Number Nine: Toro y Moi - Anything in Return (2013, of course)

Carpark Records ■ CAK77

Released January 16, 2013

Produced by Chaz Bundick

Engineered by Patrick Brown, Second Engineer Jorge Hernandez

Mixed by Patrick Brown and Chaz Bundick

Mastered by Joe Lambert

Side One:	Side Two:
Harm in Change Say That So Many Details	Rose Quartz Touch Cola

Side Three:	Side Four:
Studies High Living Grown Up Calls	Cake Day One Never Matter How's It Wrong

Toro y Moi came to me via the broadcast that is staff overhead selection at one of the music stores I frequent on longer trips--Lunchbox Records in Charlotte, NC. The album had been out for all of two months when I heard "Cake" playing there and decided to go with an instinct I'd previously experienced during my endless trips to CD Alley in Chapel Hill in years prior. I'd never heard of Toro y Moi, nothing new for me and my complete obliviousness to modern independent music, except as it filters in by chance or through the few friends who track it.

As it was the one I heard (a reasoning that also inspired the purchase of records like Tobacco's Maniac Meat and Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation), it was the first one I purchased. Causers of This followed in April, and then it was the synchronicity of a work trip to Atlanta that led me to see Toro y Moi in concert in October last year. I picked up the rest of his albums, as well as a few odd singles and the 3x7" box set of bedroom recordings that was released as well. Still, Anything in Return is the one I return to most often.

At that show, Chaz was the closest thing I've seen to a superstar. Classixx opened for him (new to me, and worth checking out, as their Hanging Gardens could easily slip into an expanded top list for last year), but when he came out, it was unlike anything I'm used to in small venues or even large ones. There's a roar for bands, and everyone is often focused on vocalists, but the fact that Chaz does his albums "Prince-style" (in the impossible-to-read-in-the-LP notes, it mentions he performed the entire album alone) seemed to shift the tone, somehow. The crowd was larger, it was a different kind of music, a different kind of venue, but there was still something to it.

It's a bit strange, to be honest--not undeserved, but almost out of keeping with his music. He was first identified with the aptly-named "chillwave", one of those terms that seemed a flash-in-the-pan, but defiantly remains in use as many such things do, thanks to sheer bull-headedness. Unlike his earlier work, though, Anything is a lot more energetic. That said, the energy is of a subdued and extremely cool variety, in most slang senses of the world, and often even a bit of the metaphorical incarnation of the most "literal" use of the word.