UNSIGNED CENTRAL.com - review of TOYS FROM BALSA, August 5th 2005
There are obvious parallels to be drawn (vocally) with Bowie (Part of Me), and although the music is significantly different, you do get the feeling that this is the experimental end of the music Glyn listens to. Not that that's a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but I wouldn't say this is particularly 21st century music. This is probably missing the point though. I doubt he's trying to win any avant-garde competitions with the music in these songs. That's not to say he doesn't like to experiment at all – there are some nice instruments and sounds being used, like on 'Missing' and 'My Love is Out in Space'. There is, however an undertone of 70s and 80s running throughout. Maybe it's just because I have a slight aversion to incessantly strumming guitars. Production and performancewise, the production sounds great, and everything is balanced, and very full sounding. There is though perhaps something to be learnt from the current climate of clicks, bleeps and understated production. The habit of over-zealous word speak-singing on the high notes or important words (something which sometimes reminds of Dire Straits) could have also possibly been toned down a little.
There's also the tendency to let the songs run a tad too long, with a verse here or chorus there good for the snip. He possibly strays a little close to the wind with the literalty of some of the more emotional lyrics – perhaps a little more abstraction would have not gone amiss... sometimes I was often waiting for some sort of big twist at the end (an expectation sometimes nicely fulfilled, as with 'Yellow Rage'). On his website, he makes a good argument for writing songs about the most varied of subjects (a French Communist feast etc) and the opener, 'Sorry' is a bright, funny song (“I went down on her, but I thought about you”).
But this is focussing too much on the negative. It's actually good to hear someone who's not deliberately trying to follow any current trends. And I like these songs. I'm feeling slightly stuck here because the militant modernist in me wants Glyn Bailey to throw his sound 20 years into the future, but another part of me is happy to let him bathe in the blanket of his sound. He knows what he wants, and makes it.
He certainly sounds like he's having fun doing it ('Friends'). I can harp on about the non-tempo synced delay and other silly things until the cows come home, but I don't think he should necessarily take much notice. I can't say it's the way I would do things if I were writing it, but for what it is, I can't really fault it.