I swear I'm not gonna call this shoegaze. What this is, is noisy rock of the sort that existed on these shores while those Brits were off...looking at their effects pedals at their feet. Whatever genre this is, it's the same one mapped out by Swirlies in the early Nineties. Silk Road, out on Friday, reminds again just how wonderful feedback can be when layered over a skewed hook. In that sense, Toner are masters of this sort of thing.
"'95 Slow" is a woozy ride, while "Dark Ecstasy" is Nineties college rock run through a meat-grinder. Whizzing by on the same sort of tunefulness that propelled most of the first few releases from Lilys, this song and many here are just wonderful. "Old Heads" has a similarly euphoric rush, while the languid "Always on Time" feels like the kind of lopsided stoner stuff that Pavement once knocked out of the park in their earliest, most formative years.
Toner, roaring out of Oakland, California, are staking a claim to the legacy of the giants of American indie and they're largely succeeding. Silk Road packs more joy into about 20 minutes than lots of records I've heard lately, and the joy is hearing someone do this again so perfectly. Look, pretend it's 1993 again and this is a Swirlies spin-off if you don't believe me.
Silk Road is out on Friday via Smoking Room Records and via the link below.
More details on Toner via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Toner]