Song, by Toad

So, finally some more sessions happening – this week we have Edinburgh’s most tippediest new band The Last Battle popping in.  There are something like seven of them, I think, so I hope they’ve either limited their numbers for this evening or I suddenly develop into a technical genius, because recording seven musicians with two microphones might prove to be somewhat tricky.

Ruth and I are still trying to think up a suitably hybrid name for the show.  Song, by Toad is basically my thing, and calling the show that rather underplays her role in it, so we thought we’d try and find another name if we could.

Last week’s suggestions included the Princess and the Toad and the current favourite: Toad on a Hot Tin Ruth.  Any further suggestions will be most welcome – please just pop ‘em in the comments below.

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. Clem Snide – Moment In The Sun
2. Amanaz – Sunday Morning
3. The Last Battle – Nature’s Glorious Rage (Live in Session)
4. Joni Mitchell – Carey
5. Slow Club – Lets Fall Back In Love
6. The Last Battle- Black Waterfall (Live in Session)
7. Dr. Dog – Shadow People
8. The Last Battle – Cutlass (Live in Session)
9. Hailey Beavis – In Any Case
10. Yo La Tengo – Yellow Sarong
11. The Beatles – Sexy Sadie
12. The Last Battle – Oh Best Beloved (Live in Session)
13. The Akron Family – River
14. The Last Battle – Soul of The Sea (Live in Session)
15. Lambchop – Every Time I Bring it Up it Seems to Bring You Down

Thanks people, see you next week for the Mammoeth session.

Right, given we’ve come down to Manchester for the Meursault gig, I thought I might make a podcast based around the two years I spent living here.  As I mentioned on this week’s Friday Five, however, those were really not very happy times so basically this podcast is just a great big hour-long whinge about how shit my life was a couple of times a few years ago.

Nah, not really.  I mean, I do describe why life was tough then but it really isn’t just a great big moan, I promise.  For some reason the music in my life at those times seems to have really stuck in my head and become incredibly strongly associated with the period in question.  Partly, I suppose, because the emotional succour you get from music when things are a bit rough is something you’re grateful enough for for it to really form an important connection.

The other aspect is that on both those occasions I had so little music with me that the stuff I did have got played over and over again, so a really small amount of stuff really dominated my listening habits at that point, and became incredibly strongly intertwined with all of my memories of the time.  So, er, yes.  Here you go: The Manchester Podcast.

Toadcast #88 – The Manchester Podcast

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01. Pearl Jam – Dissident (03.16)
02. The Newcranes – Box of Shadows (08.53)
03. James – Say Something (17.17)
04. The Lemonheads – Into Your Arms (20.30)
05. Blur – Clover Over Dover (27.00)
06. Yo La Tengo – On Our Way to Fall (39.47)
07. Moby – Southside (41.31)
08. Calexico – Removed (48.10)
09. Jolene – Constantinople (51.46)
10. The Magnetic Fields – Yeah! Oh, Yeah! (57.57)

This weekend there will be a trip to Manchester. Meursault have a gig there – in the Saki Bar on Saturday, I think – and Mrs. Toad and I are taking the opportunity to drive them down and visit my Granddad, on my Mum’s side, who lives there. He’s lived in the same house for the last forty years, one which he bought for something like two thousand pounds when the family moved out of Moss Side. See, I told you I was nothing like as posh as you think I am, despite my (raised in Moss Side, remember) mother’s determination to surround herself with begonias, organic vegetable patches and copies of Country fucking Living magazine.

So, we’ll drive down, see the gig, say hi to Granddad and then hopefully cook a Sunday roast the next day before coming back to Edinburgh. Sunday roasts are one of my strongest memories of that house. Back when my Grandma was alive Sunday lunch was a pretty bloody big deal – the house was always full and I absolutely always, without fail, got in trouble for quietly disappearing at some point to gnaw on the bone in the kitchen.

Manchester is an odd place for me, though. I suffered massive, massive culture shock when, thinking myself basically English, I moved there from Vienna to go to university. It was a horrible year: I was too foreign to be English, and too English to get the kind of tolerance actual foreigners get, so basically people just didn’t know how to interact with me at all. It was, however, the first time I really started getting into indie music and going to gigs and so on, so I suppose there are advantages to not wanting to spend time with your peers.

The other time I lived in Manchester was when I was inbetween uni and my first job, working in a gangster nightclub (guns pulled, stabbings, brawls, the lot) and with no idea how to actually get a job in my actual professional field. I was flat, flat broke and really fucking fed up – mind you I discovered some great albums then too – inevitably I suppose. So I always think of Manchester quite negatively these days, just because I’ve always been so fucking miserable when I’ve lived there. It’s no fault of the city itself of course, but I really can’t shake that unpleasant reaction I get to the place. And, stupidly, I really like Glasgow and the two cities are virtually identical in almost every sense.

1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.

The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You

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Barenaked Ladies – You Will be Waiting

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The Pogues – First Day of Forever

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Yo La Tengo – Cherry Chapstick

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Moby – Run On

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The last Yo La Tengo album, the brilliantly-titled I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, sounded something like a greatest hits album, despite being full of new songs.  It reminds me in that sense of Tom Waits’ Mule Variations, particularly in way that the strange sensation this aspect of the record generated meant that it took me a long time to realise just how good it was in its own right.

Again with this one there is a sense of touching all the more familiar YLT bases, which again makes the album come across just a little as a Yo La Tengo compilation consisting entirely of songs which you rather inexplicably didn’t hear when they were originally released.

The lush orchestration of opener Here to Fall is perhaps the biggest surprise, although the Inspiral Carpets-style organ on Nothing to Hide is also a little queer.  I was just settling down to listen to a cosy, safe and familar album when that kicked in, and it’s pretty subtle so I don’t know why it would have surprised me, but it did.  Having introduced this scratchy organ sound, they continue to play with it for a couple of songs, before switching unexpectedly back into the orchestral pop on sixth song If it’s True.  Then suddenly they’re off to explore the kind of airy, breezy territory of Summer Sun and (some of) And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.

This kind of shift should indicate why I find this to be an oddly wrong-footing album.  Just as soon as I start to let my assumptions settle, they shift just a little and suddenly I am having to guess again.  This is odd because in no way is this a radical or unusual-sounding album for Yo La Tengo.  If you don’t actually listen it might even sound like them going through the motions, but when you sit down and really have a look at what they’ve done it’s quite a bit more interesting than you might at first realise.

Considering how few bands can really achieve that so many albums into their careers, I think it’s safe to say that we will look back on Yo La Tengo as one of the true greats.

Yo La Tengo – Here to Fall

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Yo La Tengo – Nothing to Hide

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There’s not been a Big Famous Album reviewed on this site in bloody ages.  Partly I’ve become so focussed on what’s going on locally that I have somewhat taken my eye off the ball with regards to bigger releases, even just those which are big relative to the small world of indie music.  And partly there have been very few which have tickled my fancy in the slightest for quite a while.

There are some bits and pieces coming along though which suggest that this might change in the immediate future.  And about time too, all this navel-gazing is no good for anyone.  Look outwards, I say, cast off the Tunnel Vision of the Toad and embrace the wider world.  Alright, sorry, but sometimes I get so deeply into my own stuff I do kind of forget that from time to time.  So what do we have?

The Twilight Sad: I have a naughty copy of this, to which I am not going to confess, and have only listened to it a few times through.  It’s out on the 5th October though and is currently sounding rather promising.  I wouldn’t say I was all that into it just yet, but then I only really embraced their last album a song or two at a time, so I am prepared to take it slowly with this one.

The Avett Brothers: Their sound hasn’t changed much, but then it never did, really.  Out on the 29th September, the title track from I and Love and You has been slipped out in to the world for us to enjoy and it is full of the exact same understated warmth which I love about this band.  I know I am morally obliged to hate them because they are on Columbia these days but if the whole record sounds like this then I may find my indie snobbery very difficult to maintain.

The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

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The Mountain Goats: Alright, I’ll say it: I thought Sunset Tree was their best album abd I have yet to hear anything by this band that I like anything like as much, despite their considerable back catalogue.  Heretic Pride was okay, and the new song Genesis 3:23 is also… okay.  Not at all bad by any means, but I would not describe it as any better than pleasant.  This one’s also out on the 5th October.

The Mountain Goats – Genesis 3:23

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Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs is out on Monday, which somewhat makes up for the fact that they seem to have been a little less generous with preview mp3s than everyone else.  But then, with a cast-iron reputation like theirs, why would they need to?  This sounds a lot like “…I Will Beat Your Ass” and I would say that I am enjoying it, but am yet to be blown away.  There are a few more moody, quiet numbers on this record as well, perhaps a little more in line with the likes of Summer Sun and the like than the previous record was.

Flashy Python: This is a solo project by a certain hand-clapping, yeah-saying gentleman by the name of Alec Ounsworth.  He, like Julian Plenti before him, is rather keen to keep his solo project free from associations with his band stuff, and has put the whole album up for preview here.  It’s less driven than early CYHSY stuff, and generally a bit more weird, but it sounds pretty interesting to me.

Flashy Python – Skin & Bones

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Micah P. Hinson: This just dropped into my inbox this morning, and I know nothing about it bar two things: firstly, that Micah P. Hinson is fucking amazing; and secondly that the artwork, pictured above, is bloody lovely.

Langhorne Slim: His new album Be Set Free isn’t being released until 26th October, but the new song sounds brilliant.  It’s called I Love You, but Goodbye and is a little plusher and more elaborate than his earlier recordings, but unusually, I rather like this.  The piano is especially gorgeous – a times eleborate, at times rich and sonorous and at times deft and twinkly.  This augurs very well indeed – I am excited.

Langhorne Slim – I Love You, But Goodbye

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It’s about time the big(ger) boys fought back a little, frankly, but it looks like there could be some very promising recordings from some relatively high-profile artists coming our way this Autumn.

This is called the Slowcast because there are so many songs and, more commonly, whole albums out there which I took ages and ages to get into, and for no really obvious reason.

There are several reasons, I guess: how familiar a sound is, your emotional state at the time, what your mates are listening to, how popular something is and stuff like that.  I know I’ve admitted plenty of times in the past that I have a habit of refusing to like things if they get too popular.  That sounds ludicrous, but it’s not exactly a conscious decision, more an instinctive recoiling.  I never have liked much popular stuff, although I do certainly go through phases.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons that, with the label, I am not looking to sign or work with the modern equivalent of a Top 40 band – I have never much liked Top 40 music.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of the podcast.  This is dedicated to those albums which for some reason you have to hear about a million times before you eventually, out of nowhere, realise that you love them.

Toadcast #72 – The Slowcast

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01. Billy Bragg – Honey I’m a Big Boy Now (04.36)
02. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (08.37)
03. Radiohead – My Iron Lung (14.14)
04. The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels (23.42)
05. Mancino – Definition of an Accident (32.26)
06. The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest (36.09)
07. Interpol – Obstacle #1 (43.31)
08. My Latest Novel – Wolves (49.30)
09. The Wedding Present – 2, 3, Go! (55.29)
10. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (59.56)

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)

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)

In order to get into a good mood for this weekend, how about some reasonably good news from the European Parliament? This recent vote slaps down the recent threats by ISPs to simply disonnect people accused of naughty file-sharing. The joy of this is not that I am necessarily in favour of completely unrestricted file-sharing of any and everything, but that if you are going to threaten something as drastic, in the 21st Century, as cutting off someone’s internet access then you had better have some independent oversight of this kind of decision. Law enforcement, basically, should be performed by law enforcement agencies, not by ISPs at the behest of the companies who give them most of their high value content.

It’s weird, here in Europe we seem to be stuck in between the Mercans and the Middle East at the moment, with moves like the one above which come dangerously close to mimicking the dangerous American taste for completely unaccountable law enforcement, which basically means no law at all. The on the other side, we’ve got the crazies in the Middle East trying to get the Declaration of Human Rights to include fucking idiotic clauses that state that it is a violation of someone’s human rights to have their religious sensibilities. Without wishing to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities, fuck you, fuck your infantile fairytales, and fuck right off and snivel yourself to sleep in the dark of your bedroom, coddled in your childish fantasies that we have some sort of privileged places in the universe, that anyone gives a fuck about your fucking feelings and that you won’t die and rot like every other living thing on Earth. You fucking baby.

I give the Americans a hard time over their dismantling of the rule of law in their own country, something we dismayingly seem to be trying to mimic on our side of the pond, but honestly, their freedom of speech laws, and specifically the First Amendment, would be very, very welcome in amongst all this craziness. I am reminded of the quote from legal scholar Ronald Dworkin: “the only right you don’t have in a democracy is the right not to be offended”. Quite. Fucking. So.

Anyway, it’s Friday, and we are having a half day here at Proper Job in order to go out for a meal this afternoon and then get biblically rat-arsed in the evening. So Izzy, if you’re reading this, beware of dribbling design engineers stumbling about your pub at about eight o’clock. Feel free to sling us all out – we’ll probably deserve it.

So without further ado, here’s your Five for Friday.  Please take the opportunity, and try and treat the subject matter with some creativity – calling Christians a bunch of cunts isn’t very imaginative:

1. Cause some religious offence.
2. Cause some political offence.
3. Cause some musical offence.
4. Cause some national offence.
5. Cause some cultural offence.

That should do it – jihad by Saturday.

Tom Lehrer – National Brotherhood Week
Yukon – Sweden
Slow Club – Apples & Pairs
Yo La Tengo – Little Eyes
The Fiery Furnaces – Inca Rag/Name Game

Well after last week, which was basically just a great big week of Meursault gigs, this week is a week of just one single gig.  Just one.  I know!  Needless to say the scurillous Bart has managed to weasel out a few things, but honestly, the man likes everything.  I was in the pub with him last week and I heard him utter the immortal words ‘I don’t like them.  I think they’re shit.’  I feel as if some sort of plaque should be erected to commemorate the occasion.  I’ve known the guy for a year or so and I have never heard these words, or even sentiments vaguely to that effect, ever pass his lips.

Thursday 3rd July 2008: Vandaveer, free gig at Cabaret Voltaire.
This one sounds sort of promising.  I don’t know much about Vandaveer apart from the fact that I have a couple of his songs floating about on my music drive which I rather like.  It’s folk-pop with a sort of drift from melancholy to sunny and back and should make for a fine evening.
Vandaveer – Marianne, You’ve Done it Now

In other news, I won’t be at the above gig because I will be attending Born to Be Wide at the Voodoo Rooms instead.  This month’s topic is Inside the Mind of a Music Journalist and, scandalously, I wasn’t invited to be on the panel – imagine that, and me all Web 2.0 and everything!  Anyway, I shall be going along and I think the chances of me being able to keep my mouth shut are very slim indeed, don’t you?  Then again it might be funny to let them all start talking about Teh Internetz for a bit and see where they end up, be0fore sticking my oar in at the last.  Not, of course, that I’m an expert anyway.  No-one really is, with respect to internet stuff, at the moment are they?  We’ve all got ideas and hunches and instincts, but I’d be sceptical of anyone who claimed to really know.

Anyway, yesterday I was at some sort of radio conference thing in Glasgow, which was quite fun.  The tricky bit was that I didn’t really know what I wanted out of the whole thing – I mean, do I really want a full-time job in radio? I doubt it really – but it was interesting to hear what people had to say.  They were generally quite impressed with what we’re doing here, I think, in terms of the combination of media and so on, so maybe we’re moving things in the right direction.

Anyhow, I drove home to Edinburgh at about eleven and it wasn’t really dark out, yet.  I forget, sometimes, just how far North Scotland is.  Really fucking far North actually.  I know we’re not far off the Summer Solstice, when all those mental Druid loonies descend on Stonehenge and knit homeopathic aubergines or whatever the fuck it is they do, but still: the middle of the night and nothing but an eerie twilight.  It was weird, but sort of fascinating too.  And I can’t think of a better song, or song title at least:

The Wedding Present – I’m From Further North Than You (Klee Remix)

The other song that jumped to mind was Yo La Tengo’s beautiful version of Sandy Denny’s By the Time it Gets Dark.  I love this – the normal domesticity of it; the sense of resolved conflict; the image of a day full of harrassment and annoyance that ends with you and your other half sitting down late in the evening with a cup of a tea or a glass of wine, after everything’s finally been dealt with, and before you ever start to talk about all the hassle of the day you know from the look in their eyes that everything really and truly is okay.

When I got home last night Mrs. Toad was in bed with her copy of the Economist and a cup of tea and the wee bedside light was on and things were just… nice, you know?

Yo La Tengo – By the Time it Gets Dark