Toadies
The Charmer
Spaceflight Records
Good imaginary friends are hard to find. Coming close enough to feel its breath, The Charmer, or rather the alter ego of the tormented soul getting an earful in the creeping title track to the first Toadies record in nine years, states bluntly, “You’d be nothing without me.” Ties cannot be severed, it seems, except when sleep arrives, as the “other I” asks, “Do you leave me when you’re dreaming?”
Otherwise, they are inseparable, caught up in a co-dependent relationship that’s not exactly healthy, its heaving chorus pulling up by the roots the back-to-basics garage-rock of The White Stripes and shooting off all their searing flourishes. None of this is unfamiliar territory for Vaden Todd Lewis, who’s really referencing his own post-pandemic mental struggles here, as slow-boiling hysteria builds. Playing mind games with troubled characters and seeing how close to madness they get is par for the course with Lewis. Religious fervor, paranoia, and moral weakness often accompany the descent, but so does a twisted sense of humor.
In Steve Albini, Lewis and the Toadies, the guitar-mangling, post-grunge growlers behind the grinding 1994 alternative-rock hit “Possum Kingdom,” off the gripping Rubberneck LP, found a kindred spirit. In one of his final projects, the maverick audio engineer managed to heighten the thrilling tension and dig out the vicious, gritty grooves of The Charmer with his usual dry production methods and spartan studio approach, leaving their deadly hooks brilliantly exposed and coaxing rough, live intimacy and immediacy from them.
Sacrificing the thick, crunching heaviness and volume of their underrated sophomore album Hell Below/Stars Above, the Toadies opt for more austerity and a clearer, sharper sense of purpose on The Charmer, where the mean, lowdown riffs and predatory circling of “Long Time” tell a toxic love story that explodes, and the sunburned, bluesy crawl of a tortured “I Walk a Line” is dragged to the whipping post. It stings, like Lewis’s lacerating vocals and every razor-blade note of an unhurried “Normal.”
Not surprisingly then, the stripped-down, acoustically strummed “Get Out of Your Head” looks to Johnny Cash for inspiration. Meanwhile, the spinning, serrated, post-punk coils of “Closer to You” give way to chiming melody and angry stomping, the rootsy chug and swagger of “I Call Your Name” steals George Thorogood’s identity and lives in his whisky-soaked skin, and a surging “Gasoline Jane” commits slow-burning arson. Saving the best for last, the Toadies sparkle in the moody, bittersweet, stiletto knife of a ballad “In Bandages,” with its disarming male-female duet.
A study in snarling imperfections, relentless drive, and tantalizing push-pull dynamics, as well as unpredictable left turns and Southern rock churn, The Charmer is the Toadies in the raw, naked and unafraid to be completely authentic, sinfully simple, and even a little vulnerable. They cannot, however, resist plunging a dagger deep into the heart of Texas, where their origin story began.
