Well fuck me this is brilliant. Having been a fan of Down the Tiny Steps - Jonnie's previous band - as well as Inspector Tapehead (of course!) I was both certain this would be good as well as entirely uncertain as to what it would actually sound like. He's a funny fucker, Jonnie Common, equally at home as a producer of glitchy electronica, whimsical pop or gently plucked acoustic music. He slips so seamlessly between these incarnations that I found myself being confused by something which shouldn't have been confusing, really. The multi-faceted nature of his [...]
Ryan (StopMe) : I've just finished reading Bryan Talbot's engrossing 'Alice In Sunderland' (Nice how it syncs up in part's with Channel 4's unmissable current drama about the English Civil War called 'The Devil's Whore') and I'm now fully ceased of the idea that Sunderland is the greatest cultural focal point in all Christendom! I haven't just been reading though, I've also been listening and here's ten things my ears were enjoying: If like me, you loved Fisherspooner's first album (But thought everything they've released since then has been a big pile of [...]
Today we're going to Glasgow via Manchester and Fife. That's because Down The Tiny Steps are from Glagow, part of the feted Fence Collective , but have just had their latest release put out by Manchester's Red Deer Club records. On their website, DTTS describe themselves as a "Glasgow-based electro-folk-pop trio." This gives you a rough idea of what they might sound like of course, but they're worried about how that may be understood. "That sounds cack" they add "but they are not". They protest too much. It doesn't take long listening to their er, [...]
Ryan (StopMe) : I've spent a pleasant week reading a stack of new books I've just bought like Marjane Satrapi's engrossing and witty ' Chicken With Plums ' and Alan Moore's unsettling ' From Hell ' ( A journey into the mind of Jack The Ripper). In-between these highly recommended reads I've found time to track down ten more new and exciting sounds and here they are: The opening line "Remember when we we're young" sets the tone for this wistful Country inflected Indie single from Dawn Landes . Take a stroll down [...]
The reason the truly excellent Campfires & Battlefields took over all things Toad this weekend is that I was away with Mrs. Toad, and he very kindly volunteered to keep things ticking over in our absence. You will surely all join me in thanking him for his excellent job, and I guess you may [...]
I love these two bands, absolutely love 'em, so tonight was a bit of a special day in the gig calendar of Toad. Down the Tiny Steps are a sort of folky, electro, Scottish almost-hip-hoppy-at-times group based around the fantastic songwriting of Johnnie Common. The group has had a rough time recently, losing the drummer [...]
There's some good stuff in the 'Burgh this week, including a couple of highly recommended local folk acts that I have yet to catch live, so it might mean the domestic chores getting put on hold for another week. I've heard a fair bit recently about both My Kappa Roots and Withered Hand and [...]
Hopping - hopping! D'you get it, d'you ge.. oh alright alright, simmer down. It wasn't that bad. What else was I supposed to use for a flighty post with no real cohesion? Exactly, so pipe down in the cheap seats. Well I was all set to pop along to the GoodBooks gig at Cabaret Voltaire on [...]
Being a little bit of a Johnny-come-lately as far as steps of any sort are concerned I'm afraid I can't tell you what Johnnie Common used to sound like when he was a 'he' rather than a 'they'. I got into these lads by seeing the full band lineup play a superb set in [...]
Song, by Toad is quite squarely, it appears, the bitch around Toad Hall these days. Now, I do a perfectly respectable professional job, in a perfectly acceptably lazy, half-arsed way and when I got my grand-and-a-half payrise last year I was, if not thrilled, not irritated either. Thing is, Mrs Toad's bonus has just been announced and it is comfortably more than my entire annual wage. Given, as The Hold Steady have already categorically proven with copious scientific research, that "guys go for looks, girls go for status" it does sometimes cross the mind [...]
Song, by Toad
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