A sample of River Tiber’s track “No Talk” floated in the back half of Drake’s “No Tellin,” sounding like it was playing in a room adjacent to the studio. After that, the Toronto producer and singer/songwriter Tommy Paxton-Beesley started appearing everywhere, collaborating with BADBADNOTGOOD (credited as a cellist on what might one of their best songs “CS60”), Kaytranada, Freddie Gibbs, Mac Miller, and Pusha T. A few weeks ago on Beats 1 Radio, before Zane Lowe played a River Tiber song featuring Kaytranada and Pusha T, he said “I don’t even know what is going on in Toronto right now, but I know that the music sounds like the city looks.” It’s a strange statement on it’s face. What does Toronto look like? On an architectural level, the city is notoriously brutalist and disquietingly postmodern, filled with imposing and amorphous grey concrete and anonymous skyscrapers. Standing from his perch on CN Tower, Drake (aka rap game Jon Stark), the King of the North expresses all the wistful aesthetic those kind of buildings exude. But then demographically it’s incredibly heterogeneous, even for a city on the eastern seaboard, rivaling, if not beating out New York in terms of diversity. Which makes its mix of genres an incredibly interesting melting pot.
So when Zane Lowe talks about the music and the look of Toronto being symmetrical or at least related, what are you supposed to conjure up? If there is any signature sound that is popular in Toronto right now, it’s a melancholic and atmospheric R&B centered around parties gone sour, vape batteries gone dead, and text messages from an ex, from dvsn to Charlotte Day Wilson to Alessia Cara. On his debut album, *Indigo, *Tommy Paxton-Beesley takes a deep swig of that syrup, delivering what is probably one of the best representations of a regional vernacular that keeps getting more and more interesting.
*Indigo *opens up with the “Genesis,” a very loud but perhaps overly ambitious statement song that mimics all the grandeur of James Blake’s Overgrown. It has the feeling and warble of a UFO tractor beam, slowing pulling up a man into unknown. It’s also a good litmus test for what to expect from the record’s rather eclectic combination of instruments. Beesley creates a chilly yet undeniably organic environment from a strange combination of cello, violin, tuba, trombone, percussion, synth, a Rhodes organ, guitar and his own heavily processed voice. “Genesis” is like a good night at a bar, perfectly crowded, but leaves room for chance, and ends just when you want it.
In the following song “No Talk,” (the one Drake sampled) Beesley emerges more clearly, letting his voice becoming more present, multiplying it into a purposefully asymmetrical chorus of inarticulate coos. And then in “Acid Test” the third song on the album, flaws slowly start to emerge. He shares the same jam-band impulses of his collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD, laying down hammy drum solos and full keyboard sweeps freely. It can make his music sometimes overly crowded, very busy, and almost distracting. This is most evident in a song like “Maria,” an uncomfortable echo chamber of off-the-mark vocal processing and dramatic synths. Or “Clarity,” which contains a chord progression that sounds lifted from a soap opera. He works best in pared down and cloudy accompaniments. “West” [ft. Daniel Cesar] pleasantly resembles Chance’s “Summer Friends,” and it creates the same feeling of sleepy nostalgia. In “I’m a Stone” his voice is at its clearest, and amidst slippery synth arpeggios and trickling guitars, his singing seeps through like codeine.
Overall, Beesley successfully gathers all the ambient influence of his city into a set of sounds that harnesses many of the best things we might expect from music in Toronto. It’s cynically romantic, urbane, and just a tad bit mopey. Like his city’s architecture, the music in *Indigo *can at times feel homogenous and out of reach, but it leaves a lasting impression, like leaving an air conditioned room for a humid street. You want to lay there, curled up, protected by the cavernous world that Beesley creates in Indigo.
