TOY
If the revivalist sound of bands like The Horrors and Crocodiles makes you swoon—perhaps inspiring a sudden urge to let your hair grow out and buy a can of Aqua-Net—then London\'s Toy is right up your alley. But the coolness factor doesn\'t peak there: the quartet takes the dance-focused swirling pop of the \'80s and injects it with a narcotized strain of Krautrock, replete with metronomic beats and propulsive currents strong enough to drown a hippo. The 10-minute motorik stunner \"Kopter\" needs zero justification, while \"Colours Running Out\" lopes along on racing percussion and vibrant swaths of neon-washed keyboard and guitar, feeling a bit like Australia\'s \'60s-drenched Tame Impala. A few tracks, like \"Drifting Deeper,\" find the band playfully stretching out and exploring what psychedelia can mean after so many years of reinvention and regurgitation. What\'s revealed is a playful and confident streak. *Toy* is so full of beautiful surprises that it\'s hard to believe a debut this beguiling and mature could come from such young guns.
It’s a question Toy personnel Tom Dougall, Dominic O’Dair and Maxim Barron must have asked themselves in 2008, when they found themselves as the Lehman Brothers of a rapidly crashing indie market.
There’s a whiff of expectation surrounding this promising debut, and it’s certainly fair to wonder whether it’s merited.
What ‘TOY’ lacks in originality, it more than makes up for with an incredibly rich dot-to-dot of psychedelia laced musical education.
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Poor TOY. For all their reviews so far, not one of them ends without a reference to the bands they so clearly spent their youth listening to. My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and, unfailingly, tour buddies and bezzies The Horrors: turns out it’s impossible to review their debut album without mentioning all three. But nowhere has the most dreaded of descriptions – a little bit boring – cropped up yet.
Toy's name, implying a certain level of childhood fancy, is appropriate. The band's music does conjure up images of pubescent teens jamming out in their bedrooms, first instruments in hand.
Grabbing our attention earlier this year with a thrilling performance at a Clash issue launch party, TOY have divided critics and united fans.
The Horrors proteges' debut takes in late-60s psych-rock and late-80s indie with a 70s krautrock tempo, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong>
London psych-rockers Toy make a mighty, effects-laden racket on their debut, and there are great tunes in there too, writes <strong>Dave Simpson</strong>