Underneath the Pine - Toro y Moi

Underneath the Pine

Toro y Moi
Carpark Records.


SCQ Rating: 80%

Of my eager anticipation to see Caribou unleash his psychedelic carousel last spring in Ottawa, a genuine sliver was partitioned for catching Toro y Moi open the gig. Yes, I’d recently accused his debut, Causers Of This, of being a songwriting cop-out but I was eager to hear how its glitchy fragments might sound when performed by Chaz Bundick and his full band. Granted, my troupe and I opted to remain in our U-shaped booth and watch Toro Y Moi from afar, but that indifference was largely caused by a set that felt uncomfortable in its own skin. Causers Of This had only been in stores for a few weeks but already Bundick seemed desperate to distance himself from its trendiness.

The performance opening for Caribou made peace with any lingering uncertainties my stance on Toro y Moi had been wrestling with, but it – and the tour as a whole – held greater implications for Chaz Bundick. Underneath the Pine, besides being far more informed by 70s funk and new age sentiments, finds Bundick exploring Caribou’s psychedelic wormhole of kaleidoscopic delights. Like a svelte incarnation of Snaith’s 2010 hit ‘Odessa’, ‘Still Sound’ bears a groove both danceable and head-swimmingly ungrounded. The same goes for ‘New Beat’’s freshly renovated take on pre-disco soul and ‘Light Black’’s shadowy vortex – an understated freak-out if ever there was one. And those are merely the examples that don’t cite Dan Snaith’s 60s love as a primary influence; in other places, like ‘Got Blinded’ or ‘Before I’m Done’, Bundick channels the Zombies’ melancholic swoon as if Caribou hadn’t been revitalizing it for the past five years.

Any foul play behind Underneath the Pine’s borrowings is thankfully overshadowed by Toro y Moi’s many upgrades on display. Gone is the cowardly playbook that had Bundick stitching disembodied hooks to fleeting euphoria. From sketches to full-blown songwriting in the span of a year, Toro y Moi hasn’t just uncovered a unique take on electronic music through somewhat organic means; he’s found himself as well.


Toro Y Moi - Still Sound by musicmule

Causers Of This - Toro Y Moi (No Ripcord Review)

Causers Of This

Toro Y Moi
Carpark Records.

No Ripcord Rating: 7
SCQ Rating: 71%

A few months ago I read an interview with Bradford Cox in which the Deerhunter ringleader/Atlas Sound mastermind playfully sounded off on glo-fi, and what he suggested was a crown stolen from him. Whether he’s serious or not, there’s a solid case lurking behind his claim for birthright. Not only was Atlas Sound’s 2008 debut a haze-riddled bedroom record of groundbreaking proportions, it even featured a song entitled 'Ready, Set, Glow'! I’d take sides but the point is already moot. Between that interview last fall and the present day, glo-fi or chillwave or whatever you want to call it has become an eye-rolling gag, having opened the floodgates for a bevy of well-meaning but hopelessly hazy bedroom acts seeking a place in the sun. If the powers that be awarded Cox his glo-fi subgenre now, I don’t think he’d show.

So what about Toro Y Moi (AKA Chazwick Bundick) and his quietly anticipated full-length Causers Of This? Well, strange as it seems, despite close personal ties with other chillwave acts and assuming the tag – essentially guilty by association – Toro Y Moi doesn’t belong in this subgenre mess. At least not compositionally; by utilizing a throng of 80s-inspired signifiers and beats cut-up like a dreamier Flying Lotus, Causers Of This flirts with retro R&B records as often as any sound pigeonholed to the summer of 2009. 'Freak Love' sounds like a late-nineties boy-band cassette after it spent five minutes in a swimming pool, with pre-sets thrown into a sweltering, undulating atmosphere and a break-beat slowed down as if accidentally sexed up. Such effective sound-manipulation lies at the heart of Bundick’s technique, which evokes the speaker-in, speaker-out psychedelia of 'Blessa' and the stuttering, hip-hop beats that carry him through these thirty-two minutes. In his most surprising moments, as on 'Lissoms', Bundick creates a buzzing instrumental that smoothly (almost invisibly) incorporates vocal samples and a ton of eerie synth-undercurrents without sounding like a grab-bag of random, well-spiced sounds.

It’s easy to commend this album on the sole basis that despite coating his tracks with an incomprehensible amount of tripped-out trickery, Toro Y Moi still branches out into less protected songwriting. 'Low Shoulders' takes honourable shots at Studio’s Balearic-inspired dance while 'Imprint After' finds him verging on the grating vocal-stylings of Passion Pit. The majority of Causers Of This, however, can be translated by the example of 'Fax Shadow', a track so overwhelmed by its own technical prowess, it forgoes seeking out the merits of a functioning song. To call Bundick’s method a collage approach would be offering the benefit of the doubt; to call it blenderized is closer to the truth. We could sit here all day pondering what songwriting is more authentic, the kinetic instincts of stitching stylish sounds together or patiently fleshing ideas beyond thirty-second intervals, but I’m sure a new subgenre name is already prepped to bail us out.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord... )