A bundle of sonic supplies from James Toth, The Flaming Stars, Close Lobsters, The Winter Journey and The Home Current gets unwrapped

Spring is sort of sneaking through at time of writing, with the usual April avalanche of audio arrivals already attracting attention from around the corner, especially with Record Store Day in the mix. In this liminal late-March space, therefore comes a few ‘none of the above’ things that are almost destined to be overlooked too abruptly but nevertheless deserve discussing. Like the below…

Over the last two decades, James Toth’s circuitous and chameleonic capabilities have allowed him to serve up songs in a range of flavours (Crazy Horse-laced languor and churn, Sticky Fingers-tinged gospel and roll, psych-rock, acid-pastoralism, weathered twangy country, bedroom folk and more), under a variety of collaborator-aided guises (including Wooden Wand, Dunza, James & Giants, his own name), that have found a broad spread of label abodes (Fire Records, Kill Rock Stars, Three Lobed Recordings, People in a Position to Know, The Great Pop Supplement et al.). Throughout it all, Toth has remained a voracious home-recording devotee, sketching out tracks for later fuller studio treatment or documenting pieces just to capture their very existence, that have been dispensed digitally, as bonus discs, on one-off lathe-cut singles and through sporadic rarities round-up anthologies.

Importantly though, there is little or no discernible quality downturn for such informally manifested material, and at times the DIY constructions in fact represent possibly the most gratifying routes into the labyrinthine James Toth canon.

More than welcome then, is the freshly unveiled Demon Stations (Selected Home Recordings 2012-2022), the latest nugget-panning curation exercise from this distinctive Toth tributary, following on from 2011’s much-loved My Week Beats Your Year LP and the six-platter Archives Volume 3 boxset.

Sagely selected for corporeal vinyl appearance, from five different Bandcamp-only compendiums, by Feral Child Records mastermind Dom Martin, these eleven gathered cuts coalesce into one diverse and deeply satisfying stand-alone album-sized compendium. Although unpolished, these are far from being hissy four-track tastings or thin smartphone voice memo scrapings. Instead, we have convivial and textured mid-fi presentations of songs packed with plenty of pathos and playfulness.

Hence, at the more minimalistic ends, we’re treated to some whimsical troubadour essays (such as the wry well-observed Loudon Wainwright III-esque “Too Many Bands” and “Everything I’ve Lost”), mesmeric If Only I Could Remember My Name David Crosbyisms (“Stones”) and lovelorn Townes Van Zandt-like reflections (“Love Me While I’m Alive”). Elsewhere, in the moderately more fleshed-out passages, there’s also much pleasure to be had from the Loaded-era Velvet Underground chug of “Mama’s Boy”, the Highway 61 Revisited attractions of “Bad Habit” and the mid-70s Stones-style balladry of “Dilated Eyes”.

Threaded together with consistently rich melodicism and refreshingly distinctive wordplay, Demon Stations is unquestionably one of the finest James Toth releases to date, regardless of the disparate origins and sonic fidelity of its component parts. Longtime followers and late-comers will be equally and heartily rewarded.

Following a different archival arc, are some more trusty 10-inch shaped BBC session EPs, put out with near-back-to-back pacing by Precious Recordings of London.

The picks of the two artist batches are unquestionably a pair of John Peel Sessions from much-missed retro-artisans The Flaming Stars, led by erstwhile Gallon Drunk drummer and latter-day vintage culture scribe Max Decharné.

Rounding-up two commissions – respectively from 1996 and 2002 – that provide a belated appendix to 2000’s The Six John Peel Sessions compilation, on the also-long-gone Vinyl Japan, these extended-players are a wonderful way to be reacquainted with a band that repeatedly caught this writer’s ears in the late-1990s/early-2000s.

The taped-live-on-air 1996 set proffers a particularly potent reminder of Decharné’s peerlessly dry-witted and unapologetically romantic lyricism, as well as of the full ensemble’s democratised dexterity, through the Vox Continental organ-led bliss of “Ten Feet Fall”, the vocal-less Dick Dale-meets-Morricone mangling of “Spaghetti Junction”, the infectious Latin twang and shuffle of “Bury My Heart at Pier 13” and the deep thrumming film-noir of “Down to You”.

Whilst it doesn’t have quite such a strong selection of core material, 2002’s recorded-in-a-day suite is still an enjoyable time capsule from The Flaming Stars’ twilight epoch. Steering through the yearning barroom tumble of “Cash 22”, the quiet-to-loud pile-up of the garage-rocking “Over and Done”, the slinky filmic “Action, Crime & Vision” and the prowling percussive swirl of “Killer in the Rain”.

In short, neither EP should be missed.

On more familiar Precious Recordings terrain, a closely following triple ten-inch pile of Janice Long, John Peel and (bonus disc only) Radio Clyde sessions, respectively from 1986, 1988 and 1989, digs deep into the other Paisley underground of Close Lobsters. Propelled by charming Caledonian comradery, rugged C86-adjacent-jangle, shards of skewed early-James-flavoured folk-rock and a kinship with The Go-Betweens, what these twelve dispensed recordings may lack in studio finesse, is made up for with unfaded youthful energy.

Having brought us a still-stunning songs-based solo statement with last year’s Days Lost to Snow long-player, Suzy Mangion has now turned to some reissue activity with her Turning Circle label, via the CD/digital restoration of The Winter Journey’s This is the Sound of the Winter Journey.

This 2008 debut album, made as a duo by Mangion and her husband (as well as former fellow George member) Anthony Braithwaite, finds the latter’s vocals and songwriting at the fore. The net result is a low-key but highly-crafted familial affair, full of amorphous acoustically-framed multi-layered explorations.

A salmagundi of stylings, the warmly-prepared collection offers up harmonising home-fireside folk (“Malachi My Messenger”), wispy Tyrannosaurus Rexisms (“Kill Devil Hills”), lonesome laments (“Rhythm and Stillness”), a brilliantly skittering blend of Lindsey Buckingham and The Beach Boys (“Clean Kick”), hushed hymnal nods to Euros Childs (“Sovereign”), wordless salutes to Freddie Phillips (“Turning Circle”) and some rustic-kosmische meditating (“Ready-Mades”).

Whilst enthralling in own right, this fine retrospective reintroduction to the world of The Winter Journey, also certainly stokes the anticipation for a new album from the twosome, due along in the near-future.

Remaining in a history surveying headspace, but in new material form, is The Home Current’s Tales from the Leisure League (Woodford Halse). Promising to be the last outing from Martin Jensen’s ceaselessly prolific one-man project, for the foreseeable future at least, this ten-tracker bows things out with an expansive lateral trip back to the video game culture of the 1980s.

The end product isn’t, however, a niche flashback to computer magazines and Pac-Man pixels but an imaginatively immersive electro-noir assemblage, that conjures up cinematic scenes of moody misunderstood teens in neon-light-saturated arcades, elicit pre-internet technological grittiness and – somewhat obliquely – nocturnal New York cab rides, through compelling combinations of skulking and squelchy beats, shimmering synthetic strata, rubbery bass-lines, piano samples and the occasional disembodied voice.

Although, on the first few airings, the desirable hidden-strengths aren’t immediately apparent, given time, Tales from the Leisure League reveals itself as a satisfyingly solid end point or long first-act closer for The Home Current, depending on what Martin Jensen elects to be the final destination.

Adrian
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