The Toadcast - the weekly podcast from Song, by Toad

Another podcast from the South Coast, as I am down in Brighton again this weekend, visiting my parents.  My wee brother happens to be over visiting from the States as well, so we went to see Brighton & Hove Albion yesterday, which was rather fun, despite the rain.

Tonight there will be roast pork and gins and tonic, and then tomorrow we will walk into Brighton to see how good a job our distributors are doing at getting Song, by Toad Records releases into the music shops around these parts. It feels a bit sneaky, checking up on people like that, but it has to be done I suppose.

Anyhow, next week I am hoping to have a new Toad Session for you. About fucking time blah blah get on with it etc... I know, I know, but I promise I really am doing my best to get these edited and out for you - honest!

01. D. Gwalia - In Puget Sound (00.04)
02. The Bee Gees - New York Mining Disaster 1941 (05.27)
03. Naked - Lie Follows Lie (09.56)
04. Plastic Animals - Ghosts (14.07)
05. Fnords - Surfer of the Apocalypse (21.00)
06. Tom Waits and Keith Richards - Shenandoah (28.49)
07. Flamingods - Taishogoto (35.31)
08. Leonard Cohen - Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (42.17)
09. Alela Diane - The Rifle (45.26)
10. Pagan Moon - Your Swan (48.37)
11. Woodpigeon - Sufferin' Suckatash (52.51)

Welcome to 2013, Toadcast listeners.  As is tradition around these parts, we start the year with a podcast of songs we will be releasing this year on Song, by Toad Records, combined with a few we have released quite recently.

There are a few things I didn't put on here, because it seemed a shame to spill the beans too early - we have a new Rob St. John single coming soon, as well as a new album by The Leg and that collaborative album between Jill from Sparrow and the Workshop, Neil and Pete from Meursault, Rory from Broken Records and Reuben Taylor and Rob St. John - but it didn't feel right to play anything from those just yet.

What we do have is new stuff from Trips and Falls, stuff from our next split 12" with Magic Eye, Zed Penguin, Le Thug and Plastic Animals, as well as brand new and hugely exciting label signings Adam Stafford and Sparrow & the Workshop, who we'll be doing a couple of EPs with as they prepare their new album.

All in all, this is going to be a fucking amazing year for the label, I think, and I am really, really looking forward to it.  Hopefully by the end of this podcast, so will you.

01. Sparrow & the Workshop - Shock Shock (00.26)
02. Meursault - Lament For a Teenage Millionaire (05.37)
03. Le Thug - New Balance (11.21)
04. Plastic Animals - Best Friend (16.37)
05. Adam Stafford - Vanishing Tanks (25.21)
06. Yusuf Azak - Go Native (31.53)
07. Lil Daggers - Faces and Names (33.59)
08. Trips and Falls - Freedom of Homogeneity (45.44)
09. Magic Eye - Golden Circle (52.17)
10. Zed Penguin - Letters (56.17)
11. Rob St. John - Doomino (1.07.43)

Grinch, not because I am being deliberately all Scroogey and slagging off Christmas, just because I am somehow entirely failing to find any Christmas spirit at all.

I like Christmas actually. Although, I suppose to be fair, like a lot of people I despise the hysteria of the presents and all that shit.  Particularly the way the shops start punting it in late September, and the fucking adverts ladle on the emotional blackmail to imply that anything less than an entry-level mortgage spent on presents is some sort of horrendous slight on your loved ones.

Fairly standard anti-commercialisation moaning aside, though, I like the cold and the darkness and the time spent quietly with family doing next to nothing. I also like the ritual preparation of a huge meal, and then lying on the sofa watching Back to the Future or Star Wars or Indiana Jones all evening because you're too bloody full to do anything else.

But I'm not doing that this year, am I. No, I am doing the accounts and editing sessions.  Because I'm a dick.

01. Eddie Izzard - Covered in Bees (00.26)
02. Onions - Christmas (Not as Much as We Would Like) (02.47)
03. The Pictish Trail - The Handstand Crowd (08.47)
04. Kid Canaveral - Low Winter Sun (13.47)
05. Eeek! - Down and Out in Harrison Fjord (20.16)
06. Adam Balbo - Do What You Do (23.50)
07. Yo La Tengo - Ohm (30.09.)
08. Paws - Asthmatic (Laptop Demo) (39.36)
09. S.E. Land Otter Champs - Wolf Like Howls From the Bathhouse (43.27)
10. Kiki Pau - Tomte Mars (48.24)
11. Bob Dylan - Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You (59.37)

What the fuck am I doing calling something a Currycast, I hear you ask.  Music cannot be curry-themed, and nor is it.  This is called the Currycast simply because I am visiting my Granddad in Manchester and he has just asked me to cook a curry for him tomorrow night.

I have never cooked curry before, and Mrs. Toad makes such a fine one that I have never really been motivated to have a go, myself.  Why bother making the second-best curry in the house, after all. However, I made a gigantic leg of roast lamb today, so there are lots of leftover bits of cabbage, carrots, lamb juice and bits to make a fine stock base, and so as long as the flavour is right the richness should be okay.

Despite being raised abroad, when we were kids roast dinners in my grandparents' house were amongst our most vivid memories, so the fact that me and my little brother get to come here ourselves to cook roast dinners now is a really nice feeling.  It feels like we're helping to continue a tradition in which we were raised, despite the fact the he lives in America and I in Scotland means neither of us spend much time in Manchester these days.

01. Inspector Tapehead - I Am Your Pedigree (00.12)
02. Mothersday - Shoulder Soldier (08.59)
03. King Post Kitsch - Blood and Glitter (15.52)
04. Flutes - Auld Archie (20.11)
05. Flume - Star Eyes (24.33)
06. Sweet Baboo - Let's Go Swimming Wild (32.12)
07. Harness Flux - Stockholders (38.41)
08. Nehemiah St. Danger - Nehemiah St-Danger Lost and Alone in a New Paradigm (Venus of the Tumbling Towers) (44.15)
09. The Hand to Man Band - The Down Moveables (46.42)
10. Adios Amigo - Take Me to Heaven (54.01)
11. Meursault - Song For Martin Kippenberger (Jonnie Common Remix) (1.01.11)

Don't worry, the chances of me actually playing party music on a Toadcast are about as good as Lana Del Rey getting some semblance of life back into that blank, empty, defeated gaze of hers.

No, in reality this is called the Partycast because we are having the label Christmas Party tomorrow at Summerhall, and so tomorrow I shall be running around all day collecting a PA, and shitloads of absolutely awful tinsel and dreadful Christmas decorations.

Also, rather tragically. I shall be trying my very best (and probably failing) not to get too utterly obliterated because I will have to be up early in the morning to return the bloody PA and get all our merch stuff through to Chambre 69 to try and sell to people of Glasgow in vast, lucrative quantities. But umm... well I think it's time to accept that I am going to feel like a menstruating badger on Saturday morning.

01. Francobollo - Basketball (00.17)
02. Rick Redbeard - Cold as Clay (The Grave) (06.25)
03. Lil Daggers - Faces & Names (13.21)
04. King Post Kitsch - Every Face (19.29)
05. These Brittle Bones - Blood + Snow (24.09)
06. Matthew E. White - Big Love (30.57)
07. Dolfinz - Yeah Right (38.25)
08. Slowcoaches - Proper Job (40.39)
09. Silverbacks - Orange Light (44.56)
10. King DJ - Hold Me Down (50.14)
11. WTCHS - Adult Crimes (54.42)

Winter has been slow to arrive this year, but it certainly feels like it's here now. The last few days have been pretty cold, but more importantly when you live this far North, it's getting fucking dark. It's not something I dislike, actually.  We may not get much real cold in Edinburgh, nor indeed very much which anyone else would describe as Summer, but Edinburgh is at a surprisingly high latitude and during the Winter months it really is dark around these parts.

So there I was sitting at my desk at four in the afternoon and it was already really rather fucking dingy outside, and in the absence of an obvious theme it seemed about as relevant as anything else I could have come up with.  And let's face it, without that this is just a mish mash of new stuff which has been piling into my inbox over the last little while, and where's the fun in that, eh? Well? Where?

01. Temples - Shelter Song (00.21)
02. Eels - Peach Blossom (06.54)
03. PVT - Shiver (13.01)
04. Milk and Biscuits - White Noise (16.49)
05. Murals - Eyes of Loves (24.32)
06. Lady Lazarus - Lapsarian (31.44)
07. Garden of Elks - This Morning We Are Astronauts (38.47)
08. Palms - Cold (41.07)
09. These Brittle Bones - Anchor Bleed (48.11)
10. Qurious - Gold (55.16)

Videos: Vimeo - YouTube Photos: Flickr Audio: zip download - mp3s below For the utter shame of it, we actually recorded this Toad Session back in December last year. I know we can be a little tardy publishing these fuckers, but this has to be something of a record. I blame the fact that The Leg, The Foxx, Meursault and the Split 12" albums all ended up being released within a month or so of each other for knocking me firmly out of my stride, but well, there's always an excuse isn't there. We actually recorded this on the Monday after a fearsomely brilliant gig at Henry's Cellar Bar last Christmas, and did a session with the brilliant Joanna Gruesome on the same day. It was a bit rough, just a little bit like hard work, and I have no idea how the neighbours decided not to complain to the coppers, but I hugely grateful that they didn't. Massive thanks for this one are owed to Dylan Matthews and Ashley Hampson for their video camera work, to the consistently awesome Nic Ruefor taking the pictures, and to Rory Sutherland for helping me with the recording, the mixing, and for also wielding a video camera during the session itself.

Toadcast #250 - The Black Tambourines Toad Session by Song, By Toad on Mixcloud

01. The Black Tambourines - Bad Days (Toad Session) (06.37) 02. Jeff the Brotherhood - Bone Jam (11.27) 03. Ringo Deathstarr - So High (14.39) 04. The Black Tambourines - Let You Down (Toad Session) (21.02) 05. T. Rex - Life's a Gas (26.53) 06. Can - Moonshake (29.29 ) 07. The Black Tambourines - Ghost at a Party (Toad Session) (37.00) 08. The Germs - Forming (41.04) 09. Y Niwl - Dau (42.55) 10. The Black Tambourines - School Level (Toad Session) (46.54)

My folks are spending a couple of months in Rottingdean down on the South coast, and after the Meursault, Rob St. John and Withered Hand gig at the Islington Assembly Hall in London on Tuesday I have come down to spend a few days with them, before pootling on back to Edinburgh tomorrow.

This may not excuse but most certainly does explain the fact that the blog has been slightly more erratic than usual this week.  I've squeezed in posts where I can, but parents don't take all that kindly to you spending your entire visit buggering about on the internet, so I've had to cool it slightly.  Although I did force them to sit through an hour of my inbox yesterday, just so they would know how the internet makes me suffer.  Boo fucking hoo.

Anyhow, Rottingdean is very near Brighton, which I visited for the first time for the Great Escape this Spring, so it was sort of nice to be back, in an odd way. I spent way too much money at Resident again, so I will have explaining to do when I get home. Mrs. Toad is an unforgiving beast, when it comes to my vinyl obsession.

01. Elton John - Ballad of a Well-Known Gun (00.10)
02. Holy Modal Rounders - Hey, Hey Baby (08.06)
03. Alabama 3 - Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlife (11.30)
04. Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band - Thunder Road (15.40)
05. Simon & Garfunkel - Blues Run the Game (23.32)
06. Younghoon Beats - Ours (31.06)
07. The Douglas Firs - The Possessed (38.15)
08. ABC - Poison Arrow (42.26)
09. Holy Modal Rounders - Blues in the Bottle (45.59)
10. Bagel Project - The Chariot Tale (51.33)
11. Rob St. John - The Mandrake (57.07)

Coffeeeeeee... so very, very much coffee! Christ on a bike, I know I need to not be dozing off at my desk at the moment but I've had so much fucking coffee in the last couple of days I am starting to go fucking cross-eyed.

Mostly this is down to trying to get my head together after the Cold Seeds 2/Wolf Bear Crystal Toads recording sessions over the weekend which, despite my lack of real direct involvement, still managed to knock the usually ruthlessly efficient Toad machine somewhat cockeyed for a few days.

Anyhow, the disruption continues with a trip to London for the Meursault show at the Islington Assembly Hall next week, and some panel appearances in Aberdeen and at Unconvention in Preston both coming up as well. And you thought I just fucked about on the internet all day!

01. Elvis Costello - Couldn't Call it Unexpected No.4 (00.31)
02. The Woken Trees - Yells (07.55)
03. Arran Arctic - Covers (13.09)
04. September Girls - Green Eyed (15.33)
05. Laurence Made Me Cry - Intelligent Mr. Toad v2 (feat. Dementio13) (20.17)
06. Woodsman - Sonic Tomb (26.35)
07. Yoofs - Welcome Home (31.50)
08. The Failed NASA Experiment - So I Met This Girl (38.41)
09. Fairport Convention - Who Knows Where the Time Goes (44.04)
10. Woodpecker Wooliams - Crow (49.07)
11. Yo La Tengo - Stupid Things (56.16)

The Ivorycast centres, not altogether surprisingly, on the piano. I remember being mocked at school by someone (a fucking idiot) I knew for swithering on whether the piano or the violin was my favourite instrument in pop music.  She was adamant that the obvious and only answer to that question was the guitar, but then she also liked Lenny Kravitz, so I think that her opinion can be utterly disregarded on principle.

Anyhow, there's not much old music on this one, which I suppose there could easily have been.  Instead, there's a few very new things, a few things from about five years ago, some stuff from about ten years ago and a couple of tunes from the early nineties.

Also, it's not supposed to be exhaustive, definitive nor indeed at all academic.  This is just a bunch of songs I like with a lot of piano on them, not a verbal essay on the history and importance of piano music.

01. The Divine Comedy - Geronimo (00.26)
02. Billy Joel - Piano Man (04.00)
03. Hem - Leave Me Here (12.30)
04. Grandaddy - Underneath the Weeping Willow (16.36)
05. Glacis - Spring/Summer (21.36)
06. Mavis the Dog - Council For The Queen (26.29)
07. Yusuf Azak - Swim (30.04)
08. The National - Fake Empire (35.51)
09. Sufjan Stevens - Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois (39.19)
10. White Rabbits - While We Go Dancing (42.37)
11. Geoffnet - The Little Parisian Music Box (50.12)
12. Ben Folds Five - Mess (51.49)
13. Tom Waits - Innocent When You Dream (78) (58.22)