Song, by Toad

It’s a really schizophrenic album, this.  There are so many sounds straight from mainstream 70s and 80s radio hits, that it seems almost preposterous that I should like it such a lot, but I do.  Give and Be Taken starts with a female vocal refrain that could be straight from any listless R ‘n’ B-lite number in the last ten years or so.  Cannibals could be a resurrection of Tom Petty.  It gets stranger: Phony Revolutions could be DeVotchKa.

This constant switching of styles and superimposing of a rough indie aesthetic and a polished radio one keeps you pleasingly off-balance throughout listening and, crucially, prevents lazy familiarity from setting in.  You’re always listening, trying to figure out the core of this album’s identity.  It’s almost as if you find yourself trying to guess what the album itself wants to be.

This variability does, I must confess, lead to my appreciation of the record becoming somewhat erratic.  Some of the songs I doubt I would give the time of day in isolation – that’s 70s country rock, I might say to myself, dismissively – but actually they work well within the context of the album, where the smoother atmospheres are shaken back into life by rougher bookends.  This also allows you to enjoy the more mellifluous material as a surprising change, instead of a sticky morass.  It’s like meeting a woman in twin-set and pearls who scrubs up so nicely that no one at the garden party guesses she spend half her days dressed in torn jeans and snorting tequila in roadside bars.

Crooked Fingers – Luisa’s Bones
Crooked Fingers – Let’s Not Pretend (To Be New Men)

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