Two left. Today we tackle the debut album from those renowned studio rats, Toto.

Toto

Preconceived Notions: I honestly don’t know a whole hell of a lot about Toto. I have never heard a non-single by these guys, so all I’ve had to judge them by is what I’ve heard on the radio over the years. That means “Africa,” ¹of course, and “Rosanna,” and the singles off this album. A few others, I guess. I like all of it, to varying degrees, but none of it ever resonated to the point I bothered exploring their discography. That’s not exactly true— I’ve thought about listening to a Toto album a number of times, but, um, I just never got around to it. Nice I can rectify that here.

Merch I Owned: Nothing. Zip. Nada. I vividly remember admiring the cover of Toto in the record store when I was in junior high.  

Miscellany: I have always appreciated the Hydra track “99,” partially, I’m sure, because they were singing about a girl with a number for a name, which struck me as a unique occurrence in the annals of pop music. That, and the moody piano/guitar coda give the song an oddness that made it stand out from it’s lite-rock peers. Turns out it was inspired by the George Lucas dystopian film THX-1138, a film I’ve always meant to see but have somehow avoided. I sense a pattern here.

Track by Track:

Child’s Anthem—And we open with an instrumental. Not my favorite way to start an album; indeed, I can’t think of a great instrumental opener to a rock album ever². This is sort of proggy, in a Vangelis kind of way. The keyboards have a “Funeral For a Friend” tone (another long, draggy song I’ve never cared for), even though Elton John rarely played anything as manic-sounding as this. Very repetitive and immediately tiresome—I swore it was taking forever to finish, but the song is less than three minutes long. I hope this isn’t a harbinger of what’s to come.

I’ll Supply The Love—I totally forgot about this song! It got to number 45 on the Billboard Top 100, so I’m sure I heard it, even if it never merited a Casey Kasem mention. It sounds like Sweet (maybe more Bay City Rollers, but that’s ok) meets Earth, Wind, and Fire. And the bridge is 10CC. That’s a compliment. I love the disco elements, the singalong chorus, the insistent snare drum. This shoulda been the opener.

Georgy Porgy—It’s nice to hear two very stylistically different hits back to back, an anomaly among these arena-rock albums. The bass line here is great, the lead vocal (by Steve Lukather) is buttery smooth, and the keyboards scream late 70’s. I didn’t really know this song well until Sirius XM’s Yacht Rock channel made it a staple. It’s a minor classic of the form. Shout out to Cheryl Lynn (“Got to be Real”), whose backing vocals put the song over the top.

Manuela Run— The good: this is the third different lead vocalist in as many songs. The bad: if someone asked me what Generic Toto sounded like, I would point to this song. This is filler, I suppose, and way too shiny and bright, but it’s well played and earwormy enough. It’s a busy song, which mitigates the vanilla-ess of it.

You Are The Flower —This doesn’t sound like anything that came before it. It sort of reminds me of Richard Marx, with a much more soulful chorus (Marx, Wind, and Fire?). Lots of nice touches on this one: the bluesy keyboards, the excellent guitar solo on the bridge, the flute filips here and there. This is the first album I’ve reviewed in this series where what is going on in the background is as consistently good as what is going on in the foreground. You can tell these guys were sought-after session musicians. Significantly better than the last song, which wasn’t bad. Really good production values here—very, very slick. 

Girl Goodbye— this is so quintessential early 80’s sounding it made me smile when the guitars started to kick in. This is walking down a dark street wearing a jean jacket in the rain. Lyrics: he shot someone and he’s on the run. Cheesy, the main riff gets played into the ground, but these guys sing the hell out of this, and play very well. Action movie soundtrack music of the finest sort.

Takin It Back— And we have our fourth(!) lead singer. This one is softer, prettier. Again, great bass licks, as well as a nice keyboard sound that fills the rest of the track. Not one dud song since the opening instrumental.

Rockmaker— This one sounds like a B-side, but even here, I hear the hooks. It is very late 70’s lite rock, and I realize I am programmed to like late 70’s lite rock. Nice guitar solo!

Hold The Line— I have always loved this song. Just that piano riff, da da da da da da da. The bass is great, it’s sung well, the lead guitar solo is boss! I am consistently impressed by how clean the keyboards sound, and how much I like all the guitar solos. Spoiler: This is a very good album, period. It makes me want to listen to Hydra— it’s the first album I’ve reviewed that’s good enough to get me curious about the rest of the band’s catalog. 

Angela—This song is really sleepy to start, and very Christopher Cross-y, which is not exactly a selling point. Then we have these crunchy guitars that come in on the choruses, like the song is having a mood swing. And it all builds to a big finish. Not the best song on the album, but more interesting than almost every song on the REO album. 

Final Impressions/Evaluation: Like I said before, this is a very good album, the best one I have reviewed so far. I really appreciate the variety of vocalists and styles—I wonder if things will get a little more homogenized on subsequent albums, when Toto isn’t brand new and figures out what sells and what the public wants. Debut albums are often my favorites (Gang of Four’s Entertainment, Tracy Chapman’s self titled, Dramarama’s Cinema Verite, etc) because the artists are both still figuring out who they are and also taking their backlog of killer road material and committing it to vinyl. There are a lot of really good songs here, and even the middling ones are brightened by great harmonies, excellent interplay between the guitars and keyboards, and sterling production values. I have to admit: I really underestimated Toto. I won’t do it again.

Next time: We finish up with Journey. Stay tuned!

1. I have never understood how smitten millennials are with this song. I thought it was catchy/dumb when it came out (emphasis on dumb), and quickly grew tired of hearing it on top 40 radio, which played it all the damn time. It would be an instant skip for me now, but I’m sure everyone in my vicinity would outwardly groan the moment I attempted to change it. I hear it’s a frequently requested singalong at high school dances these days. Word of warning: avoid the Weezer cover at all costs. ↩︎
2. Somewhat relevant side note: I remember buying Bossanova by the Pixies, and how excited I was to hear it, since Doolittle was maybe my favorite album of 1989. I put my cassette(!) in the stereo, and waited. The first track was “Cecilia Ann,” a surf-rock instrumental. My excitement dimmed faster than a kid realizing he used his last ticket at the carnival. The rest of the album was better than that opener, but it never fully recovered. ↩︎