On I Told You So, the East Midlands trio give their angular guitars and restless rhythms a permanent voice. The hooks are bigger, the riffs still take corners too fast, and the album title doubles as a pronunciation guide. About time somebody cleared that up.
A band with no regular singer can solve the problem by finding one. a-tota-so spent years inviting people up instead.
For 2022’s Lights Out, the trio drew on singers from across the UK and Irish underground, including members of God Alone, The St Pierre Snake Invasion, Sans Froid, No Violet and Irk. The idea carried over to gigs, where a revolving cast of guests made the same songs feel different from one night to the next. A fairly elaborate way to find out what a voice could do to a riff. Also an excellent reason to own a spare microphone.
On their third album, I Told You So, out via bUTTONpUSHER (Alright the Captain), guitarist Marty Toner takes on lead vocals. There’s a neat symmetry to that. Between touring with their label-matees of Alright The Captain and putting on shows in Nottingham, Toner has spent years making room for other people’s music. Now he’s making room for his own voice inside a band that already knows how to fill every available inch.
What happens when the singer is also the person playing the riff he has to sing over?
“Death Rattle” makes the problem audible straight away. The opening guitar has a siren-like tang, the band keeps cutting across its own momentum, and Toner gives you a melody to follow through the interruptions. There’s early Biffy Clyro in the way the hook survives all those abrupt stops, and At the Drive-In in how the vocal pushes against the guitar. Even with a singer in the room, drummer Jamie Cattermole can still make the next downbeat feel like a matter for negotiation.
The relationship gets more interesting when the music settles into a groove. On “GRLD”, bassist Chris Marsh gives the song a firm footing while the closing vocal phrase keeps circling the consequences of somebody’s actions. Each repetition sounds a little less like a chorus and a little more like something the singer has been trying to admit. The rhythm section knows exactly where it’s going. The narrator is having a rather different afternoon.
That interplay is where the trio’s instrumental roots are easiest to hear. And So I Watch You From Afar and Adebisi Shank are useful reference points for the spring in the rhythms and the pleasure of hearing a riff change direction at speed. Town Portal is a closer comparison when Marsh and Cattermole dig in and let the weight come from the space between their accents.
The record deals with anxiety, grief and the effort of keeping it together when the world feels a bit too close. Toner can bark against the guitars or let a melody hang over them, and the shift changes how much of the person you hear. The layered vocals and chunky riffs on “No Tears No Sound” bring Therapy? and Baroness to mind: melody gives the rougher parts something to dig into.
Some of the early shouting is less distinctive than the melodic voice Toner finds later. Hearing him try out both approaches is part of the album’s appeal. By “Exit Wounds”, the band can build from a tender guitar figure without crowding it, and by “Raykens”, the voice has enough lift to carry the record somewhere brighter. That final turn feels earned because the band have spent so much time showing us how easily things can tip the other way.
After years of hearing what other singers could bring to a-tota-so, Toner gives the songs a common voice while leaving the other two plenty to say. There’s an old assumption that a band gets more accessible by making its music easier to follow. This lot found a chorus you can hum while the drummer is still moving the furniture.
Go on, hum it. You can work out where the one is later.
