Live
TOY
Patterns, Brighton
February 19 2019
Words/Pictures: Steve Willcox
Hot on the heels of new album, their uncompromising return to form with ‘Happy In The Hollow’, former Brighton locals TOY come out to play from their new home in London on their latest tour, and to give a live taste of their fourth full-length. There’s a certain buzz in the Patterns venue, with an all-female front row eagerly awaiting the guys for an up close and personal set.
The band walks onto the stage with their faces bathed in a matrix mesh lighting style, after the welcoming applause dies down they launch into the cosmic ‘Sequence One’ with its Happy Mondays style backbeat from drummer Charlie Salvidge as Tom Dougall’s haunting vocals and the sound of post-punk guitars float through the room. Upbeat breakup tune ‘I’m Still Believing’ is next and the only number to make it to the set from 2016’s ‘Clear Shot’ album, with its distinct guitar riff and sharply crafted melodics still finding favour with tonight's crowd.
But it's not really until ‘Motoring’ that things really get into gear, however, bringing a sense of urgency with Dominic O’Dair's soaring guitars that meld against Salvidge’s drumbeats. 2013’s hookworm ‘Fall Out Of Love’ gets some well deserved audience love as it descends into its musical prog finale. The laid-back, psychedelic strains of 'You Make Me Forget Myself', where Maxim ‘Panda’ Barron made his debut on lead vocals for the first time, stands out here as much as it proved one of the album highlights. ‘Join the Dots’ gets the full treatment from Max Oscarnold’s heavenly synths that
makes you think you’re in a church, and latest single ‘Mechanism’ is a fast paced run and its live interpretion is faithful to the recorded version, with raindrop keys and dreamy vocals that brings home how experimental TOY can be with just a simple drumbeat.
Barron’s bass gets its teeth into ‘Dead and Gone’ with its downbeat lyrics (“Breaking free from all you've even known/Push away out on your own/Treading water waiting for the tide/Always caught up in between both sides again”), while ‘Energy’ brings along its fuzzy guitars and thunderous metronomic drums that gets the crowd to move its collective feet in time, and closes out a welcome return for the indie psychsters.
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