TOY

We'd been eagerly waiting to catch TOY live. Their eponymous debut, released just a few months ago, went well beyond a simple revelation or a promising surprise among the others populating the British indie landscape of these indecipherable Noughties. Given the imaginative possibilities it opened up, it's really more accurate to call it a genuine epiphany, and we feel confident about the impact an album this important could have on the entire darkwave scene. As with Horrors a few seasons back and the (now disbanded) S.C.U.M. last year, we were lucky enough to put the live qualities of yet another next big thing to the test just a stone's throw from home. The venue chosen to host the first of four Italian tour dates for the London band, Spazio211 in Turin, reinforced in us seasoned regulars the sense of it as an almost homely refuge, a second address in the city - an idea that the rising (and trendier) Astoria's stock seemed to have called into question. Finding yourself face to face with one of the most interesting acts of the moment in such a familiar place is really the most you could ask for on a late-autumn Friday night.

And here come TOY, silent and focused, walking onstage one after another from the curtain by the dressing rooms at the side of the stage, in front of a sizeable crowd - though short of the full house that had been expected. Keyboardist Alejandra Diez comes out first, in a skin-tight little black dress that it would be reductive to call eye-catching, and which - regardless of the audience's will (of both sexes) - proves to be an unrelenting magnet for stolen glances. The rest of the band follows, with frontman Tom Dougall bringing up the rear, a sulky star in his fine Edwardian-dandy coat. The introduction is entrusted not to his words but to the instruments' fierce opening salvo, with "Colours Running Out" playing the same role as album opener it already had on the record. An almost mocking title given the circumstances, as Maxim Barron's black-ink bass unexpectedly floods and saturates every corner of the sound, squeezing out the other tones in the mix: classic EQ problems, with an inevitable hitch in the sound, thicker and muddier than it should be. Just a passing annoyance, though, soon forgotten once the mix shifts to a technically flawless result that does justice to the band's gift for complex sonic layering.

The dark sound remains the defining trait of a set that's electrifying and taut from the very start, without ever sacrificing clarity. Both the precision of these five musicians - playing with a chemistry you'd expect only from seasoned veterans - and the crack-free wall of sound that hits the enthusiastic crowd with almost brutal impact are truly formidable: imposing in its rhythmic architecture of monstrous regularity (drummer Charlie Salvidge is remarkable), yet refined down to the smallest detail by the irresistible interplay between Dougall's understated guitar and Dominic O'Dair's sharper one.

The explosive debut single "Left Myself Behind", left off the album at the time, contains all the band's post-punk drive and that noisy, atmospheric emphasis that is perhaps their most immediately recognizable trademark. A real bomb, tossed off almost casually within a run of equally striking tracks ("Dead and Gone" stands out, along with the enveloping space-rock of the instrumental "Drifting Deeper"), all delivered without ever pausing for breath and without indulging in pointless poser affectations.

With just a touch less dreamy shading and a bit less affectation, but with plenty more raw, unfiltered rock substance than on record, TOY leave you impressed by their sheer personality. Diez's kraut-rock imprint remains quite prominent even in the most frenzied moments that fuel the crescendo of the second half of the show. It's her synth that proves to be the absolutely crucial melodic connective tissue within the London band's sound, even though it's the two electric guitars that take over in the closing stretch.

They embark on impressively fluid rides, beautifully blending psychedelia with shoegaze detours, stretching the instrumental codas to extreme lengths while avoiding the risk of self-indulgent, formulaic sprawl. The ending of "Kopter" is the most successful of these maelstroms, a vast hypnotic whirlpool exacerbated by feedback cranked to the max and fuelled by a tireless rhythmic engine. It closes in noise, foaming and hallucinatory, and you don't need to be a genius to see that there could be no more fitting conclusion, as TOY leave the stage amid a triumph of shouts and applause, with no further appearances to follow.

No encore, then, but no complaints either: seventy intense minutes need no postscript. If you really want to nitpick a genuinely generous performance, there remains one not-so-thrilling detail: Dougall as a singer. All things considered, it fits his mould as a deadpan performer, but he's often really too thin vocally, overwhelmed by the guitar maelstrom for the entire show and unable to resurface with anything memorable. Nothing truly decisive, though, given the many high points, to overturn an overall verdict that remains more than flattering. After all, S.C.U.M. too had been good but not perfect when we saw them in the Astoria's basement. Our thought back then was: "well, next time we see them it'll be even better". For this little gem of a band that is TOY, we can only wholeheartedly hope that, sooner or later, that fateful next time truly comes.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google