Toy Car - Cream (1LP)

After a whirlwind of festival appearances and the fizz of national radio attention, Liverpool-based emotive, alt-rock four-piece, Toy Car return with an elaborate and determined new single Fishes, lifted from their highly anticipated debut album Cream – OUT NOW.

Following electrifying sets at Y Not Festival and the Isle of Wight Festival, Toy Car have carved their name onto the list of the UK alternative scene’s ones to watch, offering soul-bearing lyricism reminiscent of Wunderhorse and a natural drift into the stadium-sized choruses alongside The 1975. With support from BBC Radio 1, Radio X, Earmilk, and a sync feature on hit domestic TV series, Made in Chelsea, the band have proven themselves as worth of media and public attention as a band constructing songs wrought with emotion, whether in hope, sorrow or elation.

Produced and mixed by Ben Harper (The Mysterines, The Zutons) at Liverpool’s iconic Motor Museum Studios, Cream’s ten tracks capture the raw urgency, social edge, and big-room intentions that have set such high expectations around Toy Car. It’s a record built on stadium-sized riffs, hook-laden choruses and lines that hit like confessions shouted through a megaphone.

At the heart of a sense of deep honesty that pervades the album is Fishes, picked out as a celebratory, release day single. The band unveils it as a soaring, emotional alt-rock anthem built for the long nights winter and the long days of summer to come.

“’Fishes’ is a confession. It’s someone asking for help,” says frontman Shaun Hough. “The other character is down to interpretation, but Fishes comes from a point of ‘if people start talking, things can get better.’ It’s a pretty blunt reminder to live life, because we don’t know what’s waiting just around the corner.”

It’s Toy Car’s blend of high-energy alt-rock and lyrical vulnerability, drawing from influences like Cage the Elephant, The Strokes, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that has made them a must-see live band. Translating that to the studio has been a challenge the band has proven themselves equal to and Cream’s previous singles, including Thylacine and Time Flies, have offered as much energy as introspection.