Review

Mestar, Onanon and Toki Wilson

28 April 2007, The Backstage

The Backstage can be a big empty concrete box when you have to start early. This is how it was for Toki Wilson, who has been teaching himself how to play the ukulele, and treated a very supportive audience to several classics from his songbook. Interesting stuff. Toki’s ukulele style is very much in the “island ukulele orchestra” mould, with cheerfully frantic strumming and very well signposted double times. Still, I’d like to see some more experimentation, maybe shove a pickup in there and make some strange noises, or add another couple of players and do the orchestra thing.
Toki has made a name for himself in the last couple of years playing guitar and singing with reggae band Irie Eyes. The rest of his set was made up of Iries numbers and a couple of trips down memory lane to visit the grunge house where Toki grew up. Toki can be very shy on stage as a soloist, but this doesn’t take anything away from a very powerful voice and a pop sensibility that helps him overcome the banality that can befall many reggae writers. A real standout song is his ‘30,000 people,’ about the sole, criminal survivor of a Caribbean volcanic eruption. If Toki were Wellingtonian, and had the right friends, there is every chance somebody would have made a lavalava with his face on it by now.

Source: http://www.dunedinmusic.com/reviews/53