Kevin Ayers
Joy of a toy

An anthem to innocent eccentricity, to childish pranks, to the avant-garde offering an arm to a pop that is now quirky, now delicate.

With a particular taste for the marvelous and floating trifles, those suspended between the joy of living and melancholy... and they are little songs... lullabies... the whole enriched by a million inventions and whimsical deviations that manage the miracle of seeming necessary and not being there just for the sake of it...

That if, as the old Julian Cope claims, in “Claretta rag”, a delightful and inane little march, a fuzz guitar solo accompanies a trombone and the thing incredibly works, well, what can you ever say?

And here everything works, both in those three or four pieces of ramshackle and circus avant-garde, and where the more subdued and delicate world mentioned above takes you by the hand. Everything tastes of elegance, gentleness, and sudden/unstoppable madness.

And that voice then... very British... and lazy... and sly... yet deep, expansive... a voice that has echo, reverb, mystery... and that resembles no other...

“Joy of a toy” is really something halfway between laughing gas and poppy broth, and it could only have been born in the Albion land most devoted to eccentricity (namely the fabulous realm of Canterbury) where our hero wandered almost like a Syd Barrett without ghosts and shadows or like an anarchic dandy unable to take himself too seriously.

At the time of my sweetest musical youth, the explorations of the ardent rock encyclopedias placed Kevin Ayers lost on some happy Spanish island, devoted to the sweet life and Beaujolais.

And the various scribes painted him as a lazy squanderer of his talent, dedicating no more than half a page to the two or three albums published until then.

Much more space in those pages was instead given to his former companions in revelry, those Soft Machine of which he had been a part at the beginning of their picaresque and crazy adventure and who here lend a hand along with many other beautiful and luminous people.

The album begins with the title track, announced by a deafening whistle, it is a childish little concert complete with la la la.

Following: crazy inserts of light madness, acid softness, sleepy words, nightmares in the form of fairy tales and, to quote Uncle Julian, “numbers that walk effortlessly on the treacherous ridge between delight and disaster”

Then, almost to apologize for the previous madness, the finale is subdued and is a sort of melancholy and good-natured pub folk, an ode to “emptied glasses and the crazy gift of time.” Well, it couldn't have ended better.

I feel at ease with this album.

I feel at ease among those simple words that speak of sleeping cities, girls on swings, rushing trains, castles that reveal themselves by opening a box.

I feel at ease pirouetting among pastoral delights, surreal apparitions, little carousels that suddenly run wild.

There’s a bit of Nick Drake, with a more outward gaze, a bit of Barrett and, of course, a lot, a lot of Canterbury.

For this is one of Canterbury's most fragrant flowers.