Reviews
Artist:The Toy Hearts
Album:If The Blues Come Calling
Label:Woodville Records
Tracks:11
Rating: ****
Contact: http://www.myspace.com/thetoyhearts
Music styles regularly flip back and forward across the Atlantic. Sometimes this causes the music to change as it meets new regional influences and adapts to it.
Sometimes it remains even more pure than it does in it's own backyard because the aficionados aren't being subjected to the same influences as those playing it backhome.
Bluegrass is a classic example and the bluegrass revival is producing some great results on both sides of the pond.
Hailing from Birmingham, Birmingham Warwickshire that is, are The Toy Hearts, that seem to have found the best of both worlds.
The Toy Hearts are a six piece fronted by the Johnson sisters, Hannah and Sophia. The band also features the girl's father Stewart, from where, I suspect, the love of the music
and the desire to play it originated. For the record the non-Johnson part of the band consists of Jamie Fekete, Howard Gregory and Chris Shirley.
As you would imagine the instrumentation of the band throws in a pretty song collection of stringed instruments, dominated by mandolin and fiddle. The sound could easily
be found a home in the Bluegrass State. It combines spectacularly well with the harmony vocals of the Johnson Sisters. The way they draw out the words in the song gives it
such an authentic feel.
It's roughly at this point the eastern side of the Atlantic kicks in. Unlike some european bluegrass bands that confine themselves to cover versions of US standards, The Toy Hearts
add to the tradition by writing their own material, only one of the songs on the album, "John Henry" is a cover version, and for me it's also the weakest track on the album, but that
might just be because I don't think anyone will ever beat the Snakefarm version.
Leaving that aside, simply because the band has different experiences to a band that grows up in Kentucky the songs will have their own touches that bring the album to this side
of the pond. The songs are strong with a good and at times poetic lyric. The Toy Hearts know how to out their material together.
Good bluegrass hits the spot and this hits the spot like a back kick from a surprised mustang.