Hole Erth Toro Y Moi

explicit

Released on 9/6/24 by Dead Oceans
Main artists: Toro y Moi
Genre: Alternative & Indie

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Chaz Bear—aka Toro Y Moi—has never let moss grow. Over his first seven albums, he made himself an armchair (or greater) expert in hip-hop, house, electro, guitar rock, R&B, jazz, disco and boogie. But Hole Erth, the singer/songwriter/producer's eighth album, feels like a breakthrough. Opener "Walking in the Rain" manages to make romance out of a Victoria Beckham namecheck, glacial synth and SoundCloud rap beats, with reverb applied like an aural memory. "I'm in Paris in the cab/ Facing backwards," Bear sing-raps, but his mind is somewhere else: "Looking at some pyramids full of broken statues/ Reminds me, she's naked on the terrace." Indeed, Bear is in a nostalgic mood. On lightly burbling "CD-R," he reminisces about the early days of his career, back in the late aughts. "I remember burning CD-Rs/ Outside every single dive bar/ Every windshield in the parking lot/ Kinko's boxes filling up the trunk," he sings, recalling how even the hard times of touring—"Why they book us with no driving days? We beginners"—were "transcendental." But even before what's seen as his chillwave pioneer days, Bear (né Bundick) was in a high-school indie-rock band. And he's up for revisiting those glory days, too. "Tuesday" is total pop-punk bubblegum, fuzzed out with bratty blares of noise, and Bear adopts a classic emo pose for "HOV," both in tonal delivery and lyrics: "Romance is so cold/ My advice? To bring a coat." He even taps Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard to croon, indie-rock lullaby style, on "Hollywood" while Bear himself raps. As they say in Hollywood, the sentimental song ends with the perfect button: the sound of a dial-up modem. "Heaven," meanwhile, interpolates the Broken Social Scene classic "Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl" from 2002. Bear wisely called on rapper Kevin Abstract for a guest spot, and his husky, hushed style offers an appealing contrast to the song's metallic edge. Don Toliver cameos on two great songs. "Undercurrent," which also features Porches, is an echo chamber of moody rap-rock. And Toliver's voice is like a weighted blanket on low-key "Madonna," where Bear's slippery beats dart like a school of tiny fish, interrupted only by the occasional rev of motors streaking through the background. Bear pulls out some nifty tricks for "Starlink," bending, folding and glitching Glaive's nervy style, then manipulating the vocals to almost sound like a saxophone, and sounds like he's having a great time with rappers Duckwrth and Elijah Kessler, trading parts and harmonies on "Reseda." It's emo rap (sure, why not?) with anthemic guitar, while "Off Road" dips into the anxious/excited thing Donald Glover does so well: "Trapped in Pasadena/ Stuck behind a Prius…next thing I know, we're going off-road." Follow him anywhere. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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Hole Erth

Toro y Moi

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Walking In The Rain