Sex on Toast takes us through their new album, Pegasus, track by track

With a relentless spirit, and wide range of influences, the collective Sex on Toast have been creating technicolour rock for twenty years now. Today they have released their latest album, Pegasus, that brilliantly showcases their deep talents and broad interests.

The album is a glorious mix of funk and pop, big horns, RnB, jazz and rock – it’s got it all. Glorious harmonies, sweet pianos, operatic choruses and so much more, it’s a beautiful and sweet patchwork of songs packed with drama, neatly stitched together, with a health dose of humour thrown in.

To mark the release of the album the band is heading out on a seven-date national tour, kicking off in Adelaide on the 7th November. All the dates are below. Do try and catch them if you can – their live shows are brilliant, and we need to support live music!

Frontman Angus Leslie from the band has kindly put together a ‘track by track’ breakdown for the album. So do press <play> and read on !

Track By Track: Pegasus – written by Angus Leslie of Sex On Toast

Opening Credits

The initial concept for this introductory piece for the album came on the flight back from my initial writing trip to LA. I’d gone with the intention of fleshing out new music for the new SOT album that had been percolating at home, but I felt my creativity was stifled by my environment and many other factors. I craved new stimulus and a foreign place to write.

After I’d generated a few ‘song-like’ ideas in my motel room in West Hollywood, I was travelling home the plane and looked out the window and saw some clouds, the majesty of which caught me off guard, and I thought to myself, perhaps I could start this album with an almost “Hollywood film score” type orchestra piece, influenced by some of the odd and cinematic things I’d seen on my first trip to Los Angeles. I heard a rough version of it in my head, but didn’t really get it out ’til several months later when the entire world was locked down. The clouds became a motif in the music from this point on… The actual recording of this piece was one of the more challenging undertakings I had ever embarked on!

Somebody Like You

Strangely, this song was spewed out in a feverish late night lockdown-era writing session that spawned ‘Opening Credits’ (or ‘Hollyweird’ as was it’s working title.)

The final chord of ‘Hollyweird’ popped out and I liked it, and started writing a pop song that hinged on a progression that was a sort of expansion of that.

The lyrics in the middle kind of came as a semi-surrealist bunch of words but the line “ride that Pegasus into oblivion” tumbled out of my head and spawned the entire Pegasus concept.

The image of said Pegasus seemed to frame a lot of this new music (even though a lot of the music was already written) and tied in perfectly with the cloud imagery I’d dreamt up earlier. I wrote that line in the song to mean that I was riding a magical horse of imagination or creativity or some shit… into god knows where. Only later did I find out that the Pegasus in Greek mythology is literally a symbol of imagination and creativity! Complete accident!

This one was pieced together in many many studios, wherever I could find decent gear for the sounds I was hearing in my head. Schniel is responsible for the low D that is heard in the bass part. Schniel likes to rock. Jessi Lumbar’s drum fills on this could be some of the best parts of the song.

Never Let Go

This one was also written in the era of the neverending 2020 lockdown in Melbourne.

I had access to a studio on weekends between Saturday morning and Sunday night only so I could flesh out a song and lyrics on guitar during the week and then get in there on the weekend and complete a demo. This song then took on a totally new shape when played live, when we decided to include Louis King’s long-ass guitar solo in the outro.

It also made use of some musical motifs that are recurring throughout the album. Some horn melodies from ‘Somebody’ can be heard on vocals here, and some riffs that originated from ‘But Still You Whine?’ The actual finished product became more ethereal, moody and emotional than I ever could have imagined (largely due to the vocals of Beth Otenstein!)

Take Your Mask Off (And Love Me Tonight)

This one started out as a demo without a home from Barney McAll who presented it to me in 2020, as a potential song for SOT. I believe this was a lockdown love song for his wife Jen, with hilarious lyrics about some kind of Malibu holiday fantasy that existed only on their street, and cheeky lyrics about surgical masks. I really liked the chorus and felt like it suited us.

We’d never really recorded a song written by anyone outside of the band before but it made a lot of sense as an SOT song, and Barney is a brilliant musician and composer. When I popped the bridge hook and sprawling melody on there and we both agreed it was kind of a great tune and I taught it to the band.

When we started properly recording this song and completing the overdubs it really was just the beginning of the hours upon hours of work that would become the Pegasus album. I could hear even from the basic tracks session at Hothouse in St Kilda that this was going to be a great one, with lots of energy and flair from all the players.

Overdubs for this track became an obsessive and kaleidoscopic process that saw a lot of amazing ideas from everyone involved, especially Louis King, Porl Bender, James Bowers, Jessi Dunbar, Barney McAll & Grace Robinson.

This track was also the birth of what I feel is a very effective long distance relationship with mix engineer Gareth Thomson, who has been involved in every SOT track from the very beginning of our recorded output, but really made his mark as a mixer on this LP.

Pegasus Rising

“Pegasus Rising” is another instrumental piece, some of which is based on some musical motifs from ‘Mask’. Here I was trying to evoke the fantastical imagery of the Pegasus, and maybe some of its mystery.

It definitely has some major classical music influences and also the influence of some of Todd Rundgren’s music, especially some of the instrumental stuff for Utopia or “A Treatise on Cosmic Fire” from the Initiation album. Little did we know we’d be onstage with Todd less than a year later!

It features some beautiful piano playing from James Bowers who really gave this tune some serious magic with his unique touch on the grand piano at Black Pearl Studios, (the very studio we recorded Oh Loretta! at)

Neil Hamburger’s 2 Cents

My friend Gregg Turkington is one of my greatest heroes. I got into his weird music as a young fella, through bands like Three Doctors, Faxed Head and early collabs with Secret Chiefs 3.

I’ve been going to see his character Neil Hamburger since my late teens/early 20’s and befriended Gregg over the years through my connection to some of the guys from Mr. Bungle.

It’s a total honour to have Neil on here ripping the album a new one, he gave us four totally improvised takes that were all so good they were nearly impossible to choose from.

Gregg is also in two films in the Ant Man franchise. Does this place SOT in the Marvel Universe? Brad Bellard thinks so!

But Still You Whine?

This was the first thing I wrote for the album, and actually a different draft of demos for the album exists from the era this one was written in that was a lot gloomier lyrically and had more in common with the kind of glam-rock/almost progressive style of this one. Honestly they owed more to Todd Rundgren than anything, but this draft of the LP was just much too dark and miserable. Much of it was worked up before I’d composed some of the lighter songs and pieces which ended up giving the album a much different tone than the initial draft.
This song was the catalyst for many musical motifs that pop up in a lot of different songs on the album. Maybe you can hear them?

Another One

This one that was initially dreamt up as a fairly straight ahead hard rock song, as soon as it was demoed and showed to members of the band, they were quick to remark that it was rather a strange one!

I didn’t even realise this at the time for some reason…. It seemed harmonically and melodically logical to me but looking at it objectively it’s a bit of a strange mix of jazz-type harmony and punk ferocity.

The lyrics deal with a pathetic crush I had in the year 2019 with an unnamed performer.

The production made it even weirder and more violent, with layer upon layer of operatic voices, distorted keyboards, modular synths, moog and tubular bells making it a true monstrosity! Definitely one for all the fans of our laid-back funk tracks!

The end section features the esteemed Paul Scarmozzino, in a throwback to ‘Eaf’… our teenage absurdist ‘music’ collective (well we created music… but that’s a whole other story) and features the classic 2012 SOT vocal blend of myself, Schniel and Julius Millar.

Layin’ Next To You?

Among the more tender SOT ballads, this song deals with something a little more prevalent in modern relationships along with that age-old lovelorn stuff…

We started this as a full band take (including vocals) and ripped it to shreds and crafted a more ‘quiet storm’ acoustic guitar – driven approach to the arrangement.

Only the piano and lead vocals remain from the live take. Note the incredible fretless bass performance of James Gilligan on this one. The virtual string orchestra really shines here too!

Ooohyeah

A short instrumental based off an idiotic band in-joke. Not too much more to explain there, other than it uses some musical material from ‘Another One’.

The incredible accuracy and energy of xylophonist Skylar Sansome is front and centre here!

This one functions as a kind of auditory cartoon! This piece PROVES that the PERFECT ensemble IS vocoder, cellos, rhodes, xylophone, snare drum, Roland Juno synth bass, bass guitar and harp!

Could this piece of music exist because I found Mel Blanc’s grave by accident in 2020?

Prelude To A Cat

This short solo harp interlude is almost a sign off, with some vaguely harmonic allusions to some of the chords in Enrique… This one was composed by brilliant Sydney arranger Wesley Stormer and the beautiful and expressive playing of harpist Melina Van Leeuwen really brought this to life.

This one was literally written as the perfect dramatic pivot into…

Enrique

Enrique was my cat in the year 2019! I loved him a lot. Sadly through the break up of a relationship he wasn’t my cat anymore…

This deals with that experience, and my perspective , sung directly to the cat (wherever he is!) It’s a little ditty inspired by Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa and Raymond Scott’s ‘Soothing Sounds For Baby’.

Dom Stitt, Ollie Rolfe and Sam Maguire really dug in as the rhythm section here! James Bowers’ obvious genius is evident in the “choir synth” outro which ties us back to the Opening Credits… Could this ending be “the closing credits” ?
That’s up to you, the listener to decide!

Pegasus Album Tour