Hello and welcome to another installment of the feature no one asked for, and few read! This week:

Artist: Toy Matinee
Album: Toy Matinee

This one is definitely obscure. If you've heard or heard of it before, and not from me, elsewhere, you get a gold star. If you own and like it, you may be The One!...other person who bought this album. It's another of my favorites, and I shall now lamely attempt to describe it and what it means to me.

The best word I have for this album is "quirky". Musically, I guess you could call it pop. It's hummable and pleasant and has that studio-slick, richly-arranged sound I tend to like. The thing that makes it quirky, I guess, are the topics of some of the songs. "Last Plane Out" (which I love) is a jovially black-humored number about how the whole shallow, self-destructive lot of us is going to hell in a handbasket. "Turn It On Salvador", about Salvador Dali, has suitably surreal lyrics and features clarinets and Julian Lennon on background vocals. Strange, but fun. "Remember My Name" is about Czech president Vaclav Havel. I had no idea who that was before owning this album and still really don't but it's a lovely song nonetheless. Not all the songs are so esoteric, but even the more typical treatises on relationships are...atypical. "The Ballad of Jenny Ledge" is just an ode to the girl that got away, but with a chorus that begins "Tempted by half-Elvis, half man-about-town and a life of ease, she runs off with the Vegas King," it doesn't tell the story in quite the usual fashion. Despite the pop sensibilities, don't expect any ditties about how great it is to be in love here - the cynical, warped sensibilities of "Last Plane Out" prevail throughout the album, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. In short, it's a little off-kilter but rather likeable, like me, so if you like me, you may like Toy Matinee. Then again, you may just think I'm a freak and this album sucks. Eh, can't please everyone.