Toy Matinee |
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Released: June 28, 1990 Peak: 129 US Sales (in millions): -- Genre: adult alternative/neo-progressive rock |
Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts.
Songs written by Gilbert/Leonard/Pratt unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 45:44 The Players:
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Rating:  4.317 out of 5.00 (average of 10 ratings)
Quotable: A “marvelous hour or so of progressive pop music” – Duke Egbert, Daily Vault Awards: (Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album: They only had one album, but it “is a gem of progressive pop and worth digging for.” DE Keyboardist, producer, and composer Patrick Leonard worked with Madonna on her True Blue through I’m Breathless albums. He approached bassist Guy Pratt, who he met while working on Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” WK about forming a band. They added drummer Brian MacLeod of Wire Train, guitarist Tim Pierce, and singer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Gilbert, who’d released two albums with the band Giraffe. Despite the others’ contributions, Toy Matinee was promoted as a duo of Gilbert and Leonard. They crafted “polished and carefully arranged pop/rock ditties.” JV Their “clever, intelligent, rich pop music” DE ran the “gamut…from dance to rock to ballad to almost-blues.” DE The album “starts with the layered vocals of Last Plane Out, a powerful anthem about the world and its downhill path.” DE “Like most of the band's songs, [it is] characterized by diatonic vocal harmonies, a tight rhythm section, blues guitar riffs, and a hook-heavy chorus.” JV The song grew out of Pratt’s long-time fascination with “the idea of the last flight out of a war zone.” WK “The band's songs are mostly unique, though shades of a Pink Floyd ballad can be heard at the beginning of the band's” JV “wistful” DE “self-titled track, and Steeley Dan-sounding chord progressions are undeniably present on…The Ballad of Jenny Ledge.” JV “With Turn It on Salvador, a song dedicated to Salvador Dali and immersed in appropriately surreal lyrics, Julian Lennon chimes in with backing vocals in a section that sounds particularly Beatlesque. Sal's Clarinet Trio — Jon Clarke, Jon Kip, and Donald Markese — closes [the song] with a swinging melodic phrase that compliments Leonard's concordant piano passages.” JV There’s also the “hauntingly sweet ballad We Always Come Home” DE alongside songs about “obsession (Things She Said)…and the pain of never quite fitting in (There Was a Little Boy).” DE There’s also Queen of Misery, which was about Madonna, with whom Leonard, Pratt, and the album’s producer, Bill Bottrell, had worked. WK “All in all, …Toy Matinee…offers thoughtfully constructed and exceptionally played pop/rock songs alongside a number of slightly derivative songs that have a bit too much of that teased-out 1990s hair band aura.” JV However, with its “marvelous hour or so of progressive pop music, Toy Matinee is a definite winner.” DE The group was short-lived. Pratt, who was engaged to the daughter of Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright, had a commitment to tour with that band. Leonard wasn’t interested in touring. MacLeod and Pierce moved on to other session work. Only Gibert remained, working desperately to promote the album with a newly assembled band which included guitar Marc Bonilla, bassist Spencer Campbell, drummer Toss Panos, and then-girlfriend Sheryl Crow on keyboards. No more studio efforts from Toy Matinee were released, but in 2010, Live at the Roxy was released. Gilbert and Bottrell went on to work with Sheryl Crow on her Tuesday Night Music album and Leonard formed another one-time band, Third Matinee, with Mr. Mister frontman Richard Page. Gilbert’s death in 1996 ended any chance of another Toy Matinee album. Notes: A rereleased Special Edition of the album included demos of “Things She Said,” “There Was a Little Boy,” “Last Plane Out,” unreleased “Blank Page,” and the odd thirty-second “Eenitam Yot Eht” (“The Toy Matinee” backwards). |
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