Some records come fully loaded with their own little world that pulls you in with beckoning power straight from the first track. Think Stan Ridgway’s Wall of Voodoo taking you on a highway ride on the California/Nevada border rolling past roadhouse bars and kitschy casinos, or Lou Reed’s urban reportings of New York’s seamy subterranean and the lost souls that haunt the city’s hedonistic underbelly, these were albums that evoked a distinct sense of space and environment that served their narrative chops. In the case of The Toads‘ debut LP, you feel like you’ve just stumbled into a ramshackle pub off the beaten track, the regular haunt of a natural raconteur regaling whoever’s listening with tall tales of dubious veracity.

Formed of members of The Shifters, Ausmuteants and Parsnip, the initial goal was to record five tracks for a 7″ EP shortly after their debut at Jerkfest 2022, but such was the heady brew of creative energy and singer Miles Jansen’s endless well of mordant musings that soon an album’s worth of material had been conjured, surprising even the band. This restless, boundless spirit shines throughout In The Wilderness, an LP brimming with ideas and an intriguing approach to songcraft, marrying The Fall’s caustic post-punk front with the rich melodic songwriting from XTC or The Only Ones offering enthralling foil to Jansen’s troubadour sardonicism.

The laconic shuffle that greets you throughout In The Wilderness is a tricksome sleight-of-hand, masking their gripping virtuoso musicianship that subtly lifts Jansen’s skewed, lyrical foibles with a vivid sense of vignette, each track planting little short films or music videos concocted in your head. ‘Gimme Little More’ illustrates this inspiring sense of scene beautifully, its jangly scrape scoring “trip wires and exercise” with fitting skulk before an explosively cinematic solo from Billy Gardner that injects the piece with conclusive, cinematic heft to whatever drama’s stirred in your imagination. Odd, eccentric, nameless characters come and go throughout the record such as “the madman in the hall” in the gloriously paranoid ‘Ex-KGB’, Stella Rennex’s akimbo bass and brass stabs set-dressing the sketch of suspicion, while more explicit storytelling presents on the spooky ‘The Wandering Soul’, a cautionary tale of drifting through a “forest of fire” haunted with vocal harmonies and chiming guitars offering a monet of disquieting respite.

There’s a sly, crooked house beguile that mischievously pervades In The Wilderness, as if the band members are behind the scenes of the amusement funhouse, pulling the levers and distorting the mirrors of the song’s peripheries and your expectations. ‘Two Dozen Functions’ ambles along infectiously with hooky garage strut before segueing into the stirring ‘Sacred Books and the Damage Done’ like a musical diptych without you even realising. ‘Tales of a Town Split in Two’ drifts off into a charming detour of ruminative jangle and teases with an ‘almost had ya’ fade before yanking you back into a final blast of rollicking indie swag.

As the album ends on its title track, you find the pub that warmly welcomed you in’s now closing up, and the bard that entertained you all night’s now asleep, no doubt to return and do it all again tomorrow. The Toads have provided the perfect soundtrack for an evening of daft fabulism and groggy anecdotes, a fantastically off-kilter jumble of a record heaving with songsmith ingenuity and electric performance that truly inhabit an authentic corner of revelry that you never really wanna leave.