Album: "Boo Boo" by Toro y Moi
Release Date: July 7
Label: Carpark Records
Duration: 49 minutes
Grade: B+
Columbia native and USC alumni Chaz Bundick, a.k.a popular alternative musician Toro y Moi, has slowly morphed from being a young artist of maddening substance variation into an elder statesman of a genre of music he helped pioneer. Even though he and most other artists responsible for the rise of “chillwave” distance themselves from that label, Toro y Moi has nevertheless mastered the art of creating pulsing beats that seem to come at you flawlessly like a fleet of headlights.
His latest album “Boo Boo” has him up front, producing his own tracks at his highest level yet. Gone are his catchy singles. He has turned towards more melancholy territory. The opening track “Mirage” gets down to an effortlessly funky confessional. The walls of sounds Bundick delicately creates is the album’s most impressive feature. Always a consummate singer especially on “Boo Boo," Bundick’s vocals attack himself and what he has done to cause this much absence inside of him.
As mentioned previously, what stands out on “Boo Boo” is Bundick’s production maturity. His songs “Pavement” and “Don’t Try” are very reminiscent of Vangelis’ haunting score from “Blade Runner." The winding synth leads to tense resolutions to great effect. But this new skill and mindset can still create the familiar, with lead single “Girl Like You” being the reminder of how Bundick makes the basic ideas bloom a bit fuller.
Throughout the album, Bundick creates one of his most consistent artistic statements of his long career. No longer an up and coming star, it makes sense for someone who originally started out making music by himself on his laptop to be overwhelmed by all this attention. In helping ushering the “chillwave” movement, a new genre could be explored, but the path to navigate it as a career was still unknown. For better or for worse, Bundick has taken everything he’s done in stride in order to pull off a lasting impression.
Bundick strikes each song with his dreamy effects that call upon the perfect ideas to get around your head: lost love, confronting your own ego and the beauty of summer. Multiple listens to “Boo Boo” gives you little nuggets that hooks you on to it for future enjoyment. This subtlety shows great professionalism, but it shows a changed Bundick.
His songs seem to wander in the distance and trail off. The stronger songs in his previous albums like “Anything in Return” and “Underneath the Pine” are not to be found on “Boo Boo." It’s good to see Bundick changing his dynamic. But when you close out your album with the seven minute song, “W.I.W.W.T.W” and the only wake up call the listener has is when the album comes to an end, it can be disappointing.
No matter what Bundick comes up with next and how new or familiar it may be, it will be the byproduct of his journey to unexpected stardom, and I will be excited to hear him out.