The Toadcast - the weekly podcast from Song, by Toad

The Braincast is not so called because it unusually filled with penetrative insights, but because if you listen to it this weekend it will be while I am down at the Brainlove Festival either listening to bands, DJing or sneaking off to watch the Champions League final at the nearest pub.

This week is another relatively haircut-friendly playlist actually, with words like 'remix' to be found and some fashionably hazy production and everything.  In fact I may have to do another 'tedious old shite' podcast soon, just to make up for it.

Anyhow, next week looks like being the Scottish Enlightenment Toad Session, which is coming along nicely.  I just need the photos and to complete the constantly challenging ten minute main video, which always takes quite a long while.  I will listen to the podcast on the train down to London and figure out which bits I think should go in the video.  In the meantime, enjoy...

01. FOUND - Anti-climb Paint (00.22)
02. Silverbacks - Atta Boyz (07.32)
03. Phil & the Osophers - Ink on the Page (13.02)
04. Slim Twig - Priscilla (18.57)
05. Yuppies - For the Future's Sake (21.41)
06. Lau vs Adem - Imporsa (Silver Columns Remix) (24.11)
07. Dirty Beaches - Coast to Coast (Remastered) (35.06)
08. Tasseomancy - Soft Feet (44.37)
09. Sonny & the Sunsets - I Wanna Do It (52.11)
10. Youth Lagoon - Cannons (54.54)
11. Psychedelic Horseshit - Laced (60.40)

The Floydcast is named after that furry fuckwit in the picture: the Song, by Toad house cat and Mrs. Toad's imbecilic companion of the last seven years.  Last night we had him killed.  I know you're supposed to say 'put to sleep' or whatever, but when the poor wee fucker is looking plaintively at you because you're the only person at the vet's that he actually trusts it really does feel like execution.

We think he had lung cancer of some form or other.  His lungs had clouded up, the vet had tried more or less every trick they could, and he was still battling for every breath.  In the end we had him put down because his poor wee lungs were so fucked that even in the off chance we could have found what was wrong and put it right, he would still have been limping his way through what remained of his life on half a gulp of breath.

Anyhow, as much as a nuisance as I found the wee bastard I really will miss his idiotic presence, capering about the house like an arse and getting in the way whenever you try and do anything.  He would come and sit in my lap when I was trying to write this and try and lick my fingers as I typed, and that's the least of it.  Fucking pain in the arse, he was.  And I really, really will miss the wee fucker.

01. Bombadil - So Many Ways to Die (00.09)
02. Yajé - True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston cover) (09.24)
03. The Douglas Firs - A Military Farewell (13.31)
04. Sebastian Dangerfield - Morris (22.05)
05. Glass Animals - Drips (28.14)
06. The History of Apple Pie - Tug (33.40)
07. The Twilight Sad - Suck (Wedding Present cover) (39.50)
08. U.S. Girls - If The Walls Could Talk (45.42)
09. BITCHES - Wallet (47.53)
10. Tied to the Branches - Backwards (50.56)
11. Cold Seeds - Leave Me to Lie Alone in the Ground (57.59)

I am learning to despise hotel internet.  Whether I book myself and end up staying in a fucking Travelodge or Mrs. Toad books and we end up staying on one of the larger guest suites at Buckingham fucking Palace, absolutely all of them have such risibly bad internet connections that recording a podcast leaves me tearing my fucking hair out.

I couldn't even get the online image editor to load properly, so the image is that rather pathetic, borderline clipart stinker you see in the top right hand corner.  Dreadful.  My art teachers would be justifiably disappointed.

Anyhow, this is called the Plancast for one simple and far from compelling reason: the fact that Mrs. Toad and I are down in London and have had to be clinically heartless in who we do and don't see.  We don't exactly have lots of friends down South, but still far too many to see in one weekend and at times in the past we have tried to do too much and ended up being inadvertently rude to everyone.

01. Love Inks - Blackeye (00.06)
02. Dubstar - The Day I See You Again (04.57)
03. Rev I.B. Ware with Wife and Son - I Wouldn't Mind Dying ( But I Gotta Go By Myself (12.01)
04. Billy Bragg & Wilco - Airline to Heaven (18.30)
05. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons - Hard Time in a Terrible Land (23.12)
06. I Break Horses - Hearts (29.39)
07. Tusk Tusk - Out of Tune and Out of Time (37.22)
08. Sandy Denny - By the Time it Gets Dark (41.01)
09. Girls Names - Nothing More to Say (46.02)
10. Thomas Tantrum - Hot Hot Summer (51.33)
11. Jarad Miles - Darjeeling (56.04)

This is the post-Homegame, 'dear Jesus please just let me sleep for a week, good god someone please fetch me a green vegetable' podcast.

I can just about keep my head together enough to get through this, but then I have the Monday listings to write and the bloody Francois/This is the Kit/Babe gig to organise tonight as well.  Aargh!

I also have all sorts of other things to do this week, but after the sort of mind-boggling battering your mind and your liver get at Homegame I am not sure I can face any of it.  I am going back to sleep, wake me up in June.

01. FOUND - I'll Wake With a Seismic Head No More (00.34)
02. Randolph's Leap - Counting Sheep (7:57)
03. Josh T. Pearson - Country Dumb (Piano Version) (13.57)
04. The Singleman Affair - If I Only Fell in Love When I Was Young (21.16)
05. eagleowl - Into the Fold (Toad Session) (29.00)
06. The Last Battle - Ruins (35.07)
07. King Creosote & the Earlies - Bats in the Attic (Live on 6Music with Mark Riley) (40.23)
08. Sweet Baboo - Girl Under a Tree (45.37)
09. David Thomas Broughton - Ain't Got No Sole (54.57)

This podcast is, as you will already know, very, very late.  Personally I blame a combination of the RNLI, gin, and the fact that Mrs. Toad is away all week, which meant that yesterday wasn't really available for blog things.

It's also not very new music-orientated either, so hopefully those of you who come here pretty much just for that won't be too disappointed.

I think what happened was that I got so into a handful of new releases recently that I neglected all the others, so when I came to sit down and write about tunes last week I suddenly realised I had nothing to write about.  For blogging that makes things a little challenging, but from a podcast point of view I am always happy to just fuck it and play some oldies, which is what I'll do here.

01. Mad Melvin (00.17)

02. Chumbawamba - Farewell the Crown (01.43)

03. Billy Bragg - Walk Away Renee (07.37)

04. The Left Banke - Walk Away Renee (09.59)

05. Bruce Springsteen - Growin' Up (17.07)

06. Psychedelic Horseshit - Rat Poison (24.17)

07. The Chesterfields - Ask Johnny Dee (32.21)

08. The Close Lobsters - Just Too Bloody Stupid (35.23)

09. The Delgados - Everything Goes Around the Water (43.45)

10. The Sleepy Jackson - Acid in My Heart (50.19)
11. Calexico - Si Tu Disais (56.17)

No, no, don't worry this isn't some sort of chillout special (although we did actually do one of those once upon a time).  The only reason this is called the Chillcast is because on what was a beautifully sunny day for the rest of Scotland, Edinburgh performed its age old trick of drawing a freezing sea mist off the North Sea - the haar, as it's called - and turning a lovely Spring day into a damp, chilly sulk.  Bastard.

I realised a while back that I don't actually cover all that much Scottish music, despite the location of this blog being quite a prominent feature of the thing. This week, though, we have something like five Scottish (or Scottish-based) bands on this, and all of them relatively under the radar ones as well.

Anyhow, I am off to play nicely with Mrs. Toad's colleagues for the rest of the day, in some sort of horrific bonding exercise.  Ah well, it pays the bills I suppose, and it's not like she doesn't have to spend an awful lot of time hanging out with my 'colleagues'.

01. The Sandwitches - Summer of Love (00.11)
02. The Japanese War Effort - Pool Attendant (7.41)
03. King Post Kitsch - Don't You Touch My Fucking Honeytone (10.42)
04. PAWS - Summer Wipeout (16.22)
05. Marcy Playground - Wave Motion Gun (25.05)
06. The Low Anthem - Boeing 737 (33.40)
07. Horsecollar - Christopher (39.12)
08. Morris Major - In Amongst My Ideas (47.11)
09. Plastic Animals - It Fell Apart (Demo) (50.34)
10. Earth Girl Helen Brown - Girls of My Dreams (59.06)

Sparrow and the Workshop recorded one of our first ever Toad Sessions.  In fact, they were the first band I ever recorded all on my lonesome and, after a few rather panicked emails to my little brother who knows about this shit, it all seemed to go pretty well.

So, not content with merely asking Meursault to join them on their next tour of England, they upped the level of niceness by offering to come round the house and record a sort of album preview podcast for their next record.

Spitting Daggers comes out in a couple of weeks, and the band came over to get pissed, to talk utter balls and to play a couple of songs from the album and a few others they've been listening to recently.  A good, and very drunken, time was had by all.

01. Tegan & Sara - Walking With a Ghost (00.24)
02. Sparrow and the Workshop - Snakes in the Grass (09.53)
03. Brian Jonestown Massacre - Nevertheless (19.07)
04. Fists - Ascending (22.32)
05. John Knox Sex Club - Run William Run (30.27)
06. Meursault - Flittin' (40.29)
07. Sparrow and the Workshop - Faded Glory (49.44)
08. Roddy Woomble - Work Like You Can (61.47)
09. Lou Barlow - Caterpillar Girl (66.20)
10. Melanie Safka - Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) (76.32) 

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod
Free mp3 downloads: zip file (right click – save as)

The more I read about Johny Lamb from Thirty Pounds of Bone before this session, the more nervous I became.  The internet seemed to be full of all sorts of tales of him being reclusive, antisocial and very, very hard on interviewers.

Now, the press can be a little unreliable at the best of times, and personality-based reports of this nature can vary from person to person, but it almost comical how completely different this session was to my expectations.  Johny was friendly, perhaps a little shy, genuinely chatty and a lovely guy.  In fact, in terms of the interview podcast I think this is probably the most interesting one we’ve ever had.

Thanks are due to Mrs. Toad for the splendid bacon sarnies, to Dylan and Fiona who took the pictures, and to Matthew who did a lot of the filming.  As per usual we have the podcast below, the freely downloadable session mp3s underneath that, followed by the videos we made for all the individual songs.  The tracklisting for the podcast is at the very bottom of the page.  Enjoy!

01. Thirty Pounds of Bone – The Maritime Line (Toad Session) (11.02)
02. Birdengine – Scarecrow and the Longpig (19.00)
03. Dad Rocks – Aroused By Hair (23.36)
04. Thirty Pounds of Bone – A Lesson in Talking (Toad Session) (37.19)
05. Le Reno Amps – You Must Remember (42.47)
06. Mary Hampton – Ballad of the Talking Dog (44.56)
07. Thirty Pounds of Bone – The Jonah Shanty (Toad Session) (57.37)
08. Diamond Family Archive – I Have Forgotten (66.16)
09. Men Diamler – Waiting for the Snow to Thaw Pt. 2 (68.22)
10. Thirty Pounds of Bone – Uyeasound (Toad Session) (82.44)

It is a very, very fine Spring day indeed, this morning in Edinburgh, and so needless to say I am going to spend it in my office talking to imaginary people on the internet. 

This week we are simply going to have a bit of a trawl through my inbox.  As I mention halfway through the podcast, I now have unlistened albums totalling a mighty one day, eighteen hours and thirty-four minutes worth of music.  So if you are wondering why I haven't reviewed this that or the other, then that probably has something to do with it. 

The trickiest part, of course, is that it's not enough to simply have listened to something. To actually have anything resembling an intelligent comment to make you need to listen to something really quite often, and know the ins and outs of an album pretty well.  This takes a lot more than just a once-over lasting for one day, eighteen hours and thirty-four minutes.

01. The Lovely Eggs - Don't Look at Me (I Don't Like It) (00.40)
02. Lady Lazarus - Fighting Words & Fists (06.46)
03. Bill Callahan - Drover (12.09)
04. Evil Hand - Returned in Time (20.32)
05. Weird Era - Garage Honeymoon (24.41)
06. Teens - Golden Years (28.36)
07. The Spook School - Hallam (32.57)
08. The Sandwitches - Lightfoot (38.37)
09. Honeydrum - Human Stuff (45.09)
10. Timber Timbre - Woman (46.42)
11. Clem Snide - Pale Blue Eyes (54.29)

This podcast is all about our week's record shopping in Austin, although I promise I am done going on about SXSW, so those of you bored to tears by the whole business are entirely safe, I promise.

We did buy a fair bit of vinyl while we were over there though, whether it be directly from the bands at their shows (usually whilst still pished and giddy from enjoying the gig) or on one of our particular excursions to either End of an Ear or Waterloo Records.

There is such pleasure to be had from poking through rack upon rack of vinyl, and whilst I have no real quibble with digital music, I think the sheer ritual and physical relationship it sacrifices can't really be matched in the digital realm.

01. X-Ray Eyeballs - Crystal (00.22)
02. The Magnetic Fields - All the Umbrellas in London (08.15)
03. Sparklehorse - Homecoming Queen (11.33)
04. The Coathangers - Chicken 30 (17.35)
05. Lost in the Trees - Walk Around the Lake (24.30)
06. Kurt Vile - My Sympathy (32.44)
07. Pavement - Range Life (35.15)
08. Warm Ghost - Open the Wormhole in Your Heart (43.57)
09. The Books - The Future, Wouldn't That be Nice (50.19)
10. Deerhunter - Earthquake (58.27)