Review of Supercute! from Splendid Ezine by George Zahora

Here's a quick trivia question for you: how many "toy instrument" bands - that is, acts who make toy pianos, plastic guitars, et al, a significant element of their music - have recorded more than one album?

Did I mention that it was a rhetorical trivia question? My knowledge of the genre is fairly limited, so there's no prize or anything. I was just curious. I don't know about you, but I always think of eighties toy-pop curiosities Pianosaurus as the gold standard of toy instrument indie rock acts. They completed a second studio album (Back to School), but broke up right around the time they finished it, so it was never released. They might have been the Next Big Thing. We'll never know. (Incidentally, if any members of Pianosaurus read this and want to send me a copy of Back to School, I promise to keep it to myself...)

The point I'm trying to make here is that Mike Langlie's toy piano band, Twink, may well be unique simply for getting to album number two, musical content notwithstanding. The fact that Langlie hasn't yet worn out the toy piano music concept, and continues to find new and satisfying frameworks in which to showcase his chosen instruments, is icing on the very sugary cake.

Supercute! executes a gentle, cinematic pull-back from Twink's self-titled debut, drawing the toy pianos further into the "real" world without sacrificing any of their inherent whimsy. Far from the tooth-rotting twee-fest its title implies, Supercute asserts the toy piano's legitimacy within the conventional instrumental pantheon, and makes a compelling argument to boot. Opener "Knick Knack" dives headlong into IDM, as do "Not Enough Crayons for Everyone" and "And Everything Nice", and there's little or no incongruity. Aphex Twin and µ-ziq have been experimenting with toy piano sounds since the mid-nineties; Langlie and his collaborators have simply approached the idea from the opposite direction. Elsewhere, toy pianos find their way into all manner of tunes. You'll hear one add detail to "Dandelion Wine"'s undulating trip-hop brass outing (ironically, the trombone sounds more out-of-place), and a couple more take the wheel of "Jeepers Creepers"' Eastern-tinged clockwork intrigue. "Cobweb Collector"'s numb, befuddled ambiance segues cleanly into the brilliant "Rubbernecker", a busy, oddly menacing sort of bhangra anthem for a platoon of deranged toy soldiers-turned-mercenaries.

"Yarnbelly" flirts ever-so-gently with chromatic scale, its sleepy pace and gentle violin bed establishing a lullaby mood, but "Rope Trick"'s windy note-jumbles may add fever to your dreams. If you can't sleep through "Chop Shop"'s insidious "downstairs party" ambiance, don't fear: album highlight "Not Enough Crayons For Everyone" first mimics the amusingly uneven gait of a skipping child, then brings up the throbbing synth, nicely enhancing the toy piano's flattened-but-resonant melody.

And hey, if you're a college radio program director looking for a quick novelty fix, ignore everything I've mentioned and skip ahead to Twink's cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman", in which Langlie (on toy piano, obviously) and his wife on cello deliver a straight-faced but sublime instrumental version of the metal classic. There's nothing wrong with the tune - indeed, it's likely to score Twink a lot of extra attention and airplay - but on an album that's already firmly entrenched in novelty territory, it may be a little too much...no matter how cool it is.

Langlie has assembled an impressive collection of instruments and a skilled, sympathetic cadre of collaborators, and the result is an album that forever recontextualizes its featured instrument. It may sound flat and tinny, but in Langlie's hands, the plastic ivories are pretty damn cool - definitely one of music's sharper spices. You'll leave Supercute! wondering where your own toy piano went, and whether they still make 'em the way they used to.