Melted Toys, melting Noise

by Scott Wilson

Unconsciously mixing the mellow, opiate-enhanced tone of the Velvet Underground with the steady rhythm guitar picking of Sugar Ray (circa ’99, of course), Melted Toys’s self-entitled album is the soundtrack to rolling down a seafront highway at 55mph with the top down. It’s a droning but pleasant album that blends one track to the next like watching a surfing compilation movie with lots of slow-motion shots. It’s music for bobbing to but has enough of a varying tempo to keep your attention; an easy-listening album that doesn’t make you want to hurl yourself into a wall to feel something.

Melted Toys is a trio from Northern California, which might explain what people in the middle of the country would refer to as their “surfer sound.” (And I’m sure people on the coast spit when they hear that phrase, but hey, blame The Beach Boys). They have a couple guitars, a synthesizer, a bass, a cheesy drum machine, and a little echo effect on the vocals, and each instrument plays more or less constantly from the beginning of the album to the end.  Listening through the songs chronologically makes the album feel a little like an hour long jam session, but because each track is three to four minutes long there is a pop element that probably is more noticeable when you throw a few Melted Toys songs into a mix tape.

As far as singles, “Blush” and “Horizons” stand out the most, especially when played back-to-back. Though the album is in no way a radio single type of record. To get the best feeling from the whole, you have go at it like a four-year-old does a birthday cake, listen in chunks, swallowing a few songs in a sitting, not spoon-fed singles.

The audio quality of the album is professional, but there is a garage-band feel to their music. The crisp guitars and steady, complicated, and constant riffs show that they’ve been playing together for a long time and are able to match tempos and compliment each others sounds without a lot of production. And indeed they’ve said in interviews that they’ve known each other since high school. Theirs isn’t showy music: there are instrumental breakdowns, but no silly solos or showboating. Even the vocals are understated and used more as a supplement to the other parts –his voice is a mix of a whisper and a yawn. Its an egalitarian album in that no band mate is a star, and even in videos all three tend to stand in a row with their hair hanging in front of their faces, playing on as if nobody’s watching.

Though it’s their first full-length studio album, Melted Toys is an example of a group that came polished and practiced and means to do it right. It isn’t music that excites or tells a clear story, but it does set a nice, calm mood for a listener to sway their head to. Whether as California cruise music or chill listening for around the house, Melted Toys supply clean, smooth grooves. Album hits the World Wide Web, or wherever music is sold, on July 15.