Album Review: Toy - Toy

Rising from the ashes of Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, the equally poorly-monikered TOY make it clear that they have a point to prove with their eponymous debut. Specialising in psychedelic pop with grand overtures and feedback washes, TOY have crafted an album rich with texture and motorik minimalism, whilst allowing for grandiose flights of fancy. On paper it should be a hodgepodge of ideas, yet the London quintet almost pull the thing off.

Most Mod-aping bands of the Noughties choose to sidestep such touchstones, and with good reason – it's incredibly hard to pull off without sounding like pretentious cardboard cut-outs of Syd Barrett and the Moody Blues. Yet on tracks like The Reasons Why and My Heart Skips A Beat, TOY do it incredibly well, due to weird melodies and the implementation of other genre tropes, and it proves to be a refreshing take. These hybridisations are most apparent on the Krautrock urgency of Dead & Gone, the wonky shoegaze haunt of Strange and especially Kopter, nine-plus minutes of rumbling percussion and sonorous synth that could eat its own tail like an ouroboros and continue forever, such is its hypnotic drive. Tom Dougall's narcissistic, affected vocals can be grating at times, the shiny production can become too much, and Drifting Deeper is a great space drone track out of place here, but there are parts of every track that work on every level.

It doesn't always hold up to scrutiny, but Toy deserves plaudits for trying. Sometimes a near-miss is also a hit, because there's so much right here that their next album is tantalising in its possibilities. Now, about that name…