{"id":532,"date":"2013-12-11T11:35:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T16:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/?p=532"},"modified":"2013-12-23T10:10:26","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T15:10:26","slug":"toy-join-the-dots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/toy-join-the-dots\/","title":{"rendered":"Toy <br>Join the Dots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/toy-join_the_dots.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-533\" alt=\"Toy, Join the Dots\" src=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/toy-join_the_dots.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/toy-join_the_dots.jpg 250w, https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/toy-join_the_dots-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a>With last year\u2019s self-titled debut, London\u2019s Toy showed the kind of honest to goodness promise that seems more and more rare to hear in these days of rampant hipster phonies. A swirl of motorik beats and shoegaze haze that wouldn\u2019t have sounded out of place on 4AD during its heyday, the record hit all the right synapses, while at the same time also leaving the door open for great things to come.<\/p>\n<p>Arriving sooner than later, Toy\u2019s follow-up, <i>Join the Dots<\/i> (Heavenly Recordings), is 11 tracks seemingly designed to jump in where <i>Toy<\/i> left off. But while there is certainly the same kind of lysergic influences at work, this record seems somehow more immediate\u2014even on tracks like the eight-minute long title song. The band has trimmed away the extra obfuscation so that each vortex of guitars has a tighter orbit. This slight MO change is most obvious on \u201cAs We Turn,\u201d a four-minute cut in which phased-out guitars are shaped into a melodic hum that hover behind singer Tom Dougall\u2019s murmurs. Similarly, the coiled mix of \u201cEndlessly\u201d comes off like <i>Loveless<\/i> boiled down to its essential parts.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, it is the moments where Toy stretches out (as on the aforementioned title track) that are epiphanous. \u201cConductor\u201d opens the record momentously in a building push-and-pull between oscillating synths and a chugging guitar riff.\u00a0 \u201cFall Out of Love\u201d closes the record with that same kind of momentum, the band building a wall of sound to perhaps dismantle some time in the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With last year\u2019s self-titled debut, London\u2019s Toy showed the kind of honest to goodness promise that seems more and more rare to hear in these days<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[34,215,214],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-heavenly-recordings","tag-toy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - 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