DOLBY’S LOST TOY PEOPLE FIND THEMSELVES AT ROXY

Thomas Dolby put together his new group Lost Toy People through ads in the Recycler and various rock-oriented outlets, so it’s no surprise that, apart from Dolby, the four musicians and one singer are hardly familiar faces. The drummer, for example, still has a regular gig in the house band at Knott’s Berry Farm.

But that doesn’t mean the group sounds sloppy or amateurish. After a few months of quiet warmup gigs (some of them with the stocky, balding Dolby wearing a dress to avoid being recognized), the band hit the Roxy this week as a tight, professional outfit easily up to the demands of its leader’s alternately atmospheric and funky music.

The reigning whiz-kid of British synth-pop until the bouncier and less interesting Howard Jones took that title, Dolby still crafts imaginative, richly textured pop-rock and writes dry and biting songs about bigots, airheads and the flotsam and jetsam of, as one song put it, “Pulp Culture.”

The lyrics aren’t terribly compassionate and some of the music is simply routine keyboard-rock--but most of Dolby’s new songs sounded inventive during Tuesday’s set.

Lost Toy People also performed vigorous versions of Dolby’s three biggest hits, “Hyperactive,” “She Blinded Me With Science” and “Europa and the Pirate Twins.” For some reason, though, the group didn’t play any of the several songs Dolby wrote for “Howard the Duck.” Lost Toy People also plays the Variety Arts Center tonight.