In an email describing Belmar's Toy Cars to me, guitarist Lucas Dalakian wrote that, as the band works on songs for the next record, Toy Cars will be "playing basement shows in between (because they're the most fun and people scream and yell)." The 4 (or is it 3?) songs that make up Toy Cars' debut EP, Red Hands, sound like they would lend themselves well to sweaty shout-alongs in some low-ceilinged, underground rooms.
A side project for Dalakian (ROMP) and Matt DeBenedetti (Monterey, whose The King's Head EP is something I've been meaning to mention here for a while), Toy Cars produce a sound that blends the expansiveness of driving down a desert road in the American West with the closeness of pumping your fist at a New Jersey house show. The two-part opening track, "Red Hands Intro" / "Red Hands" is a great example of this. It opens with the reverb-soaked drone of a guitar and a simple, quiet vocal. As the intro moves into the song proper, things get bouncier on top of acoustic guitar and drums; and the vocals move into sing along pop punk territory with lines like, "We think until our heads explode!"
"Luck" opens with an expletive-filled phone message. The eerie spaghetti western guitar wraps verses that start off with a shouted group vocal and build to a chorus that ends with "If only we'd been born with just a little bit more luck." Set-closer "The Saddest Story Ever Told" ambles along on an almost country / folk vibe with lyrics about shouting in concrete basements.
Even if it's just a side project, designed to give its individual members room to work on things outside their regular bands, there's something immensely appealing about the result Toy Cars achieve by combining the dark, foreboding solitude of the music on these songs with the communal feel of the lyrics.
In that same email, Dalakian noted that Chris Beninato plays bass on Red Hands, while Toy Cars have added Mitch Gollub on drums to their live lineup. The band plan to collaborate with even more friends on the follow-up to Red Hands, and it should be interesting to see where things go.
Red Hands is available as a Name Your Price Download over at Toy Cars' Bandcamp page.
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