Toto Isolation 1984 (Columbia)
I'm stranded here in a dream and there's no ticket back.
The Lowdown
After their phenomenal fourth album Toto were very much at the top of the world in terms of commercial success and were now a world famous band, and AOR as a genre was at the height of its powers. They had also worked on the Jackson’s
Victory album, along with being the principal artist on the Dune soundtrack after the success of
Toto IV. Now bands in this situation are then usually faced with a number of choices and that normally includes following the album up with another similar album (usually what the record label wants) or the band decide that they want to indulge/experiment a bit in something slightly different and this is what Toto did for their fifth studio album
Isolation.
The band underwent though two important changes as already mentioned by Anteater in his
Toto IV preview, which saw bassist David Hungate departing the band and his replacement was one of the Porcaro brothers Mike, who was literally an in-house replacement anyway. The other notable change was that of principal vocalist Bobby Kimball, whose drug taking ways finally saw him being sacked by the band and his replacement was Fergie Frederiksen (Trillion and LeRoux) who had been recommended by drummer Jeff Porcaro, after Richard Page of Mr.Mister had declined to join Toto.
Now before I go any further with this album intro, I should point out that not only is this my favourite Toto album, but also my favourite album of all time regardless of genre, my ultimate desert island disc if you like! When I first heard the album though in 1984/1985 things were initially very different, as I saw it as a betrayal of the typical Toto sound and of course there was no Bobby Kimball either on the album (I was so disappointed at the time) but then after a few more spins the whole thing just fell into place and blew me away with its sheer energy, offbeat feel and go for the jugular approach (I eventually wore my vinyl version of the album out) In hindsight this is the band’s most AOR release and to this day I’ve never heard anything quite like it and probably never will from another AOR band, which is why it has always been so special to me.
The album produced two obvious singles in “Stranger in Town” a great song and video and “How Does it Feel” along with the light-hearted “Holyanna”. The other single was the heavier “Angel Don’t Cry” and the only single to feature Fergie Frederiksen on vocals, which goes to show just how much his material was overlooked on the album as he sings the lion share of the album’s tracks. The album sales wise was seen as a disappointment, prompting the band to reject doing this 'cut to the quick' approach again.