About six months removed from the summer of chillwave, Toro Y Moi's debut LP is being released in the dead of winter. Which is kind of great, if only because it prohibits us from falling back on categorizing Chaz Bundick's sound as "beach music." After all, chillwave was never really about the beach. Even if the springy sounds of Neon Indian and Washed Out often felt coastal and waterlogged, the style was always more about texture and atmosphere than it was about place. As Bundick told me in a recent interview, "The beach thing is coincidental. If I look at a band like Best Coast or Wavves, they live on the beach. I go to the beach, like, once a year."
The other hump to get over when discussing chillwave is the purported sameyness of the artists involved. You know, the idea that Toro Y Moi isn't really that different from Washed Out, Memory Tapes is basically an ambient Neon Indian, and so forth. This one's a little more difficult because there really are clear aesthetic similarities between these guys. Still, there are distinctions. Looking at Toro Y Moi in comparison to Washed Out and Neon Indian, the main difference is that the latter two put more of an emphasis on hooks. Their songs are generally catchier and more straightforwardly composed. Bundick, on the other hand, is more producer than songwriter. While they might lack the immediacy of a "Deadbeat Summer" or "Feel It All Around", his tracks often have deeper, more interesting layers.
Which approach you prefer will impact how much you get out of Causers of This. The album is geared more toward those who appreciate production, and in some ways is a departure from Bundick's earlier singles such as "109" and "Sad Sams". At times guitar-based, those songs were generally pretty punchy and utilized a fair amount of lo-fi tape hiss. Here, though, Bundick embraces a cleaner and mellower sound that's more indebted to hip-hop. He wears his inspirations proudly, and throughout there's a clear nod to producers like J Dilla and Flying Lotus. What he extracts from these sources, Bundick combines with his own vocals and other instrumentation to make warm, wobbly pop songs that, while not always as catchy as his contemporaries', are distinctive and appealing in their own right.
The album starts out strong with a string of tracks that showcase Bundick's range. First two songs "Blessa" and "Minors" exhibit his pop sensibilities, setting a wash of vocals over looped electro-funk instrumentals and crisp drum programming. Here Bundick strikes a nice balance between sticky vocal melodies and the undulating arrangements that feature through the rest of the record. On other tracks in the first half, he takes on genre experiments with similar success-- first jaunty piano soul on "Imprint After" and then sparkly disco with "Lissoms", the album's most propulsive moment. While these songs are all enjoyable, "Fax Shadow" serves as the best representation of Toro's potential. It's the most complex track here, and in its Dilla soul sampling and distorted beat pattern, Bundick shows production skill far beyond most of his peers.
Each of these songs work in a similar way. Instead of using crude production, he manipulates sounds to create texture. It's the way "Freak Love"'s drums fall off that enhances its mood, not that they sound blown-out or tinny. This craftsmanship carries him through most of the album, but begins to fade towards the end. Bundick doesn't run out of ideas at this point, but his balance of arrangement and song feels off. "You Hid" is wobbly but one-note, lacking punch, and the closing title track is too cluttered. If Causers of This stayed consistent through the end, it might be up there with the assured debuts of his peers; instead, it's just a few notches below.
