🐇 Montague Reviews: Toto IV — Toto
1982
There are records that swagger.
There are records that experiment.
And then there are records that arrive wearing an immaculate jacket, check that every instrument is correctly positioned, order something expensive from the bar and proceed to demonstrate professional competence at an almost indecent level.
Toto IV is one of those.
Montague had, of course, heard “Rosanna” and “Africa” before. Everybody has. Somewhere, presumably, there is a remote weather station in Antarctica where a lonely scientist is currently tapping the desk during the drum shuffle in “Rosanna”.
But reducing Toto IV to those two songs is rather like visiting Paris, looking at the Eiffel Tower and declaring the rest of the city unnecessary.
Montague disapproves.
Rosanna
We may as well begin with the enormous elephant wearing studio headphones.
“Rosanna” is absurdly accomplished.
That opening rhythm is instantly recognisable, but what impresses Montague most is how effortless the whole thing sounds. Nothing is fighting for attention. Keyboards, guitars, horns, vocals and rhythm section all seem to know precisely when to appear and, more importantly, when to get out of the way.
It is polished without becoming sterile.
A very difficult trick.
Montague approves considerably.
Make Believe
And this is where the album begins revealing why it deserves to be heard beyond the singles.
“Make Believe” has that wonderful early-1980s West Coast sheen: bright keyboards, perfectly judged backing vocals and a melody that appears uncomplicated until you notice how beautifully everything underneath it has been constructed.
This is one of Montague’s favourites.
It does not demand attention.
It simply earns it.
I Won’t Hold You Back
Oh dear.
Montague has become emotional.
Someone fetch a small pastry.
“I Won’t Hold You Back” is Toto demonstrating that technical ability does not have to come at the expense of feeling.
The arrangement gives the song room to breathe. The vocal is restrained, the melody is gorgeous and the whole thing carries that peculiar melancholy found in the best soft rock: heartbreak presented not through theatrical collapse but through someone quietly staring out of a window while pretending everything is perfectly fine.
Montague recognises this behaviour.
Good for You / It’s a Feeling
These are perhaps the songs that reveal how strong Toto IV really is.
On a lesser album they would simply be respectable album tracks.
Here they form part of the architecture.
“Good for You” keeps the album moving with considerable swagger, while “It’s a Feeling” changes the atmosphere entirely — cooler, stranger and slightly more introspective.
Montague appreciates albums that understand pacing.
Ten enormous singles placed next to each other would be exhausting.
Even rabbits need corridors between the drawing rooms.
Afraid of Love
Now then.
This is tremendous.
“Afraid of Love” has teeth.
The guitars move forward, the rhythm section gets heavier and suddenly the immaculately upholstered Toto drawing room contains someone riding a motorcycle through it.
This is another of Montague’s favourites.
There is real momentum here, but the band never loses control. Toto could probably perform a bank robbery while maintaining perfect time signatures.
Lovers in the Night
A wonderfully muscular piece of album rock.
It has that particular early-80s studio sound where everything seems enormous without becoming muddy.
The drums are enormous.
The guitars are enormous.
The keyboards are enormous.
Montague feels slightly underdressed.
We Made It
Another favourite, and one that deserves far more attention than it receives.
“We Made It” has something Montague particularly likes about Toto: a sense of forward motion.
The chorus arrives naturally rather than being announced with fireworks, and underneath it all is that remarkable rhythm section holding everything together.
It is exactly the sort of song that becomes better after several listens.
First listen: very good.
Fifth listen: hang on.
Tenth listen: why is nobody talking about this?
Montague knows this phenomenon well.
Waiting for Your Love
Possibly one of the album’s most quietly addictive tracks.
There is a looseness here that balances the more meticulously constructed moments elsewhere.
“Waiting for Your Love” grooves.
Not aggressively.
Toto rarely need to shout.
They merely begin playing and assume you will eventually realise how good they are.
You do.
Another Montague favourite.
Africa
And finally we arrive at the song that escaped.
“Africa” stopped belonging entirely to Toto decades ago.
It became cultural furniture.
Weddings. Radio. Television. Internet jokes. Supermarkets. Parties. Probably funerals.
But listening to it inside the album restores something.
Those keyboards suddenly belong to the same musical world as everything that preceded them. The percussion makes more sense. The vocal layers seem less like the ingredients of an enormous hit and more like the culmination of the record.
And yes.
It remains magnificent.
Sometimes enormously popular things are enormously popular because they are enormously good.
Montague is prepared to accept this occasionally.
🐇 Montague’s favourites
Beyond the unavoidable magnificence of “Rosanna” and “Africa”, Montague keeps returning to:
Afraid of Love — because Toto suddenly develops claws.
Make Believe — melodic craftsmanship disguised as effortless pop.
We Made It — the album track that quietly demands promotion.
Waiting for Your Love — warm, rhythmic and ridiculously easy to replay.
I Won’t Hold You Back — because apparently rabbits can stare wistfully from windows too.
And there is something interesting about those choices.
They reveal that the pleasure of Toto IV isn’t merely in its famous moments.
The middle of the album is extraordinarily strong.
That matters.
Final thoughts
Toto IV could easily have become unbearable.
The musicianship is almost intimidating. The production is pristine. The arrangements are extraordinarily detailed.
Yet somehow it still feels human.
There are hooks.
There is melancholy.
There is swagger.
There are moments when the band simply appears to be enjoying the extraordinary noise they can make together.
And beneath two gigantic singles sits an album full of songs that would have been career highlights for considerably less fortunate bands.
Montague finishes his coffee.
Adjusts his headphones.
Presses play again.
Same songs. Brighter tomorrows.
🐇❤️🎧
Montague verdict:
Not merely the album with “Africa” on it.
A beautifully engineered, surprisingly varied and deeply satisfying record whose quieter corners are every bit as rewarding as the songs everybody knows.
