Ayers left The Soft Machine because things had already started to get too serious. Sure, touring with the Jimi Hendrix trio and sharing bills with Pink Floyd was great fun, but Ayers wasn’t a fan of the Soft Machine’s not-so-slow transmutation into a jazz trio. But there evidently wasn’t anything too personal in it, as his bandmates turn up on Joy of a Toy, an album that’s rich with subtle invention. The songs capture everything that makes Ayers’s writing such a pleasure – wry humour meets melodic languor, silliness never gives way to abject stupidity, and there’s something genuinely affecting in the dazed glow of “Girl On A Swing.” The best of Joy of a Toy feels like it’s caught in reverie, and that’s most all the album, really, a pastoral psychedelic pop delight.