The primary "hook" behind Gizmodgery is that it was recorded using nothing but toy instruments.

This isn't a new concept by any means. Lots of bands have incorporated toy instruments into their sound. There's something wonderful, for instance, about the sound of a cheap toy piano; a sample just doesn't give that same satifying, visceral "plonk" sound when you hit they keyboard. And does anyone remember Pianosaurus? During the late eighties, they forged a brief but entertaining career writing jangly rock songs for toy instruments. And they were really quite good.

Self has approached this "toy instruments" dodge from a different direction. Instead of embracing the cheap, tinny sounds of toys, they've decided to push them to their limits, creating a big, loud, garish power-pop album from distinctly low-end sounds. They're also working with a broader palette; among the toy pianos, drums and guitars in the "instruments used" blurb, you'll also find toy cell phones and talking animals. Every now and then you'll catch a snippet of something that's unmistakably Toys-R-Us, but a lot of the time it's easy to forget about the source material.

"I am a Little Explosion" starts gradually, referencing its toy store origins while building its eighties-style white funk workout. It's the raw, knife-edged guitars of "Alive" that really get things going, working the band's Queen/Prince amalgam against an aggressively dirty beat. From there, "Chameleon" heads into Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, territory, though you can hear a toy piano clanging cheerily in the background.

One distinct high point is "Trunk Fulla Amps", a highly hummable track centered around the phrase "I've got a trunk fulla amps, motherfucker!" Lyrical name-checks of various big name bands allow Self to trot out momentary mini-imitations -- they're brief, but often dead-on. Their momentary injection of Queen-style vocal harmonies, used only on the word "Mother", conjures Freddie Mercury and co. most ably. "Trunk Fulla Amps" will leave you so happy that "Pattycake"'s Bee Gees/Steely Dan vocals won't make you want to kill anyone.

"Miracle Worker" comes in from the rock side of the park; it's frenetic and sarky, with lyrics like "She once had a boy who loved her/in every way/he told his friends he scored/ and she beat him to death." You've got to hear it for the full effect. Less effective is "Hi, My Name's Cindy", a dangers-of-dating tale that plays a little too broadly, coming across as little more than a novelty song. Such is also the case with Self's fairly straightforward cover of the Doobie Brothers' "What A Fool Believes", though it's amusing the first few times.

But does it work? As an innocent bit of fun, yes. As much as I hate to admit it, a number of songs stuck with me -- particularly "Trunk Fulla Amps". As an album of "toy music", it is perhaps less successful; in many cases, the use of toys seems entirely gratuitous, as if the painstaking efforts to make toy keyboards and guitars sound "real" wound up being a little too successful, requiring a few more overtly toy-oriented noises to be added in the latter stage of production. But that's the thing, isn't it? When you make an entire album with toys, people want to hear toy sounds. It's just like building a model of a cathedral out of popsicle sticks; to be truly impressed, people have to be able to see the popsicle sticks. If it just looks like wood, no-one cares. While Gizmodgery offers some delightful songs, a lot of those toy piano moments can be written off as weird keyboard settings, while the Speak and Spell vocals can be dismissed as plain-old vocorder. Perhaps that's for the best -- I can't imagine it'll be too much fun to reproduce this stuff live with the original instruments, if it's even possible -- but I find myself wishing they'd let more of their popsicle sticks show.