Saturday, August 13, 2011

One Track Mind: Toto - Falling In Between (2006)




Toto has long been one of my favorite bands. Their willingness to take risks and try a variety of different styles of music has always impressed me as has their brilliant talent. After all Toto is a band of session cats. These are the guys the other bands call on to perform on their albums.

Heck these guys started out backing up Boz Scaggs on his Silk Degrees album and after the unprecedented success of their 1982 album IV they were tapped by Michael Jackson to play on his Thriller album.

In 2006 Toto released what would inevitably be their final studio album, Falling In Between.  Some would argue this was their best album ever and most would agree it was their best album since IV.  They certainly went out with a bang.

The album opened with the title track.  From the first time I heard Falling in Between, it swiftly became one of my favorite Toto songs.  It had a fiery drive to it I'd not heard since Gypsy Train on their 1992 Kingdom of Desire album.

Between Steve Lukather's fiery guitar work and the powerful vocals of original lead vocalist Bobby Kimball (who rejoined the band in 1998 after a 14 year absence), the tasteful background vocals and keyboard work of grammy winning keyboardist Greg Phillenganes, and the precise and tasteful drumming of Simon Phillips Falling In Between has it all.  It inevitably set the tone for the entire album.

Related Link
Falling in Between (album review)



1 comment:

Poem58 said...

There a few Toto songs I really love, yet overall have not been a serious fan. I did get a chance to hear the FIB album and the only song that caught my attention was Falling In Between. I love to crank that one up in the car. Pure bliss. For some reason I wish the end would have gone into a 3rd verse, musically if not lyrically instead of fading away, it just feels unbalanced like they were slammin and jammin then mellowed then ended. To me it just felt right to have them kick that end right back into a jam, yet it just floats away on the breeze.