ALMOST fifty artists and bands have released music over the past decade on Song, By Toad, from outrageously prolific Fifer King Creosote to former Lift To Experience bronco Josh T Pearson. Here are just a few of them.
Adam Stafford
FIRST breaking through with his band Y’All Is Fantasy Island in the 2000s, Falkirk musician and film-maker Adam Stafford has been releasing music with Song, By Toad since 2013’s Imaginary Walls Colliding. This May’s audacious, mainly instrumental album Fire Behind The Curtain was recorded in The Happiness Hotel, the lock-up recording studio of label head Matthew Young.
DTH PDL
ORIGINALLY the solo project of singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and soundtrack artist Alastair J Chivers, DTH PDL (that’s “Deathpodal”) is an Edinburgh four-piece who meld hypnotic hypnotic electro with squalling indie rock.
www.facebook.com/DTHPDL soundcloud.com/dthpdl
Faith Elliot
A FACE on Edinburgh’s music scene since moving from Minnesota in 2006, Faith Eliott is an artist-musician who “writes songs, draws, hoards stuff and encrusts things with beads and googly eyes”. Inspired by a period living in rural Nebraska, 2016’s EP Insects showcased a tenderly honest approach to lyrics and performance. New music is expected soon.
faitheliott.com www.facebook.com/FaithEliottArt
Modern Studies
NOW signed to Fire Records, who released their sumptuous Welcome Strangers album in May, Modern Studies’s first home was Song, By Toad. It was the latter who released the supergroup’s debut album Swell To Great, which was shortlisted for 2017’s Scottish Album Of The Year.
That record was based on songs Emily Scott had written on a creaking Victorian harmonium, and the crsytal-voiced singer and multi-instrumentalist plays Song, By Toad’s Origins Line show on September 28.
www.modernstudiestheband.com www.facebook.com/modernstudiestheband
Meursault
RESTRAINED, smart and witty, Meursault – essentially a revolving cast of musicians around mainstay Neil Pennycook – have been releasing music on Song, By Toad since their 2009 debut album. Like Modern Studies’s Swell To Great album, Meursault’s I Will Kill Again was shortlisted for the
Scottish Album of The Year Award in 2017. Pennycook’s outfit recently posted a video about Crow Hill, their new Kickstarter-funded record, on their Facebook page.
www.facebook.com/meursaultmusic iammeursault.com
Siobhan Wilson
THERE Are No Saints, the second album from Elgin-born musician and singer Siobhan Wilson was described by no less than Rolling Stone magazine as “one of the most stunning collections of songs to be released in a long time”. Song, By Toad head Matthew Young said he wanted to release the record just a minute or two into its angelic, haunting title track. Expect more great things from Wilson, who supports the majestic Fleet Foxes on August 7 at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Bandstand.
Sparrow And The Workshop
IN 2013, Song, By Toad released Murderpolis, the third album by Sparrow And The Workshop, and a record as good as its title suggested. The rocking guitar licks, powerful, sassy vocals and pop smarts of former Sparrow frontwoman Jill O’Sullivan can now be heard in the top notch output of BDY_PRTS, her heroic duo with Jenny Reeve.
www.bdyprts.com www.facebook.com/bdyprtsband
Jonnie Common
“YOU can’t expect me to stay the same way/cuz if I stay the same way I die” offers moustachioed awkward popstar Jonnie Common in 2014 track Crumbs. Relentlessly prolific, ever-creative, in the last year or so the musician has scored a TV play, written music inspired by Dundee’s McManus Gallery and released Kitchen Sync, an instrumental album make entirely using the sound of kitchen gadgets and appliances. More recently, he’s released excellent single Restless and YouTubularBells, the second collection by CARBS, his wonky, spoken-sung pop outfit with Conquering Animal Sound’s James Scott.
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