Song, by Toad

I was so disappointed with both the music on the last Rilo Kiley album and with Jenny Lewis’ sex-kitten cavorting which accompanied the PR effort that I ended up developing a real dislike of the band.  This is possibly due to me being a bit of dick I suppose, rather than any fault of the band, but I really didn’t like the actual tunes much either so the results would have been much the same I guess.

Anyhow this album, recorded by Jenny Lewis and her fella Johnathan Rice, seems to straddle the pop instincts of Rilo Kiley and the soulful gospel-folk of Lewis’ solo work.  Unfortunately, I don’t actually know enough about Rice’s own work to give you an idea where it might sit as far as a fan of his music would be concerned.  In general though, as will surprise precisely no readers of this site, I tend more towards Jenny Lewis than I do to Rilo Kiley, and this fact is pretty much all you need to know to predict my reaction to this record.

Generally, when they go upbeat and get into their boy-girl, borderline doo-wop pop tunes then I kind of tune out.  Not that it’s no good or anything, just that I don’t find it at all emotionally engaging, so for all it’s pleasant enough my attention tends to drift.

Given that they are bumping uglies and are both successful musicians in their own right, I guess I am not surprised that there is a little more blissed out dreaminess to this album than any real sense of driven artistic adventure, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad record.  There are some cracking moments on this, notably opener Little Fly, and songs like As a Sprout and Wild is the Wind.

Overall I think there are far too many indifferent, middle of the road efforts like Winter Sun for me to ever end up forming a deep or particularly lasting bond with the album as a whole, but it’s an enjoyable listen with some great moments.  In fact, it’s an album which feels like it was conceived on a lazy, contented Sunday afternoon, even down to the cover art, and that is probably the best way to listen to it as well.

Jenny & Johnny – Little Fly

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Jenny & Johnny – As a Sprout

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Belle & Sebastian are one of my favourite bands, so I am pretty gutted that it feels like our relationship is comprehensively and irreparably broken.  That sounds rather idiotically melodramatic, but this feels a bit like breaking up with someone, seeing them hanging around some new friends and finding them so utterly unlike you that the breakup takes on a kind of finality, in the sense that if that’s what they really enjoy, then no amount of talking about it is going to make you right for each other anyway, so might as well just let it go.

You’ve probably guessed I’m talking about Norah Jones by now, haven’t you.  If Stuart Murdoch wants to make music with Norah Jones, then he is probably not making music for me anymore, and if I am going to react like this to him making music with Norah Jones then he probably won’t care in the slightest that he isn’t making music for me anymore.  And nor should he.

I remember seeing the first posters for Belle & Sebastian going up around Glasgow, and not being entirely sure they were real.  The artwork was so distinctive, despite being so simple, and the name of the band and the names of their songs had such an otherworldly air to them that it took a while for me to be sure they weren’t a spoof or a cinematic project or… well something other than a straightforward indie-pop band anyway.

My girlfriend at the time became enamoured with them, put a handful of songs on a series of mixtapes, and my own infatuation quickly followed suit.  There was something mischievous and enigmatic about their fey playfulness which made even its most sugar-sweet incarnations seem a little subversive.  It was as if underneath every pretty, breathless stanza there might be a tale of domestic abuse lurking.  It’s hard for me to personally put my finger on, but they just had that magic, even if the music often sounded like the most wide-eyed, innocent thing in the whole world.

So given that their appeal was a little tricky to pin down in the first place, it’s inevitably going to be a little tricky to articulate exactly what I think they have lost.  I could say that this lacks any kind of essence, any kind of essential life-force, but then it would be hard for me to pinpoint exactly where I thought that resided before.  This album basically lacks the urgency to exist which the drive to make themselves known seems to give younger musicians, and without that inner flame, all we’re left with is the sugar-coated outer shell, resulting in an album which is so flaccid and suffocating I can barely bring myself to listen to it.

That compelling desire for self-expression simply seems to have evaporated, and I’d imagine it might well have.  How, as a successful, established older musician do you maintain that hunger?  Few can do it.  So I guess Murdoch simply isn’t making music for that market anymore, that excited, hungry listener with a passion for hearing something weird and unsettling which will make them sit up and take notice and spend two months figuring out if they like it or not.  Or maybe he is, but it doesn’t feel like it to me on this evidence.

What it feels like is an album by a band who have evolved into something I was never going to like, whether it was a good or bad version of itself, so in a sense I am really in no position to praise or criticise this record.  But one thing is for sure, Belle & Sebastian and I are very clearly not on the same page anymore because I think this is awful.

Belle & Sebastian – Come On Sister

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Belle & Sebastian – Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John (feat. Norah Jones)

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There’s a shitload of news today, but let’s start with that naughty bit of the headline, shall we?

The National have announced that an expanded version of High Violet is to be released on November 22nd.  If, like many of us, you own the album already I urge you to download the new material illegally, or email 4AD and demand they send you the tracks for free.  Having initially been lukewarm on this record, I have since come to think of it as one of my favourite of the year, but for fuck’s sake, the fucking thing’s only been out for, what, six months?  Is my version already obsolete, and am I really going to have to buy the whole fucking thing again?  This is grasping huckstersim of the worst kind, and exactly the reason people started to hate the big labels (and George Lucas – in fact, especially George Lucas) in the first place, because cajoling people into buying the same thing again and again is technically referred to as ‘ripping the the right royal fucking piss out of your fanbase’.

Born to Be Wide is at the Electric Circus again on Thursday.  There will be another round of the excellent Charity Shop Disco (where DJs pick records from the Oxfam music shop and you can buy what you hear), as well as round-table chatty stuff based around A&R.  Guests will be Hannah Overton from XL Records, Stewart Henderson from Chemikal, Kenny McGoff from Columbia and Yvonne McLellan from Island.

The Scottish Music Awards are now accepting nominations and submissions and so on for 2011.  Canada has the Junos, darf sarf has the Mercurys, America… well, doesn’t really have anything, and now it seems we will be making a square go of kicking off our own up here. So if you want to submit your stuff or make a suggestion, there are forms at the bottom of the front page of the site.

My Sweeping the Nation interview has just been published, as has one with new blog Five Minutes With… so for those of you who haven’t had quite enough of my incoherent and self-contradictory burbling over here, pop over there to have a quick scan of even more of it.

The Music Alliance Pact was started by Jason from the Pop Cop and recently reached its one-year anniversary.  The Pact itself is a coalition of bloggers, each from a different country, who regularly compile a collective post containing one song each from their respective countries of origin.  Apart from reminding us that decent independent music isn’t all anglophone, it also serves to magnify the reach of Jason’s personal choices several-fold.  Being on a single blog post is one thing, but being featured in the MAP puts you in something like three dozen.  To celebrate, Jason has made a compilation available at the above link, including songs by every band he has featured in the MAP since its formation, many of which are exclusives recorded specifically for the occasion.  Happy birthday!

So there you go.  Honestly, what are the fucking National thinking?  I am tempted to guess that in this case it wasn’t really their choice, more the record label, but of course I really don’t know.  I mean, this is a total piss-take isn’t it?  Can anyone think of a decent excuse for this sort of balls?

I very nearly reviewed Hot Panda’s debut album, not least because I have to admit I really like the artwork.  I was not, ultimately, quite into the album enough to really want to write about it though, whereas this time the reverse is true.

The artwork, whilst a nice image to be sure, is just another in a long, long, loooong line of cover designs which use vintage ‘found’ photography and (generally white) block capitals for the typography. Whilst this tends to look very nice, and in this case they’ve gone to the extra bother of using a more elaborate font and drawing a white diagonal line through the middle of it, I am starting to become a little tired of the lack of imagination being show by graphic artists at the moment.  I love these pictures too, but I am not sure just imitating everyone else really cuts the mustard if a band have asked you to do their artwork.  Anyhow, I (hugely) digress; there is, of course, some music to be discussed here too.

So, what is it that I ended up liking about this album after not quite clicking with its predecessor?  I am not sure.  It’s a bit of a mess alright, but a good one, and the long, slow-burning intro to an album which bounces around with reckless energy highlights the kind of well-judged way the band have wielded the various tools at their disposal throughout the record.  They have the capacity to go right over the top, with off-kilter, high-tempo, yelping punky pop, but there is a lot more to them than that, and they tend to use their more full-frontal material with well-judged restraint.

In general the album drifts about from rather pretty dream pop, with an eighties indie inflection, to the kind of mental stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  I think one of the things I like best is the blend of the old and the new.  There is, as I mentioned before, a very eighties indie feel to some of the slower songs, whereas a love of abrasive old punk seems pretty prevalent in a lot of the more boisterous tunes, which can at times remind me slightly of Liars actually, but the percussion, stuttering rhythms and electronics seem very modern, and the blend is well managed indeed.

A couple of the songs don’t quite do it for me I have to confess.  The Ghost isn’t a track I find as compelling as Mindlessnesslessness, for example, and in that latter period of the album the pace could do with being punctured just a little somewhere as it does get a bit too much after a while.  Nevertheless, small quibbles aside, I have been really enjoying this album and think I had better go back and listen to their first one again now!

Hot Panda – Shoot Your Horse

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Hot Panda – Mindlessnesslessness

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I am still trying to figure out whether I am more or less busy now that I have liberated myself from the enormous inconvenience of a job which actually deigned to pay me money for my efforts and embraced idle dilettantism.

Mrs. Toad was cruelly subjected to a weekend with my side of the family this weekend, while I went off gallivanting at UnConvention Salford, and then popped out to meet a couple of new Manchester friends on Sunday.

Oddly enough, she and my mother seem to have developed an oddly functional dysfunctional relationship, based largely around telling one another to fuck off every half an hour or so.  Given that my mother and I are quite similar, and my relationship with Mrs. Toad is also largely based around us telling one another to fuck off every ten minutes, I suppose this should be no surprise, but there was something oddly heartwarming about hear my wife say ‘Oh fuck off Maggie’ to my mum on a regular basis as they prepared Sunday lunch yesterday.

It’s a pretty quiet week this week though, so I am hoping to get caught up on some design work for our next two releases and sort out a mailing list for the first Yusuf Azak single, due out in a couple of weeks.  So there.  That’s the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for you.

Saturday 9th October 2010: Archie Bronson Outfit & Victorian English Gentleman’s Club at Cabaret Voltaire.

This is a post of pure ignorance I am afraid, but there is little else on this weekend and having had a listen to the MySpace pages linked above it sounds like this could be raucous and excellent fun.

Saturday 9th October 2010: Woodenbox & The Stormy Seas at Electric Circus.

The last time I saw Woodenbox they were making a full tent bounce like a happy pack of Andrex puppies at Rockness.  They seem to be adding members everytime I see them, and with that, more and more of that reckless enthusiasm to their wilder moments.  I guess you’d probably describe them as Americana and leave it at that, if you wanted a pigeonhole, but the brass section, whilst not quite as mariachi to my ears as it seems to be to others, gives their live set a real sense of pop joy.

[Long-time Toad pal and all round top bloke Men Diamler has released a new album, and in a brilliant turn of events he's made it available free to download! In this week's Sunday Supplement the man himself introduces the album for us.]

Welcome to “12 Songs For A Girl”.  Somewhere between 2009 and 2010, against every cynical bone in my body, i fell head over heels for a girl who shall remain nameless.  We used to hang out a lot, doing this or that, and i was bowled over by how inspired and happy i felt whilst in her presence.  I recorded some songs for her birthday, and that’s where i probably got the idea to write and record an album in tribute to her.  The songs i recorded, didn’t do the minx justice.  Although it must have been blatently obvious that this nervous, dishevelled dreamer was chasing her, i thought that, through the vessel of song i could explain how i felt without relying on the power of speech, which has proved lethal whenever it comes to anything important.

I put my plan to action in January 2010.  The snow and cold made travelling impossible, so i found i had four days with nothing to do at home.  I wrote all the songs in three days, on the only guitar i had with me (which had four strings – i found an open tuning that worked and went from there), and then set aside that fourth day to record them on my four track.  I made the album, with a sleeve made out of a hardback book cover and pasted the photograph of a pig on it.  I tore some Polish song from A.L. Lloyd’s volume on folk song. and pasted that for the inner sleeve.  The girl was polish, you see – and it somehow fitted.

A lot of the lyrics referenced either stuff that we did together or stuff i’d learned or thought about her.  It’s full of very personal references to people, places and things.  The snow, like sand, found into almost everything.  Despite all the references, i think some of the songs are as direct as anything  i’ve ever done;   Listening now, i’ve worked out (obvious i know, but i’m slow) that the album is as much about me as it is the muse.  There’s a lot of opening up that would seem slightly unnerving to share with you all.

I finally gave her the copy of the album on the fourth night.  She said she loved it.  You are all aching to know whether she fell into my arms and we lived happily ever after?  The answer is no (sob).  We are still friends and see each other time to time, and that’s cool when it happens. I have played some of these songs live, and played and copies the album to various friends.  Some people said i should release it.  Some people said i shouldn’t.  I’ve thought about rerecording the thing, but i decided i wouldn’t have the time when i’ve already got two albums to finish this year.

There’s two major reasons why i want this amongst the public.  Firstly, i like it – and generally what i like, i like to share with others.  It’s very messy as one would expect for an unrehearsed collection of songs recorded in a day, but some of my favourite recordings come when the chord changes and lyrics are not even dry on the page..I think it holds together well, like a bag of street urchins does in a victorian photograph.  I don’t think they should be seperated.

Secondly, i need closure.  I’m not greatly a person concerned with my own past and in resurrecting it.  I don’t want to have a backlog of songs in the can for future projects right now – I have to keep writing anew.  There so much to be done.  Since i wrote and recorded this(only months), i feel i’ve changed imeasurably as a person.  I’m not sure for better or for worse, but i doubt i’ll write songs like these again.  A part of me in this record has left the building.  My future writing from today onwards goes the other way. At present,  I can still enjoy listening to this record though, and i’m sure i’ll always be proud i made it during that unforgettably cold winter.. That girl deserved an album.  If you know who she is, you know it’s true.  I truly hope this half hour proves a pleasant diversion for you.

Out you go,

Men Diamler, September 2010.

Men Diamler – Waiting For The Snow To Thaw

Men Diamler – It Takes One To Know One Better

Hoarse.  Horse.  Hoarse.  Horse.  Geddit geddit, see what I did there?  Yes, another tedious pun, but I know you know to expect no better from me these days.  Anyway, it’s only called the Hoarsecast because I have a bit of a phlegmy flu which, whilst not fun, is hardly very debilitating so there is no need for me to moan really.  Not that this usually stops me, but anyhewww…

It’s a funny old mix, this playlist.  I rearranged the songs time and again, swapped a few in and out here and there and just couldn’t find a way to make them click together for some reason, so for all I like everything that’s on here it is still a little bitty, as a single coherent mix.

Mind you, with me talking pish between all the songs, there’s fuck all chance of these things really flowing in the first place.

Direct download: Toadcast #142 – The Hoarsecast

01. Wilco – I Can’t Stand It (00.17)
02. Hooray for the Riff-raff – Slow Walk (08.32)
03. Interpol – Evil (15.49)
04. Jose Delhart – Broken Hearted Chant (22.17)
05. Flower Orgy – Boneyard (25.12)
06. Willie Nelson – Good-hearted Woman (31.59)
07. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Notes From the Waiting Room (38.07)
08. Dumbo Gets Mad – Eclectic Prawn (40.33)
09. Sexual Objects – Here Come the Rubber Cops (47.56)
10. Grinderman – Star Charmer (57.53)

Not only do I have a cold, and that invincible drowsiness which comes with it, but being self fucking employed I can’t even have a bloody skive!  God dammit! I feel like Kevin the Teenager from the Fast Show, it’s just so unfaaaaair!

Anyhow, to explain myself, yes that really is an armoured dinosaur up there at the top of the page.  I did a Google image search for ‘heavy cold’ and apart from a bewildering array of machetes, that image featured quite prominently.  And it’s an armoured fucking dinosaur for goodness’ sake!  More such mental (and rather cool) illustrations can be found on the site whence I pinched it.

I remember a lot of friends of mine at school were very keen on their fantasy RPGs, but I never really got into it myself.  And a, little like being a music obsessive, I suppose it can come across as a bit sad and nerdy from the outside.  But whenever I walk past Forbidden Planet on the Royal Mile, particularly on a Winter evening when it’s cold and rainy outside and warm and light inside, and all the fantasy fans are in there with their figurines and dice and cards and whatever other accoutrements they have, then it really does look like a very sociable and very enjoyable thing to be doing.  I guess I just got nabbed by records instead.

So, as Winter slowly approaches, coughs and sneezes abound and the Scottish night becomes dramatically longer, why not pretend it’s not cold and shitey outside, delurk for a change and chip in five silly answer to five silly questions on here, and then blether away talking shite with other skivers and slackers for the rest of the afternoon.

1. Name your armoured dinosaur.
2. Pick one crucial feature an armoured dinosaur must have in order to be truly fearsome.
3. What is its secret Achilles Heel?
4. You know those really cool half and half animals in fantasy stories?  Which two would you mix?
5. Do you actually like fantasy stories or films or whatever, or do you just find it childish nonsense?

Navigator – Danger Dragon

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Dragons – Here are the Roses

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E.S.L. – Princess vs Dragon

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Sunset Rubdown – Dragon’s Lair

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Hot Lava – Blue Dragon

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Yes, finally, we have managed to coax the Savings and Loan’s debut album out of the bastards, and will be proudly releasing it at the very beginning of December this year.

I thought this was the band’s first ever gig, but the promiscuous fuckers have just informed me that it’s only their first in five years, not quite their actual first, so it won’t be as special a night as I first thought.  Not bad though.

The Savings and Loan is Andrew Bush, formerly of Chemikal Underground favourites De Rosa amongst other things, and a friend of mine, Martin Donnelly.  I think it was maybe three or more years ago, back when the blog was in its relative infancy, when I received an envelope at the door containing a single CD and not a word of explanation.  Very few people even had my address at that point, so I was a little suspicious, but what gave the game away was that Martin credited his girlfriend with the cover photo.  He only used her surname, but that name is distinctive enough that I was finally able to guess where the package had come from.

The EP they included was absolutely gorgeous (see the review I wrote at the time) and Martin and I shared a good couple of pints round the pub when Song, by Toad Records was a mere glint in my eye and pain in my wife’s arse, so in a sense this was supposed to be one of the first things we ever released.

Andrew and Martin decided however, once we really finalised plans to release the EP, that they wanted to take the start they had made and flesh it out into a full album.  Whoever says that the album format is dead certainly hasn’t let many bands know.  Anyhow, they’ve been poking away at this project for almost two years now, and now it is finally finished.

Compared to the EP there are a couple of the original tracks, a couple of re-recordings and a couple of new ones, so the lucky few who have actually heard and loved it will not be disappointed.  And for those of you who know nothing at all about the band, I think you are going to be in for a treat.

As per usual with house gigs it will be BYOB, and all the money will go straight to the bands.  It helps us enormously with planning if you buy tickets in advance as the place just isn’t that big, and this ticket link should be live any minute now.

Swallows is one of the songs which has been re-recorded for the new album, and I can’t really let any of that out of the bag just yet, so here’s a taster from that first EP for now.

The Savings and Loan – Swallows (Demo Version)

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Over the top, raucous folk music may be drifting slightly out of fashion these days, but I think I’d describe this album as I described the band’s Toad Session in 2009: “a complete, and completely splendid, mess”.

Also, in the interests of full-disclosure, I should point out that they are playing an album launch at Medina in Edinburgh on Saturday the 16th October.  Myself and Dylan from Blueback Hotrod will be sorting the gig, Jesus H. Foxx will also be playing, and tickets can be bought in advance here, for a fiver.

Anyhow, cynical self-promotion aside, the band weren’t entirely happy with their debut album, Follies in Great Cities.  I got the impression talking to them that whilst they didn’t want to criticise the record itself, they would in retrospect have done things rather differently.  The process seemed to be something they were just a little at odds with, and they said that they wanted this record to be a bit more raw, to try and capture the energy of their live shows.

This, they have certainly done, as this album careers along at a cracking pace, stumbling from one violin and harmony-fuelled stomp into the next.  In the early days of Honeytrap the combination of Big Dan’s lead and Little Dan’s impassioned wail gave the band’s eccentric yomps style enough, but adding Sophie into the vocal mix gives them even more toys to play with, and they use that variety really well, to add depth and texture to the style of the album.

Funnily enough, though, I really don’t like the first song.  When I first put it on I just thought it was a like a version of Honeytrap where all the vim and energy had been removed, and I was a little worried that I might not like the album, until the introductory yelp and squawk of violin which introduces Roslin is a Cylon reassured me that all was going to be just fine after all.

In terms of what they were aiming to capture with this recording, in contrast to the first, I think it’s fair to say that they’ve nailed it.  If I wasn’t at heart a socially awkward indie kid with a well-suppressed but nevertheless significant fear of making a tit of myself in public then this is the kind of music I would get hammered to and dance about like a fool in the front of the stage.  When the band recorded their Toad Session they (and we) were already pretty fucking plastered, and although that meant the whole thing was more than a little chaotic, they still played really well, and that’s kind of the vibe this record gives off – it’s like they’re all on the same penny farthing, careening out of control down a hill and just about managing not to fall off it, despite numerous close shaves.

In amongst all this excitement there isn’t much sign of some of their earlier, more emotionally intense (as opposed to just musically intense) material.  There are times when, in the middle of all the cavorting, it might have been nice to change emotional gears here and there and hear something a bit less caricatured, but nevertheless for the most part this is a raucous joy of a record.

Honeytrap – Roslin is a Cylon

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Honeytrap – Little Johnny Winter

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