Another month has flown by and it's time to head north of Hoxton Square again to The Macbeth for the mighty Twisted Licks monthly residency. This months edition featuring the helium sluiced stylings of My Toys Like Me.
It’s a strange week in London’s music world as many movers and shakers have hot footed it over to that Texas in order to swap buzz bands and 50oz steaks with the great and good at SXSW. As such the crowd is a little Spartan on arrival compared to normal, but by the time My Toys Like Me take to the stage it’s getting hard to swing anything let alone disgruntled felines.
My Toys Like Me are an interesting proposition. The band takes to the stage in their original form, that of vocalist Frances Noon and producer Lazlo Legezer, who started making music in 2005. They kick off with a swirling version of the track Quiet Please, featuring the astoundingly apt vocal line. “Quiet Please. I’m not listening all I can hear is the crowd. “ Noon is one of the most unique vocalists to grace the stage in a while. She has a striking, haunting vocal that ranges from Beth Gibbons raspy whisper to shattering falsetto. There are elements of Tricky, Bjork and Betty Boop scooped into the blender and the resultant elixir is an intoxicating siren call that at first fascinates and later hypnotizes the listener. Lazlo is content to hide away stage left leaving Noon as the center of attention but he is busy behind his laptop impersonating the Wizard behind the curtain, crafting pulsating rhythms and quirk loops that perfectly offset and ground the vocal acrobatics of his consort.
After the first 5 minutes the band are joined on stage by Charlie Boud and Alfonso Pisaneli who complement the electro sound with a rotation of live drums, guitar and bass. Fleshed out the band take on a much more muscular aspect, mixing up funk and dance on numbers such as ‘Superpowers’ and the ecstatically good ‘Barnaby’ which really won’t leave my head alone days later. They also waltz through a highly tongue in cheek reworking of ‘Inside Out’ by Salt N Pepa – hot!!
Lyrically Noon brings you into an introspective, twisting world of urban obsession, unrequited stalking, self aware dancefloor douches and secrets, secrets, secrets. It’s a heady mix and in their brief set they manage to cover a lot of ground. My Toys Like Me, mark the name, the future should be theirs.
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