Toner (Noah)

Let’s say you’re a human being who has been, for a variety of reasons, been asked, every few weeks, to write a post about your local music scene. And let’s say that it’s the beginning of a new year (2015 bitches) and you’re sort of recovering from your three-week holiday break (relaxing is tiring) and you realize pretty late in the game that you have to write the post that your big Texan editor has, from afar, demanded of you. And let’s say you’re sort of scrambling around the internet and you stumble across this little Oakland, CA band called Toner and though you think you’re just going to find something that’s pretty good, that you can get behind and hopefully dig into a little deeper later, you find a band that, well, just about perfectly represents all of your sentiments about the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

Toner, to be frank, sounds like some perfect, alternate reality combination of Built to Spill’s neurotic guitar and Weezer’s peppy, smarter older shit. It’s a tight, but fuzzy, upbeat, but dosed with just a lick of melancholy. Like a New Year, you know? It’s like here you are getting older and it’s nice to see 2014 disappear behind you and to like, you know, feel that weight slump off your shoulders to look forward to what the unknown of 2015 might offer. But then on the other side, you’re saying goodbye to another year, taking another step down that coil of mortality and really, who the fuck knows what 2015 is going to offer? What if the robots come and take over and you get assigned to clean the robot-toilets in Unit 4A (’cause those robots are nasty)? Who knows? Well, maybe Toner knows, maybe they’re melancholic pop is a harbinger of the year to come and if you listen to it backwards it says “2015 is going to be a hell of a ride.” Or maybe, yeah, maybe it’s just an exemplary song from a clearly talented musician, and, well, hopefully it’ll help to kick your year off just right.

:Toner – That’s Fine: