half I really find completely needless, but a combination of how much I love the rest of them and the sheer ubiquity of this album still make this one of my favourite this year.  For a change, people playing it all over the place hasn’t put me off, because those places were places like The Bowery and friends’ houses and stuff like that, so somehow it’s ended up being a good thing for a change.

Animal Collective – Also Frightened

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21.FOUND – Enough About Human Rights
I’m not sure if anyone, not even the band themselves, likes Enough About Human Rights best from their excellent Let Fidelity Break EP, but I do.  There’s just something unexpected about this song, for some reason.  The fact that it is in fact a Moondog cover probably has a lot to do with that, but the hectic, percussive energy FOUND pile into their version just makes me grin every time I hear it.

22.Timber Timbre – Demon Host
The ‘ohs’ in this song take the spectral folk of Timber Timbre and give it a pleading, forlorn quality which imbues it with just a little more pathos than some of the others on the album, and this makes it extra special, in my view.

23.FOUND – You’re No Vincent Gallo – Toad Session
Honestly, I could put pretty much their entire session in the top ten of this list quite easily.  It was one of the best things I have ever seen, I think it’s fair to say.  Without all the stuff added by the full band I found myself so much more impressed with Ziggy’s voice, with the gorgeous tones he got from his banjo… with pretty much all of it, honestly.  Gorgeous.

24.Broken Records – Lessons Never Learnt
This may have been on an earlier release, but it was on this year’s(ish) Out on the Water EP, so I am putting my foot down and saying that it counts.  In any case, a really surprising song to come from a band like this, and I think that little down-up of the cello absolutely makes it.

25.Trips and Falls – Breaking Up With My Mormon Missionaries
These guys were pretty much the revelation of the year for me, in all honesty.  So much so that we’ve offered to release He Was Such a Quiet Boy on Song, by Toad Records, and it should be coming out in early March.  Their music is just fucking creepy, to be honest, and the male/female vocal interplay on this track in particular really is odd.  Add that repetitive descent on the strings and this really is an unsettling song.  And a brilliant one.

26.Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy For the Good Times
It didn’t grab me as my favourite track from Jesus H. Foxx’ debut EP Matter right off the bat, but I think it is.  The cornet, the harmonies, and that simple, repetitive rhythmic underpinning for the whole thing… it all just works incredibly well together, and there’s a sophistication to it which never ceases to surprise me when I think that this is the band’s first release, with their current lineup that is.

27.The Pictish Trail – You Covered the Earth With Your Thumb (Toad Session)
I love the Toad Sessions.  They really can provide some amazing recordings, and with Neil so kindly recording and mixing all of the ones we’ve done so far this year we really have had some incredible stuff.  Johnny Pictish is about the nicest guy ever to set foot in our house, and his session really was good.  The slow build of this, and the prominence of his vocal really are gorgeous.

28.Navigator – Change
An oddly melodic tune from one of the most belligerently low-fi albums I think I have ever heard.  It took a while for the sense of ‘whoooah, what the fuck?’ to subside when I first heard this record, but it is absolutely brilliant.  Fuzz or not, this is just a stone-cold pop gem and one of the most catchy riffs of the year.

29.The Builders and The Butchers – Golden And Green
Mental and ferocious brilliance.  When these guys hit their stride their ramshackle old jalopy threatens to shake loose its wheels altogether and crash into a ditch, and those are almost without fail their greatest songs.  This is just like that.

30.Titus Andronicus – Fear And Loathing In Mahwah, NJ
I don’t know whether I just like how raucous this song gets, or whether I like how quiet it is half the time, compared to how raucous it gets when it cuts loose.  Either way, this is one of the best play it loud soungs of the year.

31.Sparrow & the Workshop – Into the Wild
I heard this EP so close to doing this list that Horse’s Grin could as easily have been here instead, but such is the slightly arbitrary nature of these things that you’re getting this one.  Maybe it’s something about the storming ending which gets me – Nick is getting to really have a right bloody go on his guitars these days, and Jill is proving that her voice is easily powerful enough to step up and match it.  This is full on rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s superb.

32.Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (I)
Yes, more Wild Beasts.  I don’t know how this happened – it wasn’t exactly deliberate, I just kept ordering and re-ordering my list and their songs kept on sticking in there, often at the expense of stuff I thought I liked better.  This one’s more downbeat, but again that guitar sound and gorgeous voice produce something atmospheric and yet still insidiously infectious.

33.Alela Diane & Alina Hardin – I Have Returned
This whole EP is simple and absolutely gorgeous.  Again, I could have picked pretty much any of the songs from it, but there’s something about this one which seems to have captivated me just that little bit more.  The vocal interplay between the two is as lovely as with any song on the EP, but maybe there’s something in the roll of the verses which does it.  Then again, maybe it’s just arbitrary and I might pick a different one this time next week.

34.Meursault – Nothing Broke
A different version of this was on the band’s MySpace page the first time I ever heard them and it made a really strong impression on me.  They recorded it for their Toad Session back in August last year, and now this gorgeous piano and harmonium version for the truly stunning Nothing Broke EP.  If anything, the only reason this song is so low on this list is down to the fact that it’s so familiar by now.

35.Timber Timbre – Lay Down in the Tall Grass
This song shows just how simple most of this album is – the barest hint of percussion doing nothing very complex, a simple organ riff repeating throughout the song, and vocals.  There’s other stuff there too, but really very little of it, and that kind of subtle touch is what makes this such a special album.

To download all these songs in one big zip file, click here.

1-10 / 11-20 / 21-35 / 36-50

36.Wild Beasts – All The King’s Men
The vocals are weird, but there’s something about a large chunk of this record which I find absolutely compelling.  I love Ben’s voice, for starters, and this song probably highlights it better than any other.

37.Virgin of the Birds – Ilona, You Should Still Be My Vampire Attendant
Quite apart from the weird start, this is just a song based around a single, simple, brilliant hook.  So infectious I simply can’t stop humming it to myself.  And he’s playing a gig at our house on New Year’s Eve, if you fancy seeing him live.

38.Meursault – William Henry Miller Pt.2 (EP Version)
Meursault releasing their singles so late in the year has really fucked with my lists.  I love Nothing Broke, and both of the Williams Henry Miller on it, but the single version just blows this clean out of the water and the poor little acoustic version has ended up exiled to No.38.  It’s non-lyrical vocal bits which make this – the sort of deflated sigh of dismal unhappiness in between verses – just brilliant.

39.Withered Hand – Providence
Erm, nothing to say about this actually.  It’s just ace.  Dan’s slightly peculiar lyrics, the borderline-Hawley guitar strums, the vocal harmonies… who knows what makes this song so good.  Like all his music though, it just makes you like the guy.

40.Timber Timbre – Magic Arrow
Spooky and weird.  That kind of describes the whole album, but the repeating bassline and the insistent rhythm give this one a sort of sinister purpose of its own.  One of the discoveries of the year, as far as my ears are concerned.

41.Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard – To be Ojectified
There are a lot of songs about ageing and mortality on Em Are I, but this is one of the saddest and most resigned.  It’s like a cross between a stream of consciousness and the gradual deflation of an airbed, and ends up being both maudlin and comforting.  Which is to say that the lyrics are a bit on the horrible side, but the delivery is sympathetic and warm.

42.Broken Records – Wolves
Broken Records (and many of my other friends, like Sparrow & the Workshop and Withered Hand) suffer a bit in this year’s Festive Fifty because many of my favourite songs on their album, like A Good Reason, were actually featured in demo version on previous year’s lists.  This song, however, did not, and is one of the highlights of their album for me.  By the time everything gets going it’s just a fury of a song, and cannot fail to remind of how brilliant these guys are on stage.

43.Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber
It’s an odd subject, and the story is almost as compelling as the music itself.  There was a bit more full band stuff on vs. Children, and I’ve heard older fans complain about this, but the drum beat and the repeated, yet unintrusive chime of the piano in the background of this song are both lovely.

44.Alela Diane – White as Diamonds
This is fucking stunning and would have been in the top five had it not been for those goddamned bastard cymbals, which time has done nothing to soften.  The acoustic Daytrotter version of this song is one of the loveliest things I’ve ever heard.

45.Broken Records – Out On the Water
Hmm.. am I allowed to include this, given it was out last year?  Fuck it, I love it when a band whose live set is mental and reckless suddenly slow it down and play something surprisingly gentle. Here this is performed live at the Bedlam Theatre early last year – bloody great:

46.Wild Beasts – Hooting And Howling
A bit like other songs of theirs on this list, I don’t know whether I love the vocals, the laid back but nevertheless quite danceable beat or that really nice guitar sound they have.  Cracking album.

47.The Leisure Society – The Last of the Melting Snow
The Leisure Society made a bit of a rod for their own backs with this song.  By virtue of its Ivor Novello Award nomination it shot a tiny band on a tiny label right into the limelight, and infortunately the rest of their material just didn’t cut the mustard.  The album was just plain weak, and I found myself forgetting about this song because of it, which is criminal because it is absolutely brilliant.  There is a reason it got them so much attention.

48.Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were
For a band with two drummers and four guitarists to make such nuanced and subtle music is downright weird.  This is probably ‘the pop song’ from their fantastic Matter EP, and that head-nodding rhythm and the gorgeous vocal lead out make this one of my favourite songs of the year.

49.Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers – Beating St Louis
Shilpa Ray’s voice plus accordian.  Job done.  Honestly, for someone with pipes like these to be accompanied by the macabre accordian moaning which dominates this song is simply a cast-iron recipe for Toad-pleasing.

50.The Smiles and Frowns – Mechanical Songs
Another song which sound like it would be drifting around the abandoned site of a funfair which had gone horribly wrong, this song is from the band’s excellent debut, and also available on eminently desirable white vinyl 7″.  Buy one, and make your friends slightly nervous by playing it all the time.

Download the all these songs as a zip file by clicking here.

1-10 / 11-20 / 21-35 / 36-50

I am back on Fresh Air Radio this evening, although unfortunately not accompanied by the lovely Ruth, as she’s not feeling well. However, to keep the loveliness quota nice and high, the extremely lovely Diana de Carrabus from Candythief will be playing live in session for us this evening.

She may be named like a dastardly Bond villainess, but Diana’s music is theatrical pop joy.  A somewhat stripped-down set is required in the tight confines of the Fresh Air studio, however, so it will be just herself and an acoustic guitar, accompanied by violin.

On air 7pm-8.30pm GMT – listen here.

The tracklisting will be updated live below, so feel free to add your comments in as we go along.

1. Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree
2. Elbow – Station Approach
3. Candythief – Bargains (Live in Session)
4. Son Volt – Sultana
5. Alex Ward – Sounds Like Someone We Know
6. Timber Timbre – Magic Arrow
7. Candythief – Pass It On (Live in Session)
8. Betty Harris – Mean Man
9. Seasick Steve – The Letter
10. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (I)
11. Candythief – Amnesty (Live in Session)
12. King Charles – Beating Heart
13. REM – Disturbance at the Heron House
14. Felix Lighter – The Rational Pedestrian
15. Candythief – Junk (Live in Session)

And here, for those who missed it, is last week’s session with Thomas Western.  The sound is rather scratchy unfortunately, but I am still getting used to the desk.  To those who care, I think it’s his guitar mic which was clipping, not the vocal one, because the two were very close together:

Thomas Western – Fresh Air Session and Interview

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Thomas Western – The Worm Forgives the Plough (Live on Fresh Air)

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Thomas Western – Your Front Door (Live on Fresh Air)

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And the accompanying videos:

These videos were taken when I interviewed Wild Beasts for Fresh Air Radio a little while ago, and I thought you might be interested in seeing them.  Ben (the wee chap on the left) has a fucking amazing voice.

The Fresh Air broadcast is about to start up actually, and it looks like I am going to get a Wednesday evening slot – hopefully around half six or seven – so watch out for that in the coming weeks.  In fact there’s actually a launch party in the big swanky-looking Uni building thing on Bristo square (Teviot, is it?) on Tuesday.  The beer’s fucking cheap so please come along and help kick things off with a degree of drunken debauchery.

Interview is here.

Fresh Air Radio website.

Wild Beasts website.

Buy Wild Beasts stuff on Amazon.

I’ll admit before I start writing this review that I am oddly ambivalent about Wild Beasts, and that this gig didn’t entirely cure that.  Some of their songs I absolutely love, a couple are just a little too weird, and a couple don’t quite light the fireworks.  For the most part though, I really like them, and this performance generally cemented that impression.

Interviewing them beforehand for Fresh Air Radio was interesting too.  Apart from the fact that they came across as incredibly nice, down to earth guys, it was interesting to hear about the emotional state which led to some of the wilder aspects of their music.  Originating in the bustling metropolis of Kendal*, they decided to make the move to Leeds specifically to take a chance on their music careers.

Consequently, according to the band, a lot of the desperation in the howls and yelps on Limbo Panto was just that: a shrill proclamation of their existence.  The risk they took to arrive in a new city and try to make themselves heard in an already bustling music scene drove them to extremes, and you can hear it in the album, which has a kind of manic, dark energy to it.  Follow up, Two Dancers, is mellower and less ragged, with the band now achieving consistent recognition and admitting to consciously taking it a little easier on their audience.

Nevertheless, the transition from being a band who had to shout just to be heard to a band enthusiastically pimped by the NME and one who are now as cavalierly dismissed as being good as they were previously just cavalierly dismissed has been a little weird for them.  They have only just taken the next big risk: that of becoming full-time musicians.  This is a terrifying time for any band, because it’s a circular dilemma. The only way to become full-time musicians is to take the chance and just do it, because without devoting that kind of time and energy to it, you can’t make it work well enough to justify the decision in the first place.  And even then it might not work.  But basically the only way is to just do it and take the chance and in the current music industry, where no-one really knows where the money is coming from, that’s a big risk – something of which the band are acutely aware.

I can’t really tell whether that newfound confidence which they describe as being present on the album has transmitted in any way to their live performance.  They do strut confidently on stage, but the fourth wall is generally left intact.  Ben talks to the crowd occasionally and a little uncomfortably but Hayden, chatty, thoughtful and sincere during the interview, tends to stay hidden behind a wall of hair.  He has already admitted that he finds the recent increase in demand for live acoustic sessions to be a rather trying because it is a little too personal, and a little too unforgiving, when he would rather keep a little distance between the performer and the person.

On stage you can see that quite clearly, although they aren’t as theatrical or as flamboyant as you might expect.  In fact they’re a pretty straighforward four-piece: drums, bass and two guitars with a bit of keyboard thrown in from time to time, when called for.  The real difference comes with the math-rock flavoured drumming, the simple but brilliant guitar riffs and the interplay between the two lead vocalists.

As my gig companion Morgan said, it’s weird to see a group switch lead singer mid-set, because it fundamentally changes what you perceive to be the character of the band.  I suppose we tend to project a lot of the musical emotion onto the singer, and having to shift that to someone else after three songs is quite strange.  Having said that, the interplay between Ben and Hayden’s voices is amazing, and is just about my favourite aspect of their music.  One is wild and pleading, the other more vulnerable and sympathetic and that seems to be the dynamic of the music itself.  Wild Beasts are simultaneously fractious and vulnerable, and that contradiction is probably what I find so engaging about them, despite the fact that I don’t love every song they’ve ever written.

Even during this set, which I really enjoyed, there were songs I found to be a little too full-on.  Particularly with their early stuff I can find the songs getting away from me a little when the theatricality is at its strongest.  At the same time, and slightly paradoxically, there are times when I find the songs a little bland – where the twin sparks of pop sensibility and innovative belligerence just fail to ignite something exciting and the song never quite gets off the ground.

So I come back to where I started: Wild Beasts have done a lot of brilliant songs, and the ‘one hand giveth while the other taketh away’ dynamic is something I find really exciting, but there are definitely times when I don’t really connect, for various reasons.  An intriguing band though, and a really good gig.

Wild Beasts – All the King’s Men

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Wild Beasts – We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ on our Tongues

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Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from Domino Records

*For anyone who doesn’t know Kendal, this description might not be entirely serious.

This week’s job is the finishing of the Honeytrap Toad Session, preparing the second Toad House Gig for Friday – brilliant brilliant brilliant! – sort of getting ready for the Toad Autumn Party at the Bowery on the 10th (Pineapple Chunky madness, woo!) and getting the Meursault singles pressed and the artwork sorted.  If I am dead by the weekend, do not be surprised.

Fortunately, the start of the week is relatively light on gigs.  Lightish anyway.  Tonight is free, so I should get a chunk done then.  I just fear the traditional upload hell which tends to accompany the finishing of these bloody videos.  Vimeo is a great service in many ways, but the uploading is flaky as fuck and incredibly annoying.  Still, that’s presumably a matter for Friday at 4am, if the FOUND session is anything to go by.

Tuesday 29th September 2009: The Blank Tapes & Magic Leaves at the Bowery.

I really like it when people around me get all giddy about the visit of bands I’ve never heard of – it makes going to a gig that much more exciting.  This is one of those gigs

Wednesday 30th September 2009: Wild Beasts & The Kays Lavelle at Cabaret Voltaire.

These guys are just on the edge of stuff I like – some of it I absolutely love and some I find just a little bit too much.  It’s camp and loose, but they write terrific pop songs nevertheless and I am really looking forward to seeing them live to get a bit more of a clue about their personality as a band.

Wild Beasts – Hooting & Howling

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Thursday 1st October 2009: Leith Tape Club at the Iso Lounge, with Animal Magic Tricks and Men Diamler.

The Leith Tape Club is a lovely night, with a small capacity and an initmate atmosphere, and conveniently right around the corner from my work.

Thursday 1st October: Meursault, Three Blind Wolves & Washington Irving at Sneaky Pete’s.

Three Blind Wolves are apparently Ross Clark-related, although I have to confess I know nothing about them.  Washington Irving are another new one on me, but I think we all know quite enough about Meursault by now.

Friday 2nd October 2009: X Lion Tamer & Nite Jewel at Sneaky Pete’s.

I don’t know why I like X Lion Tamer, exactly.  All that synthy 80s pop should be way more than I can handle, but oddly I find myself really enjoying it – basically I suppose because the songs are just incredibly catchy.  Night Jewel, I have to confess, I know almost nothing about.

X Lion Tamer – Neon Hearts

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Friday 2nd October: Animal Magic Tricks & Men Diamler play the second Toad House Gig.

These house gigs look like turning into really nice things.  The last one was bloody lovely, and with the lovely Animal Magic tricks and Men Diamler, whose music can be as mental as it can lovely I think this one will be a fantastic night.

Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves

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Friday 2nd October: Trespassers William, Glissando & eagleowl at the Wee Red Bar.

Gizeh Records’ allstar tour comes to Edinburgh, supported by local sorts The Kays Lavelle and eagleowl.  I have to confess I rather feared for eagleowl, who were somewhat threatened by a recent combination of relocation and fornication, but seeing them back playing (superbly) at the Withered Hand EP launch last week has cheered me right up.  They have about seven new songs recorded too, you know.  I’ve no idea what they’re going to do with them, but they have them, which is tantalising, but definitely rather excellent news.

Saturday 3rd October: Kid Canaveral EP launch at the Bowery, with Come On Gang and Cancel the Astronauts.

This lineup is ridiculously indie-pop-tastic, with Edinburgh’s three finest lining up in a show of defiance to all that moany indie-folk shit I insist on listening to.  This stuff is all about the infectiousness of the tunes, and Kid Canaveral are perhaps the most hummable band in the city.  Their new EP is out on download or, erm, tape.  Yes, tape.  Good fucking grief, it’ll be wax cylinders or fucking eight track next.

Kid Canaveral – Couldn’t Dance

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After complaints on a previous thread about the timeliness of the reviews on this site, I think it’s worth re-stating something of a disclaimer before writing what is another woefully late album review: I write reviews only as and when I feel I have sorted out in my head what I feel about an album.  Somtimes I have to hold off for a while because the review is written before the album is actually released, but more often than not reviews on Song, by Toad are just plain late.  The reason for that is quite simple: it can take me a while to wear an album in properly, but I’d rather do that than rattle out the posts too quickly just to meet some imaginary deadline.

I actually downloaded this record naughtily a little while ago, and have been mulling it over ever since, but it still took a nudge from their label, Domino, to get me to actually write this review.  This is why things are always a little late around here.

This album, a little like Wild Beasts’ last one, has required all that time and more to settle in and allow me to form some semblance of a sensible opinion, although for different reasons.  Usually, when a group makes a big splash with their debut album and releases a follow up with a lot of the more notable eccentricities ironed out I am the first to start complaining.  With Wild Beasts, however, I found their first record just a little too much to assimilate, so I’m actually grateful for the fact that they’ve taken it a little easier this time around.

So how would I describe it?  Well I’m not sure, really.  The guitar work has all the atmosphere of a super-edgy, hipper-than-thou indie band, but the music doesn’t necessarily carry that kind of style with it most of the time.  The album chimes along like an odd cross between Vampire Weekend and early Interpol – at once menacing and jaunty.  They do give you something of a dancey feeling, but there’s definitely something funny going on which I can’t quite pin down.

Maybe it’s just the voice – a swirling, melodramatic croon which I really like – which makes this music seem so unique.  I am sure there are a million out there who would disagree with me, but Wild Beasts seem to have a really distinctive character and, far from blunting their individuality,  this less extravagant approach seems to have given this album more discipline and hence more consistency than their last.  It may tail off a little towards the end, but I like it.  Rather a lot.

Wild Beasts – All the King’s Men

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Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (I)

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Domino

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 »

I bought this for only one reason: Drowned in Sound have been going on about with such enthusiasm I thought I’d better give it a try.  And were they right?  Well they were right about something – there’s definitely something quite amazing going on here.  I don’t think I like much of it, but it’s fucking brilliant at the same time, if you get my drift.

It sounds like a deranged musical, somewhere in between Rocky Horror and Moulin Rouge.  The pirhouetting falsetto is so extreme that I spent most of the first listen waiting for the Serious Indie Voice kick in, which it never does.  As I listen to this the phrase ‘you have got to be fucking joking’ is never far from my thoughts.  It’s nuts – what the fuck are they trying to do?

I’m honestly flabberghasted.  Songs like The Devil’s Crayon are basically just brilliant pop songs, but most of the rest of it is so camp, so theatrical, so melodramatic it exceeds any scale I have for these kinds of things.  Again though, I think this album is brilliant, not because I am likely to listen to it – it’s a bit much for my conservative indie tastes – but because it’s just so bold and direct and shameless.  Who the fuck invested in these guys – what balls!  Not that I can’t see what he saw, in a sense, but in an era of so much conservatism by nervy record labels, something this creative must represent taking a hefty chance.

What an amazing record.  As you can probably tell, I have no idea what to make of it, but I can’t help but be impressed.

Wild Beasts – The Devil’s Crayon
Wild Beasts – Woebegone Wanderers

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