Music

Toad and the Stooligans Are Here

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Maybe the feeling I get from Toad and the Stooligans is a kind of personal nostalgia for the jam bands that provided a soundtrack for my carefree college days on the quad, watching a frisbee fly back and forth while a few grimy folks slacklined between two trees.

With just a hint of G. Love and Special Sauce–style hip-hop, plus electric piano, jammy guitars and deep bellowing bass, the Stooligans enter the Providence scene with the release of their album Very Handsome, a well-produced and unique hip-hop record with unpredictable, improvisational instrumentation that makes each track a pleasant surprise.

The Stooligans are a tight-knit group of musicians who grew up playing music together. “Dan and Mike worked at a deli together and were always rapping there,” the Stooligans drummer Matt O’Brien says. “Mike was doing solo shows, and both he and Dan were friends with [singer] Mike Slap. Slap asked them both to open a show for him at Machines with Magnets. So we put together a band for that show, and everything has kind of rolled from there.”

Toad and the Stooligans come across as more improvisational, close to the style of a jam band, but Matt points out that while the album works to capture their live sound, it is a polished piece of work and a template for onstage explorations. Very Handsome has a vintage hip-hop sound and vibe; along with the collaborative approach to the background instrumentation (with Dan “Illiterat” Pomfret on vocals and guitar, Alex Caimano on bass and Matt on drums), that sound provides a great canvass for Mike “Toad” Jencks to rhyme over. Catchy hooks, guest vocalists and unpredictable rearrangements of rhythms produce a clean sound with minimal effects, just enough to unify the eclectic styles explored in the music.

Toad and the Stooligans, Dan Pomfret, Alex Caimano, Mike Jencks, Matt O’Brien, adam hogue, providence monthly, music, local music, Very Handsome

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