Toyesauce – Good As It Gets Anymore
Just try to listen to all of the great music that we’ve lost through the years because people were just too afraid to dance. You can’t even imagine it, can you? You can’t picture hard-rock, punk or heavy metal bands of the past putting in some great dance grooves, or the biker-looking singer moving to the microphone and whispering: “You’d better dance to this one!”
Nah, most of rock music, as great as it, sometimes, is relied solely on force and on getting the audience to feel bad about themselves and their effect on others. It’s time that we change all that. And, if you haven’t already, lose yourself to the groove, and to dance moves, as silly as they are, with the sounds of a band like Toyesauce.
Toyesauce make the kind of dance music that Prince and a group of the most esteemed jazz-rock fusion players would make. “Good As It Gets Anymore” is party music for polite people who say “Excuse me!” when they crash into you on the dancefloor. It’s funky, well-timed, nicely-played, and every rock band could use a bit of this.
Favourite Armchair – Durability of London
Half the time, I’ve no idea what people are saying to me. I’ve just been brought up well enough, I suppose, that I smile and nod politely. And the other half, I know that the people talking to me are saying things that, upon close inspection, don’t make any sense. I do the same, smiling and excusing myself from these kinds of conversations.
The fact, however, is that some of these people turn those ideas into songs. I’m sometimes asked, tasked or forced by pride to review them. I have to make things up, make them more interesting than they are, present them as being important to the future of the human race.
I like it when things don’t make much sense on purpose. I like Favourite Armchair for the disregard with which they approach format and performance. And, frankly, when the constraints about making “a good pop song” are removed, whatever is truthful springs out. Maybe this will happen to you when you hear “Durability of London.” It might sound like the history of the U.S. distilled into less than three minutes of music. It might sound like anything other than that.
