The Toadcast - the weekly podcast from Song, by Toad

 I have named the Nursecast in honour of the fact that Mrs. Toad has been unthreateningly but rather inconveniently ill for the last few days and I have been nursing her gently back to health.  And by nursing of course I mean taking the opportunity to lounge around in bed next to her and watch stupid videos while she suffers.  I know, I know, I'm a gem.

We have a couple of new and exciting announcements from Tom Waits and Jason Lytle on this podcast, as well as a rather interesting-sounding new band from about as far North in Scotland as it is possible to get before you fall into the sea and have to paddle frantically for Iceland.

And, just to cheer us all up, the sun has finally come out, which is at least some consolation for the fact that the Edinburgh International Festival of Overpriced Shit landed on us last week, and will have to now be studiously avoided for the next month

01. Texas Tea - Heart Says Yes (Head Says No) (00.26)
02. Tom Waits - I Breathe Better Underwater (05.40)
03. Jason Lytle - Dept. of Disappearance (06.01)
04. Sex Hands - Way, No Way (12.27)
05. Onions - Gemsbok (14.57)
06. The Maginot Band - Slow Down Sundial (22.34)
07. OnlyReal - Cadillac Girl (27.52)
08. White Poppy - Mirage Man (35.04)
09. Noun Verb Adjective - Darwinian Lust (39.40)
10. Lost Left - Thank You For the Lung (43.26)
11. Lord Huron - Time to Run (48.34)
12. The Von Bondies - Rock 'n' Roll Nurse (56.27)

So, as I said last week, we should now be stumbling back to something vaguely resembling equilibrium here at Song, by Toad.  The releases are out, nowt else has a fixed date, we're cruising into Summer and dammit I better find something to do soon before I get a fit of the lazies.  Which is what happens to me when I have too little to do.

So this podcast is a fairly normal trip through a pile of shiny new songs, with a brief detour to mark the occasion of Mrs. Toad and I celebrating our sixth anniversary, which we did this weekend just past.

Dress Sexy at My Funeral may sound like a rather inappropriate song for an anniversary, but I like it nevertheless.  The sentiment has a certain degree of 'fuck you' to it, which is one of the things which makes our relationship rather fun to be in, from my perspective.

And as I said when introducing the Billy Bragg song, it's a funny thing to think that Mrs. Toad and I first met at school as fifteen year olds.  And presumably back then we were just normal high school kids thinking about normal high school things, with not the slightest inkling that this embryonic friendship would turn out to be the most important relationship in our lives.  Which I think is rather sweet, actually.

01. Ringo Deathstarr - Rip (00.22)
02. H. Hawkline - Black Domino Box (07.36)
03. Smog - Dress Sexy at My Funeral (15.51)
04. Billy Bragg - The Fourteenth of February (22.07)
05. Popstrangers - In Some Ways (27.27)
06. The Marble Vanity - The Autumn Woods (32.09)
07. The See See - Automobile (40.11)
08. The Louche - Salt (43.49)
09. Woodpecker Wooliams - Sparrow (48.50)
10. Dolly Parton - Little Sparrow (57.32)

ringo deathstarr, h hawkline, smog, billy bragg, popstrangers, marble vanity, the see see, the louche, woodpecker wooliams, dolly parton

Wow.  I am just - only just, mind you - about back in my right mind after the Fence Collective's awesome Away Game Festival on the Isle of Eigg.  After spending three days in the Inner Hebrides, embracing Scotland's talent for wildly variable weather to its absolute fullest, we journeyed back yesterday, stopping off to record a Vic Galloway session for BBC Radio Scotland.

That meant we got back in around one in the morning, and after eight hours' kip and a very long, very hot shower, I now feel just about ready to face the world again.  Not to take in on in a carpe diem, up and attem boy sort of a way, just ready, just about, to handle real life once more.

This podcast is, as I assume you will have noticed by now, going to be all about Away Game, with all but a couple of the songs by bands I saw play at the Festival.  And what a fucking awesome festival it was.  Well played Eigg, and well played Fence.

01. Water World - Catch Yrself (00.26)
02. King Creosote - Not One Bit Ashamed (07.09)
03. OLO Worms - Strays (17.55)
04. Y Niwl - Undegnaw (22.09)
05. Rob St. John - The Whites of Our Eyes (29.15)
06. Scott Rudd - Bullshit Love (38.01)
07. Jo Schornikow - Bird's Nest (39.47)
08. The Twilight Sad - I Became a Prostitute (Acoustic) (46.26)
09. Sparrow & the Workshop - Faded Glory (50.17)
10. Luna - Malibu Love Nest (55.49)
11. eagleowl - No Conjunction (1.04.52)

Delivered to you live(ish) from Istria, welcome to Toadcast No. 233, the Crocast, recorded whilst travelling some of Europe's prettiest coastline.

Or sort.  Actually it is recorded in one of the most horrendous resort complexes either of us has ever seen, but this is just a mere stop on the way; tomorrow we shall be travelling some of Europe's prettiest coastline!

We even managed to turn up at the rent-a-car place with an expired driving license and credit card which didn't actually work, and they still gave us a car without so much as blinking.  This is an awesome holiday!  Tonight: buttery, garlicky grilled fish and dry white wine.  And actually, the local dry whites, despite us hearing awful reports about Istrian white wine, have been really good so far.  As you can probably tell from this podcast.

01. Vadoinmessico - Archaeology of the Future (00.45)
02. Murals - Eyes of Love (09.20)
03. Sharon Van Etten - Kevin's (20.49)
04. The Lovely Sparrows - While Sailing (24.55)
05. Errors - Relics (33.24)
06. Buttonhead - Champion Bread (42.37)
07. Caravan Club - Tongue Tied (Rough Mix) (54.24)
08. Honey - Cape Canaveral (58.06)
09. Fantasy Rainbow - O, Weirdo (1.07.54)
10. The Blank Tapes - I'm Back (1.14.45)

This was originally supposed to be called something vaguely phlegm-related, due to the amount of hacking and coughing I have been doing over the course of the last few days.  It's the reason this podcast never appeared on Sunday or Monday, that's for sure, and had I tried to record it then you'd have just heard me growling my way through links like I was auditioning to replace that guy who does the voiceovers for all those macho trailers in Hollywood.

"Forced to choose between his old ways and the family he would do anything to protect" - that kind of shit, y'know?

Anyhow, sitting in muggy Edinburgh while rain interrupts play at Wimbledon, and with a rather odd tennis-themed song on this week's playlist I figured The Ballscast would be more suitable.  I am not fussed about tennis at all, but being back at my grandparents' house in Manchester during the Summer holidays and watching Wimbledon is a rather significant childhood memory for me. As was then going out to play tennis on my Granddad's carefully cultivated lawn and completely destroying it, much to his silent fuming!

01. Blur - The Puritan (00.22)
02. Zed Penguin - Heathens (07.20)
03. Vitamin Pets - Fried Eggs (11.06)
04. Paul Banks - Summertime is Coming (16.36)
05. Indian Wells - Wimbledon 1980 (21.16)
06. Keaton Henson - To Your Health (31.59)
07. Trans Manna Ray - Woman Killed, Fetus Removed (37.00)
08. The Traps - Your Headland (45.53)
09. Conner Youngblood - Gold (49.19)
10. Two Gallants - Broken Eyes (56.57)

Despite this being called the Applecast (imaginative, don't you think?) and being recorded in New York, it has preciously little to do with anything American.  We just happen to be here at the moment.

As soon as I record and publish this I will be heading out to watch England's inevitable hard-luck story as we go out of the Euros to Italy in the quarter finals, as seems to be traditional with England. And then I get on a ferry to the Governor's Ball, which is a music festival on Randall's Island, which looks like it will be rather fun.

Mrs. Toad might actually be able to get a three-month secondment out here, which might be fun.  We'd have to find some way of making sure the cats were fed in our absence, and that the house was looked after in general, but given I can basically work from a laptop pretty much anywhere, it seems like it would be a really rather fun thing to do, don't you reckon? The Song, by Toad Records New York office!

01. Milk Maid - Stir So Slow (Toad Session) (00.16)
02. New Fabian Society - Necropolis (06.02)
03. Jesus H. Foxx - Permanent Defeat (13.56)
04. Yola Fatoush - Celine (20.25)
05. Min Diesel - A Bitter Pop Song (23.29)
06. Rick Redbeard - Now We're Dancing (31.49)
07. I Am Oak - Palpable (40.15)
08. Meursault - Lament For a Teenage Millionaire (43.25)
09. Eels on Heels - Kaleidoscope (51.09)
10. Barna Howard - Timber, Nails and Tears (56.46)

So, I know what you're all thinking (well, those of you that give a shit anyway).  Yes, that's right, last week, for the first time in about three years, I missed a weekly edition of this podcast.  I can whinge about excuses all I like, but you don't really care do you?  Suffice to say that I genuinely was too busy.

Or, I suppose, too hungover.

Because there was a window - one, tiny, podcast-recording-shaped window of time - where I could actually have got the damn thing done, in the middle of the afternoon in Iceland, before the England game I suppose I might have been able to squeeze it in but you know what?  Yes, I bottled it.  I bottled it because I was hungover. I know.  I feel the shame.

So there you go, whinging out of the way, let's get on with this week's music choices.

01. Adam Stafford - Vanishing Tanks (00.07)
02. Kate Nash - Underestimate the Girl (10.37)
03. Glass Animals - Cocoa Hooves (18.11)
04. Eagulls - Coffin (22.25)
05. David Byrne & St. Vincent - Who (27.35)
06. Loch Awe - The Diamond King & Six Holy Mirrors (34.44)
07. Keel Her - Prize Catch (41.19)
08. Mission of Burma - Second Television (44.49)
09. Hut - Smiley (Demo) (48.36)
10. Fantasy Rainbow - Sun is a Drug (53.19)
11. Brer - Sea of Doubt (60.02)

It's Jubi-fucking-lee weekend, so whilst we are all engaging in various levels of plotting against the Royal Family and being resentfully grateful for a couple of days off.  Although given we've had this fucking pantomime and that grotesque carnival of obsequiousness and vulgarity of a Royal Wedding, surely we wouldn't have to be pillaging old people's pensions if we'd just made the fuckers pay for it all themselves, and kept the people's money in the people's coffers.

Mind you, given that their hands are permanently in the fucking public purse anyway, the idea of 'their money' and 'our money' is a little blurred.  Burn the fucking lot of them I say.  Burn them alive and do it in public.

Why?  Because having done away with inherited rule, we now have another stratum of unelected persons running countries, in the form of the pornographically super-rich.  Burning the Royal Family alive might just serve as a warning to the bankers that we like the people who run the country to actually be fucking accountable, thank you very much.

01. Chumbawamba - Farewell to the Crown (00.)
02. Playlounge - Conor, Oh Burst! (07.41)
03. Joanna Gruesome - Tugboat (Galaxie 500 cover) (Toad Session) (09.25)
04. Piano Magic - The Slightest of Threads (16.43)
05. The Thlyds - I Fucked the Queen (22.12)
06. Silver Jews - Secret Knowledge of Back Roads (25.05)
07. Easter - Begin Again (30.54)
08. Onions - Louise Louise (36.52)
09. North American War - Geraniums on a Spit (42.16)
10. The Grand Gestures - There's No Place Like Home (47.22)
11. Sonny & the Sunsets - I See the Void (53.09)
12. Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen (58.10)

The Philcast is named after the detestable little Tory weasel Phil Collins, as a result of this comment on this post by James who writes Appetite for Distraction.  So you can all blame him.

In addition to Phil Collins, we have some Phil Spector, Phil Ochs, Phil & the Osophers and, somewhat more tenuously, Esther Phillips.  Also, for some utterly inexplicable reason, the Spider Man theme song came up when I searched my iTunes library for 'Phil'.  Any ideas?  Was it written by Phil Phillips from Philadelphia?

Also, we have the first 'Fucking Preposterous Song of the Week', in the form of Phil Collins' Easy Lover.  For reasons of being a fuckwit, mostly, I suppose, I'd quite like to make this a regular feature.  Next week Turn Around Bright Eyes by Bonni Tyler or Hello by Lionel Richie - whaddaya reckon!

01. Billy Bragg - I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night (01.20)
02. Phil Ochs - Jim Dean of Indiana (08.20)
03. Pet - Black Arts (15.49)
04. Money - So Long (God is Dead) (20.10)
05. Phil Collins - Easy Lover (27.05)
06. James Yorkston - Catch (33.26)
07. Esther Phillips - Home is Where the Hatred Is (37.46)
08. Crystals - Then He Kissed Me (41.10)
09. The National - The Rains of Castamere (47.07)
10. Stagnant Pools - Dead Sailor (49.40)
11. Phil & the Osophers - Uses of a Man (56.01)

Seeing as we are in Canada for the weekend (dear thieves, the house is not unoccupied, and the lad staying there is a fighty little fucker), I figured some Canadian songs might be in order.  I am actually half-Canadian, which is a bit odd, because I've never actually lived there.  So it's always weird coming here, to a country I'm technically from, but which I really don't know at all.

Given we played Born Gold, Odonis Odonis, Slow Down Molasses and Hot Panda on last week's show, however, I figured that was probably enough new Canadian bands for the time being, although the excellent Hooded Fang did sneak on this one at the beginning.

But mostly, apart from the more usual new stuff I tend to play, I've included a handful of nostalgic songs by Canadian bands, most of which I haven't listened to in quite a long time.  And I must say it was sort of nice to look this stuff up again, after so long.

01. Hooded Fang - E.S.P. (00.44)
02. The Tragically Hip - Ahead By a Century (09.26)
03. UMA - Drop Your Soul (feat. Silver Apples) (16.20)
04. White Heath - In a Glasshouse (19.36)
05. 54-40 - Casual Viewin' (33.11)
06. Bruce Springsteen - Circus Song (Live on WBCN 9th Jan 1973) (41.07)
07. Giant Giant Sand - Detained (47.35)
08. Alan Watts - Africa Bats (51.37)
09. Barenaked Ladies - Wrap Your Arms Around Me (1.00.59)
10. Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Kiss and Say Goodbye (1.08.12)
11. Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Heart Like a Wheel (1.11.00)