I can’t think of a much more poignant song for an astronaut to sing than David Bowie’s Space Oddity. Knowing that the final verse about drifting off into the void is in fact an actual possibility rather than a vivid fictional picture gives the song a whole new level of meaning.

Chris Hadfield from the Canadian Space Agency did just that, however, whilst on board the International Space Station. It’s a daft version, but being sung by an actual astronaut gives it a certain degree of pathos, and the video is really rather cool as well.

Hadfield himself seems like an absolutely brilliant guy, as well. Whilst on the ISS he made a series of over seventy videos of various things, including the rather brilliant one below, answering a question from a bunch of school kids about what happens when you wring out a flannel in space.

There aren’t really a lot of high profile musicians out there who produce this kind of supremely sad, fragile sounding piano music – or at least, not that I listen to anyway – so I suppose Stuart is probably sick of hearing the name Perfume Genius bandied about by now. I have limited reference points however, I am afraid, so I am going to have to drop it in as well. And maybe a nod towards a slightly less uplifting take on John Grant too.

Ham-fisted comparisons aside, this was a really good show. He was hardly an extravagant showman, spending most of the time hunched over his piano, but the timorous delivery on the record was gone, and in its place something more bolder and more lovely. It’s hard to say what grabs you about an album where a gentle rise and fall of the mood is more prominent than directly hummable melodies and choruses, but there was something about this which really was lovely. Even Mrs. Toad, who tends to dismiss most of the downbeat music I listen to as ‘moaning pish’, really enjoyed it, and that’s really saying something, believe me.

We didn’t catch enough of the set for me to say anything more about this really, but it has certainly sent me back to listen to his latest album again. In fact on his Bandcamp page you can listen in full to both of his full album releases, and the latest is for sale on vinyl via Faux Discx.

Recorded, their tunes are strong and hummable, and the laid back stylishness of their guitar sound has a certain retro swagger to it which I really like.  They are an unhurried, confident-sounding band though, and a little like Glass Animals again, I suspect that what makes their recordings so enjoyable to listen to might be the thing which took the shine off the live performance for me a little. Simply put, the laid back, slightly disinterested nature which so appeals to me on record seemed to rob the performance of the kind of charisma which makes a good live show.

You don’t have to ramp everything up to ten to address this of course, and I am not saying that they should have just played faster and louder, but there was a lack of intensity and engagement in the performance, or so it seemed to me, and suddenly what was stylish and laid back just felt a bit flat. They still write eminently hummable tunes of course, and please don’t get the impression that I didn’t enjoy their set, because I did, I just kept waiting for it all to click into place for me, which it never did.

It would have helped, of course, if I had a better knowledge of the band’s back catalogue. I heard about them because of their CMYK 7″ series release with the brilliant Faux Discx, but they have an extensive back catalogue of tape and split 7″ releases, some of which contain some absolutely cracking pop tunes – like this and this for example – and I have to confess I am not as familiar with it all as I could be, which often doesn’t help when you’re at a live show. Neither does being with restless companions, I suppose, so maybe I should just put this down as one of those occasions where you just don’t quite click with a band and move on. I still like their records though, so maybe I should go back through those a little more carefully before seeing them play live again.

Seeing all these Brighton musicians playing in a small live room of a ramshackle but nevertheless excellent-looking studio, to an audience of their pals, while the UK’s music industry charged around the town centre hoping their delegate passes would get them in to see the latest buzz band from Manchester or Brooklyn reminded me of the only other Brighton musicians I interacted with over the weekend: over beers in a pub far from the festival. So whilst the Great Escape is good for the industry, and it’s definitely great for us to come down from the opposite end of the island to finally meet people we largely know only through Twitter, it seems to be of little benefit to the music scene in the host city itself.

The irony of that is that of all the bands I saw this weekend which gave me that buzz – that sense of excitement you get at seeing something genuinely good and a little bit unexpected – then it was this. Their music is gorgeously thrummy guitar indie – too ethereal to be shoegaze and too heavy to be dreampop. You might not get that from these recordings, and the others on their Soundcloud page, but live was a different prospect.

All those guitars you hear thrumming away in the background became loud and BIG, and the vocals had to be that bit more strained and edgy just to make themselves heard. It was a cacophonous racket, and way, way nastier than I was expecting. And I think you know me well enough by now to know that this was no bad thing. There were times when the melodies seemed a little overwhelmed by the sheer racket, however, and a lot of the subtleties from the recordings were lost.

That may have just been an inevitable consequence of the size of the room and the nature of the sound system of course, but Eleanor has a gorgeous voice, and there were times I would have to preferred it to be a little less overwhelmed by everything around it, but those are minor quibbles. In general they were excellent, and probably the most exciting band I saw all weekend. They have a single out on Tiny Lights Recordings, and I look forward to seeing where they go from here.

That fact that the gig took place at this church certainly helped matters, and with the interior lighting it was much more impressive on the inside than on the out, and a hell of a lot bigger too.

With Harcourt perched behind a grand piano, the image was impressive, even if the venue lent a rather disorientatingly heavy reverb to the vocals when they were at their loudest. Nevertheless, once I acclimatised my ears, the effect was gorgeous.

I was late getting there, arriving to a grand piano accompanied by a solo violin player who also provided occasional and lovely female vocal backing vocals. It was a beautiful combination. The violin player, who I think might have been Harcourt’s wife, actually, reappeared from time to time and each time the effect was gorgeous.

In fact, Harcourt’s ability to dramatically change the timbre of the performance was one of the highlights of the show. He played synth, acoustic guitar and piano, sometime with violin, sometimes with backing vocals and sometimes unaccompanied, and with each the feel of the songs was subtly varied, although each in its own way suited the charisma of the setting all the same.

Perhaps the moment which most encapsulated this for me was when, after a couple of songs of bold piano, violin and forceful vocals bouncing thickly around the church Harcourt unplugged everything and sang a song unamplified, to a rolling, gentle acoustic guitar refrain.  It was gorgeous, and the sudden change in the volume of the sound and the near-vanishing of the smothering waves of natural reverb brought a remarkable change in the feel of the performance. Suddenly, instead of being grand and impressive, it was fragile and lovely.

And pretty much the best gig of the weekend.

Not so, it seems, and I was genuinely surprised to see them on the bill at The Great Escape this year, and even more so to hear whispers that they have signed to a really rather serious record label. They play what I have previously described as muffled disco, and a friend of mine suggested that it’s possible the fact that they sound a little like Alt-J had something to do with the label’s interest in a band who’s relatively unprolific and low-profile habits might otherwise dissuade A&R types.

I have never heard Alt-J so I have no idea if this rather offhand observation has any merit, but I have to say that it sounds depressingly like classic A&R behaviour, despite the fact that I can really only think The Lumineers who have made anyone all that much money recently by being a bit like someone else.

In any case, that doesn’t matter to me, as I haven’t heard any Alt-J anyway, and in any case the reason I was excited to see these guys is because I really like their recorded material, so I was really curious to hear what it sounded like live. It was, sadly, a bit disappointing, however. What makes them exciting to me in recorded form – the slow pace and muffled beats – just seemed to prevent the music generating any real energy live.

It’s possible I was in the wrong frame of mind, and it’s possible they aren’t all that practised as a live band, as I haven’t seen much evidence of them being out and about that much – although I could be totally wrong about that. Either way, despite being very specifically excited to see these guys in the flesh, I have to confess this didn’t grab me as much as I had hoped it might. It wasn’t bad, by any means, it was good. I just wasn’t thrilled, which is a shame.

Still, after the damage done to my liver by £300 bottles of wine (more of that later) in Brighton, I think a quiet week is a good idea, particularly as we are firmly in the midst of the Silly Season as far as the music industry is concerned: Wide Days, GoNorth, SXSW, Great Escape, the beginning of festival season… it all turns into a gigantic mess around now, and the liver and the sanity tend to bear the brunt of the damage.

Anyhow, the only gig I can see this week which looks like it would be up either my or your street  is one which I rather annoyingly cannot attend, which is ever the fucking way, but you should go if you can: Kid Canaveral, The Last Battle & Randolph’s Leap are at The Caves on Thursday night. The gig is free, but on a first come, first served basis, so don’t be too late and still expect to get in. It will be a night of indiepop, tinged with folk, and should be full of irreverent fun.

Other than that… well as I said, let me know if I’ve missed something obvious because it would hardly be the first time.

I like The Great Escape. Brighton is an awesome place to be, which is important if you’re going to try and lure Mrs. Toad to a music festival.

In some ways I prefer it to SXSW, because they don’t really focus on big-name headliners here, meaning that it really is all about new music and up and coming bands. At least, that makes it more fun for me personally, anyway, because that’s generally the kind of bands I am excited to see.

Anyhow, this year The Hype Machine asked me for five picks of bands to see at the Great Escape this year, and I thought I would pass them on before the chaos begins…

Glass Animals – I don’t like to play the ‘heard it here first’ card, but I genuinely wrote about these guys miles before pretty much anyone else. Not sure what else to call this, apart from muffled disco.

Temples – A touch of one-song syndrome here. Shelter Song was absolutely brilliant, but I am not so sure about their new tune (below). Time to go and see them live and find out for sure, I think.

Eagulls – Ian and I saw them on the end of Brighton pier last year and they were brilliant. Epic, nasty guitar rock and a lead singer who prowls the stage like he’s looking for a fight.

Lab Coast – These guys are eminently hipster-friendly, as you might guess from noting that they are signed to the effortlessly cool Faux Discx. It’s stylish, laid back, lo-fi guitar music, and very good it is too.

Mac DeMarco – This stuff is rather stylish too, but in a very different way to Lab Coast. Mac DeMarco also play hipster guitar music, but in more of a lounge-style, laid back, ‘I will have sex with your daughter’ kind of a way.

And just because the last two were rather unimaginative – you know full well already that I like these two bands, after all – here’s a band whose manager got in touch with me when I registered, to promote the band. Generally I sniff at that – not for any good reason of course, it’s just a rather dumb reflex – but this lot actually sound rather good, and I think I will go and see them. Meet Keebo:

It’s not exactly an album in much of a hurry itself though, so I am giving myself a free pass on this one. There are so many touchstones in here though, I am a bit worried about writing one of those reviews-by-endless-comparisons. It’s not a reviewing style I am all that fond of, but in this case I think there’s some point in it, because this album seems to take an awful lot of very familiar concepts, but the results have a pleasing sense of their own personality, even if it isn’t that obvious on the first couple of listens.

The first things which spring to mind are the likes of Smog and Richmond Fontaine – morose, introspective Americana which nevertheless has something of a grand sweep to it. Certainly conversations with your girlfriend about playing Mississipi Fred McDowell on the car stereo, such as in Outsider Blues, have that touch of Willy Vlautin’s ability to use banal minutiae to conjure remarkably touching, complete impressions.

Go back to the start of the record, however, and it opens with an absolute beast of a song. A beast which is, to Alan Partridge the fuck out of this, a very different animal indeed. No Bed for Beatle Wand / Days This Long actually reminds me of Hookworms in its slow-burning sprawl or, if you want a more genre-appropriate comparison, the excellent Damon Moon and the Whispering Drifters. It’s big and ambitious, but confidently so, and doesn’t feel the need to rush anything.

The fact that the band started their album with a song over ten minutes long perhaps tells you all you need to know about their sense of self-possession, and this characteristic comes up again and again throughout the record. It’s beautifully restrained, huge when it needs to be, meandering when it chooses and gorgeous when it’s ready. The fact that it doesn’t hop up and down demanding your attention is possibly one of the reasons why I didn’t quite get it immediately, but once you’re hooked, it is one of this album’s greatest virtues.

It was the kind of record which I never thought I would end up reviewing because I didn’t think I was that into it, but every time Mrs. Toad and I sat down for a glass of wine at the end of the day it was one of the first I would reach for, because it has a wonderfully warm vibe and works really well as a whole album.  That was in November when I was first sent the promo.  And now, in May, here we are: Blood Oaths of the New Blues has slowly become one of my favourite albums of the year.

Buy from Fire Records – band website

Harcourt has a sense of humour of course, as the song below suggests and the video of him playing Gin & Juice on his website conclusively proves, so I don’t think we should take the rolling piano and keening in his voice to be anything defeatist, it’s just how some people express themselves when they are being contemplative. And if there’s a single word I would use to describe this album I think it would be that: contemplative.

Funnily enough, however, it wasn’t that kind of  music which got me into Ed Harcourt in the first place, despite it being perhaps the single most prominent characteristic of his work. No, that would have been the playful bombast of Shanghai, from his 2001 debut release Here Be Monsters. At the time my music taste was in a bit of a state of flux, caught between the the rich melancholia of the likes of Harcourt, Richard Hawley and even Sparklehorse on one side, the experimentalism of Kid A and Amnesiac on another, and the raucousness of the early White Stripes releases on another. I had a proper job for the first time, access to Napster, and was exploring and buying new music at a hell of a rate, so there is a lot of music from that part of my life which I ended up leaving behind, both intentionally and otherwise.

I say this without malice, but it’s entirely possible had I not personally known the label involved, that this release might have passed me by altogether.  What with there being so much music out there there is perhaps less attraction in revisiting artists you thought you had moved beyond, even if you did so entirely by accident.

Oddly enough, though, it is this sense of being slightly out of time which perhaps helps me to enjoy this album as much as I do. Harcourt is in a different place to me, personally. The second song on the album is about his newborn child, and with Last Will and Testament at the end and lyrics like “I’ve nothing left to prove” in the middle, you get the impression he is surveying the status quo and taking stock, to some extent. As his status quo is so very different to mine – only two years his elder – and his lyrics fairly unadorned and literal I might find it difficult to engage with some of this, but the nostalgia invoked by not having listened to his music for so long provides a neat analogue to the ‘state of play’ observations made on the album.  He sings songs about who he has become, and in looking back to when I first heard his stuff over ten years ago, I find myself contemplating the same.

There are some wonderfully rich moments on this album, too, where the swirl of piano seems to scoop up other instruments into brief eddies of orchestralism. This kind of ebb and flow prevents Back Into the Woods getting oppressive or boring, but while there aren’t really any weak songs on here, Harcourt doesn’t really deal in the kind of melody which you will find yourself humming as you walk down the street, so beyond an enjoyment of the general sound, it took me a while to get into the whole of the album on a level beyond that of pleasant background ambience.

Generally when I moved beyond that, to specifically liking the individual songs, it happened as the lyrics sank in. So I would recommend you take some time with this and don’t rush it. Buy it on vinyl, put your feet up, have a glass of wine and indulge in whatever it is we grown-ups listen to instead of downbeat emo.