Toro Y Moi recently put out a new album and Filter Magazine was kind enough to let me review it for them. I was pretty positive about the album, Underneath the Pine. Which is good news. The bad news is that I only had about 200 words to chat you up about all that goodness.
Well, below, you can find my track-by-track listening notes and thoughts. Toro Y Moi (a product of South Carolina native and multi-instrumentalist Chaz Bundick) has been on the verge of blowing up for a while now, heck, even Odd Future like him, so you better get on board.
Whether you’re familiar or not, feel free to play along by listening to a free stream of the album HERE and scanning through the notes below. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Underneath the Pine
1. Intro/Chi Chi – floating, sweeping riffs with a touch of sadness. decidedly more r&b/funk to the album. Taking a layered, almost live approach to the chillwave movement.
2. New Beat – sounds like a Jackson b-side with a slippery key line and walking/bouncing bass line. Chaz is not the most brilliant vocalist on the planet but the music isn’t about corralling the music but letting the textures overlap and intermingle. Just enough wistfulness to be endearing but not too much to be trite. Nice awareness of pacing and beat, steadying out rhythms and riffs or flattening his swirling effects to give his songs a sense of propulsion. (Cues from low shoulder)
3. Go With You – glo-wave can feel ice an amalgam of unmatched beats and effects. One of Chaz’ strengths is his deftness at matching complimentary rhythms across instruments. Almost orchestral in its overlapping of competing time signatures and open sounds. Some glo-wavers [chillwavers] are commendable for their ability to distort and expand their sound, Chaz’s skill comes from understanding how his distinct sounds interplay, and when to cut back to allow some space into his music.
4. Divina – ability to match pace and overlapped beats help lift even his instrumentals to more than an interlude but interesting fabrics in and of themselves.
5. Before I’m Done – Information Missing.
6. Got Blinded – psychedelia in the traditional sense, like a funk sergeant peppers. More straightforward, vocals take more of the stage with a nice bass kick drum beat behind what are probably an array of keyboards cutting and slamming at different tempos. Standout track, though chaz has a slight whine on his high end.
7. How I Know – a little too retro. Uninteresting as a straight homage/allusion. All tracks have a vague air of a psychedelic cartoon opener. Optimistic splash of sonic color and a vague threat of danger or sadness. With the amount of slamming rhythms, it can start to sound like a jackhammer insisting you bop along.
8. Light Black – ability to build tension and drop into different chord structures to both relieve and elevate the song to another texture
9. Still Sound – as above, knows when to cut and drop into a groove to break the pace and elevate the song to another tone, mood, or emotion. It’s hard to switch a song mid-stream without sounding rushed our amateur, Chaz is able to paint with his instruments and his reverbed, strangely ethereal voice. It’s as malleable as the rest of the electronics in his impressive repertoire and just as expressive. The sound of a human playing.
10. Good Hold – old style ballad through a circus mirror. Filtered into oblivion.
11. Elise – Built on drones. holds the song together as the rest of the instruments play overtop of it. It’s a safe anchor, and along with the largely unfiltered vocals, it gives the listener something to sink their ears into. It allows Chaz his flights of experimentation without losing touch of the song’s integrity at large
Here’s a little video for “Still Sound” with Chaz getting chased by a ghost – so there’s that:
