Captain! Come quick, we've found a live one!! I'd pretty much given up on hearing any bombastic indie guitar stuff this year and resigned myself to spending the autumn squirrelled away in the flat reading books and listening to metal but it appears that all is not in fact lost, there's still some life in the beast that is British indie in 2012. TOY (I'm not sure they do lower case) have been touring as support for the Horrors and at first glance are coming from a similar place that their benefactors reached on 'Primary Colours' three years ago but give their début a few spins and you'll see that there's a lot more on show here than mere repackaging of the same ideas. The two bands do have certain things in common beyond their sound, namely the fact that TOY feature three members of defunct skinny jean collective Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong who surfaced around the same time as the Horrors in their pre-krautrock phase back in 2007 when they were still flinging out forgettable garage goth punk. 'Primary Colours' rebranded the boys as savvy masters of effects pedals and droning guitar pop with a badass production job by Portishead's Geoff Barrow and 'TOY' is a good companion piece to that album but in many ways it's totally different, less reliant on massive swathes of guitar fuzz and imbued with steadier rhythms and mellower soundscapes. The enthusiastic press reaction to their début features several references to early Pink Floyd and I can kinda see what they mean - there's a Syd Barret pop edge to this stuff that reminds me of 'Relics' (ie the stuff Floyd put out as singles in the 60s rather than their longer, weirder album cuts). You'll remember the tunes after one listen too - 'Lose my way' is classic House of Love-esque shoegaze pop and the lush string-laden 'My heart skips a beat' could almost pass off as a Burt Bacharach number. They move into more epic territory halfway through the record on the aptly-named instrumental 'Drifting Deeper' and the breezy 'Motoring', probably a krautrock reference but I don't know enough about German psychedelia to comment, let's just say it sounds like a poppier version of Swervedriver when they're in cruise control. The best thing about TOY is that they don't just go for the throat on every track, they infuse their music with enough energy to keep it moving but never overload the boat and maintain a perfect balance between lysergic pop and psychedelic indie without scorching your eardrums or wearing out their ideas. I don't know who produced this but they've done a good job keeping tabs on the band, no one instrument dominates the proceedings and it doesn't hurt that they probably have a better vocalist than the Horrors (I always felt those guys got stuck with the good looking tall bloke early on and had to carry his lanky ass on their later stuff). When TOY do finally let rip on the ten minute closing track 'Kopter' you get an idea of what they're capable of in a live setting and it's pretty promising stuff, starting off as trippy pop in line with the rest of the record before picking a riff and bashing the fuck out of it for several minutes as the album hurtles towards its vastly satisfying finale. I already know that I'm going to wear this shit out if I don't discipline myself to not over-playing it - every time I go back for another listen I pick a new favourite and you'll find yourself walking away grinning like a starstruck lover after the first few dates with a new girlfriend. TOY are poised to creep through into this year's indie best of lists without getting ruined by media over-exposure which is definitely a good thing - that Alt-J record is great and all but how long do you think it'll take before you're sick of hearing the fucker? I therefore advise you to bag this one discretely and feast on the sonic delights on offer without making too much of a big deal about it cos these guys (and girl) are onto something really special and this may only be a taste of what they're capable of producing once they get into their stride. 'TOY' is one stoooopendous listen from start to finish and if anyone tops this shit in the indie guitar stakes before the year's out then I will be immensely surprised.
Check out : 'My heart skips a beat' - I could just fucking take off and fly listening to this.
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