Twee pop outfit Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong hailed from Brighton, England, achieved rave reviews and notoriety in the space of a single year and then dissolved into nothingness after never releasing a single album.
But since quietly moving on from that tire fire, trio Tom Doughal, Domic O’ Dair and Maxim “Panda” Barron, along with drummer Charlie Slavidge and keyboardist Alejandra Diez, went on to form the enjoyably weird, shoegaze/pop outfit TOY. While the group’s debut album failed to sound focused and reeked of new band playing scared, “Join The Dots” reels in all the amazing ideas from the first go around to create a more confident sophomore album. The formula they established on their debut of swirling guitars, string accompaniment, simplistic drumming and steady, plodding bass lines returns with a new sense of purpose.
After teasing listeners with Brian Eno-esque seven-minute-build-up-of-sound “Conductor,” TOY switches gears by harmonizing traditional pop song structure with unconventional rhythms. “You Won’t Be The Same,” deliriously dreamy “Endlessly” and “As We Turn” build from shuffling rhythms and urgent guitar strumming to full-sounding, psychedelic-infused pop numbers harkening The Stone Roses.
But this is TOY’s science: easing listeners in with a distorted guitar riff or two, then teasing and pleasing them into a dizzying, beautiful soundscape that’s somehow also excellent to drive to.
The title track itself even blends those same swirling pop experiments with a bare-bones shoegaze assault, capping it off with air-siren guitars.
Doughal’s bland vocals – a glaring weakness of the first album – work much better with the beautiful, structured chaos of strings, synths and sounds found on “Join the Dots.”
TOY resists being classified by genre almost as vehemently as the band resists fans’ fruitless Googling. But “Join The Dots” proves that, at least on the former, they know what they’re talking about. After all, being classified simply as krautrock-revival or post-punk or shoegaze or dreampop or simply “alternative” reeks of lazy re-imagining, especially when TOY has proven more than capable of wearing all those hats at the same time.
(Heavenly Recordings)
Dec. 10, 2013
Grade: A-
