The Toads are from Portland where it rains a lot but they sound like they write songs in sunny California.
The pop hooks are aplenty on the bands latest EP “It’s For You” (their second) and The Toads move the dial from power pop, to the guitar-driven punk pop of Weezer, to the harmonic vibe of the Beach Boys.
As usual The Toads lyrics are firmly rooted in capturing life’s ordinary moments.
Bassist Matt Dinaro says:
“So I was thinking about phones as a theme, and it just so happened that where I work, they were updating the phone system, and they had all these discarded old landline phones they were going to recycle, just sitting there in the hallway in a laundry bin. And that seemed like a perfect cover image. And I thought of “It’s for you” as something people used to say when they answered the home phone. But nobody says that anymore because everyone has their own phone, so these days it’s always for you. So it seemed like a good theme, because we’re often pegged as a retro, 90’s band, and we even recorded this time on an old Tascam machine that hasn’t been produced since like 1985.”
Photo by Heather Hanson
Holy cats! i think i might be in love!