...A Toys Orchestra

Spring awakening in the Eternal City, as we head back onto the streets for a new season of live music. Winter is swept away like the icy piano of "Wake Me Up", which bursts into tribal pop in the epic style of the most inspired Arcade Fire. …A Toys Orchestra bring colour and warmth to a packed Wishlist Club, in the heart of a Saturday night in San Lollo, for the true friends of the historic San Lorenzo neighbourhood who turned out to celebrate the venue's tenth anniversary. Fresh off a new (and acclaimed) album, the band from Agropoli open their set in the name of an old-school sound, that electronic-tinged alternative pop put on display in the bittersweet uptempo of "Welcome To Babylon".

The first song on the setlist from their latest record is the breezy "Goodbye Day", an intimate circus saraband enriched by woozy horns in the manner of master Tom Waits. More than twenty years have passed since the raw debut of "Job", during which the Campanian band managed to rise out of the Salerno provinces and establish themselves as a leading presence on the Italian independent scene. A gradual, relentless maturation, leading up to the surprising "Midnight Again", from which comes the slow, dreamy unfolding of "Miss U", one of the key tracks of the melancholy that pervades their latest album on Santeria.

The acoustic guitar that opens the sonic wonder of "Midnight Gospel" flows into a choral harmony bordering on the mystical, as if lighting up not just the Wishlist's room. A warm, colourful solemnity, somewhere between the Beatles and the vocal emotion of Régine Chassagne.

The band steps on the gas with the dark electro gallop of "Our Souls", redolent of Depeche Mode, setting the crowd jumping as the Roman set reaches its heart. The show flows wonderfully, riding the clattering rhythm of "Life Starts Tomorrow", already foreshadowed in the Canadian dreams of "The Suburbs". But such overt quotation is entirely forgivable, because …A Toys Orchestra are in dazzling form, launching into the minimal pop-wave of "My Heroes Are All Dead", dusted off ten years on from the album "Butterfly Effect".

Then comes "Invisible", the first selection from the masterpiece "Technicolor Dreams", which starts out languid and detached on piano notes before exploding with the entrance of hooded Enzo Moretto's dilated guitar. From the unsettling rhythmic visions of "Hallelujah" to the dazzling gospel-western elegy "Take Me Home", the band is met with thunderous applause.

The electric distortions of "Look In Your Eyes" close out the set with real punch, before the long encore granted at the crowd's insistent demand. "Midnight Revolution" rides on pounding alt-pop shaded with psychedelia, setting up the one song of distinctly Italian stock, "Celentano", which nods to a certain national-popular taste. We're nearing the end now, on the Rolling Stones-esque piano of "Powder On The Words", which wouldn't look out of place on a compilation of the best English ballads from the late Sixties. The band opts for a liturgical finale, on the dark notes of "Lub Dub", closing out a concert for warm hearts, just like this Saturday night in San Lollo.

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