Review Summary: A beautiful debut filled to the brim with heart and character.
Emo can be a tricky genre to nail. Sound too straight-forward, and you’ll come off as grating and uninteresting. On the other end, being too ambitious can lead to too many ideas washing away the originality. However,
Toy Mountains, a small, relatively unknown four-piece from Glasgow, Scotland, do not suffer from such an issue; quite the contrary. Providing a fresh-sounding, alternative-rock influenced emo sound, their debut EP
I Swore I’d Never Speak of This Again (hereon referred to as
I Swore…) shows a surprising sense of maturity and results in one of the most satisfying and heartfelt listens of the year.
Opener
Hard Done By is a brilliant tone-setter for the rest of the EP; sparkly guitars, emotional vocals and a sense of purpose. All songs on
I Swore… never feel lengthy or overdone; their shifting tones conveying the emotion perfectly. The aforementioned opening track starts slow, opening with a drum and guitar line, before exploding into a beautiful full-band crescendo, before backing down again to let the vocals take hold; “I’m not the man my mother thought I would be/Because I’ve been holding/I’ve been holding back”. The passion provided in the vocal performances throughout are filled to the brim with genuine emotion and the lyricism is smart and heartfelt. Following track
Full Circle, after its slow piano intro, explodes much like the opener, but this time with a heavier take, the harsh and clean vocals balancing each other perfectly; “I’m realising then/I’m more than you deserve”. Once again, the song backs down, letting the bassline drag the song along to its somewhat bitter end, the line “I’m more than you deserve” screamed with an incredible sense of passion.
And even after these incredible opening tracks, the EP doesn’t settle down, with following songs
Old Friends and
Everything Ends incorporating a perfect heavy/soft dynamic.
Old Friends starts fast, letting its guitar lines and drum rolls carry the song forward, before letting emotion flow through the veins of the song yet again through its bassline and heartfelt vocals; “It’s not like it was easy for me/To break my ties with you/And everyone we knew”. And even after all of this, the song once again goes full throttle, before letting a slow guitar line finish the song off.
Everything Ends is much like
Old Friends, but takes a much more math-rock approach to its guitar performance, screeching along with the blast beats, drawing resemblance to that of
Fall of Troy, particularly towards the middle of the song; the clean vocals singing over the top of the scattered guitar lines (“These days it always seems/I’m playing catch-up/With other people’s expectations”) for much of the song.
Perhaps the best example of why
I Swore… is so incredible in its display of emotion is in closer
Sight Reading. Opening with a slow piano line, which is taken over by an equally slow guitar line, it plods along, letting the emotions in the vocals carry the depressing vibe. The song, with its post-rock leanings, moves up and down with such grace and perfection that it soaks the listener in its beauty. The long notes of “The love of my life” towards the end of the song are filled with such heart that the way in which the song devolves in its ending is a perfect correlation to the mix of emotions
Sight Reading, and
I Swore as a whole, possesses.
I Swore I’d Never Speak of This Again, whether taken as a whole or individually, is a masterpiece of emotion through performance. Whether it be the sparkly guitars of
Hard Done By, the soft-heavy emotion-filled
Old Friends, or the post-rock beauty of
Sight Reading,
Toy Mountains show maturity beyond their years. Everything is so masterfully put together to bring forth an incredibly emotional performance, resulting in a listen certainly worthy of your time.
