Review Summary: Great musicianship, perfect production and some truely great rock songs all of which are let down by the appearance of one too many unexceptional disco and ballady songs.
Toto, famous for 'Rosanna' and 'Africa', are a soft rock group formed in 1977 in Los Angeles whose career started in 1978 with the release of their self titled debut.
This is an album of many parts, and of many genres mixed together. The best songs off the album are the straight up, incessantly catchy, pop rock songs 'I'll Supply The Love', 'Hold The Line', 'Girl Goodbye' and 'Rockmaker'. All being insanely memorable with choruses that are just born to be sung along to. Another trait they all hold is the mixing of seemingly unmixable genres and all of these different elements sit harmoniously side by side - funk, pop and disco intertwined with Boston/Foreigner esque rock. This helped them score hit singles with the former two songs and a nomination for best new artist award at the Grammy's in 1979.
But along with immense commercial success, they also garned an unfavourable response from the critics at the time. This may be down to the high number of forgettable disco, funk and ballady songs on the album, those being the boring disco songs 'You Are The Flower' and 'Manuela Run' - the latter of which sounds remarkably similar to 'Oh, What A Night' by the Four Seasons. The rather overly gushy, and REO Speedwagon esque, ballads 'Takin It Back' and 'Angela' are best forgetten - with the best ballad being the hit single 'Georgy Porgy' and even that song is unexceptional and run of the mill. With these ballads demonstrating the main focus and quality of the lyrics - pleasant enough warblings about love and women.
A couple of things that the critics at the time cannot fault are the production of the album, and the performances given by the band members. The production of the album is faultless, every instrument sounds crisp, clear and at it's best. A perfectionist streak to production akin to Tom Scholz, but thankfully Toto were more productive than Boston ever were. The vocals of front man Bobby Kimball perfectly matches the soft rock of Toto - being very pleasing on the ear and very smooth. The drummer, Keyboardist and guitars all gave very adept performances. With the guitarist Steve Lukather being particularly good, showing he could switch from 70s disco/funk guitar playing right down to the shredding display on 'Girl Goodbye'.
So Toto is an album of many styles, the great soft rockers 'I'll Supply the Love', 'Hold The Line' and 'Girl Goodbye'. The bland disco numbers ' Maneula Run' and 'You Are The Flower and the gushy and uninspiring ballads 'Takin it Back' and 'Angela'. Great musicianship, perfect production and some truely great rock songs all of which are let down by the appearance of one too many unexceptional disco and ballady songs.
