Toys In The Attic Hilton Head Island SC

Toys In The Attic

Aerosmith

Columbia Records, 1975

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 06/11/2002

After the letdown that was Get Your Wings (as well as the failure of "Dream On" from Aerosmith to fully catch on as a hit single the first timearound), Steven Tyler and crew needed something to go right.Refocusing on songwriting (along with the ability to throw in acatchy hook or three), Toys In The Attic was a marked improvement for Aerosmith -though I'm not quite willing to put it in the upper echelon ofoutstanding albums.

If you have never heard "Walk This Way" or "Sweet Emotion"before, you're either under the age of four, or you have beenliving in a cave the past 25 or so years. Overplayed to the pointof structural collapse, Aerosmith mined gold with these two songs -and rightfully so. "Sweet Emotion" is a musical freight train thatonly continues to pick up steam as it continues; Tom Hamilton'sbass work acts as an anchor for the whole song, while the guitarduo of Brad Whitford and Joe Perry lay the foundation for the song,Tyler sticking in his playfully suggestive lyrics throughout.

As for "Walk This Way" - you could almost call this track one ofthe earliest rap songs, due to Tyler's lightning-fast delivery ofthe lyrics. (No wonder that Run-DMC embraced this song when theycovered it on their album Raising Hell.) Admittedly, I'm sick of hearing this one onthe radio - but when I hear it in the context of the entire album,it fits.

Toys In The Attic has many moments like this - though radionever glommed onto tracks like "Uncle Salty," "No More No More" andthe title track the way they did to "Walk This Way" and "SweetEmotion". Too bad, since "Toys In The Attic" is an absolutetour-de-force that takes no prisoners from the moment the firstguitar chord bursts from your speakers. "No More No More" is anenjoyable track which shows that even a gentler moment can bewrapped around a hard rock center. And it may be filled with enoughdouble-entendres to make Tipper Gore blush, but one can't help butlike the playful naughtiness of "Big 10-Inch Record". (Too bad thekids of today will have no idea what Tyler is talking about; I canstill remember digging 10-inch records out of my grandparents'collection... and, if I remember right, this was also the size of78's.)