Albums From the Attic: Toy Matinee

If there is anything that the pop music industry can be counted on to produce with regularity, it is the unending stream of promising acts that are only ever discovered and appreciated long after their time has passed, fallen victim to a collective of reasons that must have been grouped up onto a "how to kill a great new band" bingo at the advent of the recording industry and enshrined as standard M.O. Anyone who has spent any amount of time following music, especially pop music, will have noticed how quickly the winds of fortune shift and doom a group to obscurity (XTC) or propel them to new heights (Pantera). In the case of Toy Matinee, an art rock/pop studio group led by a couple of songwriter/producer kingmakers, Kevin Gilbert and Patrick Leonard, (think Dr. Luke without the sexual assault stuff), the killing blow was dealt in a far more mundane, "death by a thousand cuts" style - crushing indifference upon release aside from some moderate radio success in LA. While Leonard would go on to a quietly successful career producing albums for Elton John, Leonard Cohen and many others, Gilbert would unfortunately pass away six years after this album's release, dissipating any hope for a follow up record.

Captained by Gilbert and Leonard and crewed by an assortment of their musician friends, Toy Matinee doesn't waste any time in tipping its hand and showing you what you're in for with "Last Plane Out", a lilting power-pop foot-tapper that gives a good reading of the group's blend of spot-on use of harmonies, meticulous studio workmanship (mostly thanks to Gilbert's unending tinkering) and a level of composition and writing that is simply a joy to experience. The record continues in such a confident, playful manner that you can't help getting carried along through highlights like "The Ballad of Jenny Ledge", "Turn It On Salvador", and the powerful closer "We Always Come Home". The mood is almost uniformly light and if there was ever an album that could be described as "joyous", it is Toy Matinee - every song bears evidence of enormous polish and it all comes off as so effortless that the band might as well be winking at you the whole way through. The production is warm and bright and the lyrics are a great mix of more out-there 60's material and straight-ahead emotional topics as the songs jump between usual pop fixations like relationships and family  as well as anti-war anthems and some unorthodox dedications: "Turn It On Salvador" was dedicated to the late Salvador Dali while "Queen of Misery" was written about Madonna, whom many members of the band worked with prior, and "Remember My Name", written in memory of Czech president Vaclav Havel. With a lean runtime just south of forty minutes, Toy Matinee is that rare album that gives much, much more than it takes and is more than worth seeking out for any fans of no-frills, high quality pop.