PSYCHEDELIA has become a bit of a dirty word in the modern rock scene. Bands can be reluctant to be categorised by a term which is simultaneously too broad and too narrow, and its original connotations of escapism and otherworldliness seem to have been lost somewhere along the way.

In an interview earlier this year, Toy’s guitarist Dominic O’Dair aired his grievances with the word in the modern music scene. “So many bands get labelled as psychedelic it’s become an ambiguous word – it doesn’t really describe something very accurately.”

While Toy are clearly influenced by music which could be called psychedelic – from The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to German krautrock bands like Can – their sound transcends such reductive categorisation.

Since 2010, when the band formed out of the ashes of abandoned indie project Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong, Toy have released three albums showcasing a range of song structures and textures. Witness Kopter, for instance, a super charged nine-minute wig-out based around Charlie Salvidge’s whipcrack drumming. On the other end of the scale there is newest single I’m Still Believing, a charming pop song that is among the most accessible in Toy’s canon.

A dream-like quality pervades much of the band’s work – to use a cliché, they are fully capable of taking the listener to “another place”. “It’s always a natural progression,” says dark-eyed singer Tom Dougall, who grew up in Brighton.

“We never think ‘we’re going to sound like this or this’. It just happens naturally.” New album Clear Shot generally tones down some of the elongated freak-outs that Toy made their name through, but the complexity of the songwriting is pronounced – the greater emphasis on harmonies is in some places faintly reminiscent of The Beach Boys.

“Yeah, we always listen to them,” says Dougall of the seminal California band. “We might suddenly all get into a type of music, like film soundtracks, which have been quite big for us recently.” There is certainly something cinematic about Clear Shot, and the last track is even called Cinema.

“Often the things we discover seem new to us, even if they’re not,” adds Dougal. “You can take inspiration from all sorts of things since the dawn of time.” Kopter, the aforementioned last track on Toy’s debut album, seemed to some extent to capture, or even partly instigate, a new mode of songwriting in British alternative music. Clearly repetition in music is nothing new, but the way in which the bass and drums lock into a propulsive rhythm on the song was, and is, very exciting.

“We really like that idea of surging forward,” says Dougall. “There are lots of bands we love that have always done that really well. That song [Kopter] was influenced by German bands like Neu. I remember hearing that at a party when I was 18 and thinking nobody else was really channelling that sound. As much as we love that, though, we feel like we’ve done it now.”

Fans of this and other older songs needn’t worry, though – Dougall promises the band will play songs from all three of their albums on their up coming tour. Their show at The Haunt will have special resonance to the singer, who spent his teen age years in Brighton and met three of his band mates here.

“We all used to listen to records together in Brighton and just do teenage things. Our favourite venue was The Freebutt [now closed] which had loads of good bands. My sister [Rose Elinor Dougall, a solo musician] used to play in a band called The Pipettes who were always playing.” Although Toy are often described as a Brighton-based band, they’ve actually been living in London for 10 years. Dougall says “we’re not really a Brighton or London band”.

Looking ahead, Toy are aiming to drive forward with intent – much like a lot of their music. “We never really stop writing and we want to keep this momentum going,” says Dougall. “We want to get another album out next year, if possible.”

The Haunt, Pool Valley, Brighton, Saturday, November 19, 7pm