TOY have shared new track I’m Still Believing, the latest track lifted from the forthcoming new album ‘Clear Shot,’ due for release on Friday, October 28th via Heavenly Recordings.
Capturing the essence of the band’s penchant for multifaceted arrangements, chiming guitars skirted by elevating snyth are soon opened into more pop-tinged territory, during bright choruses framing frontman Tom Dougall’s introspective narrative.
Capped with a signature, elongated break pairing the striking and intricate guitars of Dougall and Dominic O’Dair and the ever-captivating bass of Maxim Barron – the song is a statement from a group still evolving, three records in and able to pull from a wealth of musicianship and experience.
The album was recorded with producer David Wrench towards the end of 2015 at Eve Studio.
The band have also recently unveiled Fast Silver, the first track to be taken from the album. The track premiered on Stereogum, which described It as “deliriously delicious grunge-tinted acid-pop, loosely performed, yet impeccably assembled”
Splitting their time between Tom Dougall and bassist Maxim Barron’s place in New Cross and Dominic O’Dair’s flat in Walthamstow, where they set up a makeshift studio and laid down the early album demos, Clear Shot began to take shape in the first half of 2015.
Taking inspiration from an esoteric blend – Radiophonic Workshop, Comus, the scores of Bernard Herrmann, John Barry and Ennio Morricone Fairport, COUM, Acid House, Incredible String Band, The Langley Schools Project, The Wicker Man soundtrack and even the direction behind Electric Eden, Rob Young’s book about the development of folk music in the U.K. – by the time they entered Eve Studios in Stockport in October 2015 with producer David Wrench, the band were clear about the direction the album should take.
The result is their most coherent and confident album to date; lushly cinematic, shot through with their most expressive melodies thus far and coated with a ‘sheen’ courtesy of Chris Coady (Beach House, Smith Westerns, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), who mixed the album in LA with some of the reverbs and vocal processors used on Purple Rain, across the 10-tracks strands of ideas appear, sink and re-emerge in an almost modal jazz manner. Clear Shot sees TOY working both in bigger colours and more minutely crafted detail, achieving an altogether higher level of artistry than before.
TOY previously released their self-titled debut in 2012 and cemented their reputation as the best alternative rock band in the country with Join the Dots at the end of 2013. Such was the reception to Join The Dots that TOY toured their second record for nigh-on two years, culminating in their biggest London show yet at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in April 2014.
TOY are: Tom Dougall (vocals / guitar), Dominic O’Dair (guitars), Maxim Barron (bass / vocals), Max Claps (synths / modulations) & Charlie Salvidge (drums / vocals).
Track listing:
Clear Shot
Another Dimension
Fast Silver
I’m Still Believing
Clouds That Cover The Sun
Jungle Games
Dream Orchestrator
We Will Disperse
Spirits Don’t Lie
Cinema
For more information on TOY, visit thebandtoy.com.
