Toro y Moi - Underneath the Pine (2011)

This time around Chazwick Bundick takes distance from the Chillwave movement he was sort of being part of, he admitted that he didn’t want to be labelled like a Chillwave kind of musician; on this idea he took different elements and dived into a new sound, and for an artist like Chazwick this elements were traditional, guitars, pianos, bass, and real drumming, all of them refreshing the sound and making the Toro y Moi experience a different one that anyone could expect.

If compared to Causers of This (other than the vocals), this are two different sides of making music; this time around since the intro “Intro Chi Chi”, Bundick separates the sound starting with a very distorted guitar and a tambourine, also a piano set to the back in echo and voices on top of it, for some seconds this sound maintains until it brakes down to tropical real drumming and funky bass lines; this sets the beginning of a new way of approaching sound, transforming the Lo-Fi Chillwave into a Funk experience.

The single is another example of this new sound, on purpose named “New Beat”, because the feeling that drums and bass can add to Lo-Fi and a guy that knows this kind of production too well make a completely new experience for Bundick, there’s some disco beats, playful production tweaks added to real instruments and its a much more clean production this time, still in tracks like “Good Hold” the sound fades away for a while and all you have left is the echo on the distance that suddenly rushes back to the front, distance and closeness forced by sound tweaking of the production, but everything sounds more planned and less accidental (though the accidents of sound production in ‘Causers of This’ are completely intentional and an important part of the charm), and then “Divina” brings piano to the table, and then “Before I’m Done” intentionally adds acoustic guitar to the formula. What makes it Toro y Moi is the playing with the sides of the headphones, where the sound will come from, “Before I’m Done” also ends up with ambient electronic after he well played the acoustic and the funky drums and bass.

But probably the best songs in this LP are not the ones that make us remember what use to be Toro y Moi, but the ones that shows us that new sound, songs like “New Beat”, “Still Sound”, and a kind of psychedelic experimental rock song like “Light Back” that reminded me a little to the sort of experimentation that MGMT were making with their last LP if it were had been a little bit more Lo-Fi. It was a surprise to listen this side of Toro y Moi, not because in the past it wasn’t there because songs like “Imprint After” had the funk hidden behind the chill, is just that this time you don’t have a musician with different digital sounds mixing them in a basement with a tape recorder, this time is “real music making” with real instruments; maybe some will miss the old romance of a solo artist with the tape recorder and the computer, but I liked this new twist. Now to the question is it better? Is it worst? That’s something that can’t be said, is different and probably will appeal to a different audience or to a more open kind of listener but you can’t compare winter and summer, each season has its charm.

Tracklist:

1. Intro Chi Chi
2. New Beat
3. Go With You
4. Divina
5. Before I'm Done
6. Got Blinded
7. How I Know
8. Light Black
9. Still Sound
10. Good Hold
11. Elise

Rate: 7.2/10

Google That Shit!

Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

If I tell you that there’s an album with chilly airy guitars, saxophones, sexy girls chorus, an occasional flout and 80’s light rock vibe and on top of it that it’s good I’m sure that pretty much everyone would look at my like I finally snapped. The worst part that that’s what I’m about to tell you.

There’s a band called Destroyer, known for 60’s inspired songs of indie rock and a notorious influence of Pavement and Bowie, this band has been around since the 90’s and a lot of times has been a one member band fronted by Dan Bejar, also part of The New Pornographers, part of indie super group Swan Lake, collaborator of Bonaparte, and other half of Hello, Blue Roses. This guy is true royalty and has made an album called Kaputt with his band Destroyer…and Kaputt it’s about a very accurate title for the album because is a very calmed explosion that will take over my music year.

Bejar has passed through a lot of genres (Folk, Chamber Pop, Shoegaze, Glam Rock), but Kaputt is kind of a really new twist because it takes things that in time just haven’t been part of the “good music” scene, or the “indie” scene, or the “hipster” scene or really any scene for the last years, adding very kitsch instrumentation but ambitioning a sincerely good effect, of course I’m talking about the distinctive 80’s saxophone light rock, the flout, and the watery guitars sticking to a very classic serious light rock, it seems like saxophone, 80’s and good music could only be together if the intention of the music is going to be “C0heese and Corn”, if not then we have to fear failure, and that’s kind of the fear I have when mixing seriousness with 80’s and saxophones.

Sure, we all can love a little bit of that era, and enjoy it, but it’s sort of something that didn’t necessarily had to come back until Destroyer got this LP out, it’s weird how it touches very well known areas of adult 80’s rock trying to gimmick jazz in the 80’s and still sound fresh, new, calmed and not nostalgic at all, you can’t mistake this LP with a time different than now, because the process of making it sounds like that it can only be possible after the 90’s, if one of the main influences of Destroyer is Pavement, in this LP I swear I hear Sade (or something like that), and I swear I love it.

The songs in here have very strange lyrics, about struggling with freedom and American, also girls, sensuality more than sex and drugs. It starts with Chinatown that really captures the sentiment of the album and all goes building until the middle with the truly amazing song Suicide Demo for Kara Walker and every now and then talks about songs for America until at last it gets to the actual Songs for America song and raps up with Bay of Pigs (kid of political but also kind of disguised).

This is an Album that is not worth reviewing per se, I just recommend it really hard because not one of this nine songs are out of place, and they are calmed and long and patient but also very entertaining, it’s really a quality album.

Tracklist:

1. Chinatown
2. Blue Eyes
3. Savage Night At The Opera
4. Suicide Demo For Kara Walker
5. Poor In Love
6. Kaputt
7. Downtown
8. Song For America
9. Bay Of Pigs

Rate: 9.6/10

Google That Shit!