Popcorn Noises

Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine

And so, perhaps as quickly as it began, the nascent chillwave scene in American indie rock summarily ends. OK maybe that’s over-selling it just a tad, but it does seem that, with his second album, Chaz Bundick has learned what godfather Ariel Pink found out on his last record (we need not be buried in inverted lo-fi VHS haze to explore these old sounds), as well as what Dan Bejar proved with his latest Destroyer outing (the spectrum of ‘smooth’ music is much wider and richer than you think). Back when first single “Still Sound” appeared in December, I wrote about how it seemed like Bundick was an artist in search of his sound, already too big for the britches with which he’d first been fitted. Underneath the Pine, then, is our glimpse into the next step of his artistic development, though certainly not the final destination.

In a lot of ways, Bundick is still working within the same loose concepts of sonic nostalgia, laid-back vibes, and a sense of puppyish vulnerability that evades any bloody specificity, but the forms his work takes have shifted somewhat. There is the aforementioned “Still Sound,” which puts a blocky funk bass line against a slick disco strut for one of Toro Y Moi’s grooviest moments to date, as well as the sunshine soul of “New Beat,” which follows the trail of Daft Punk’s vintage synth squiggles back to Stevie Wonder, making a very strong bid for the most immediately likable song in his short catalog. But where these two songs are undoubtedly some of Pine’s brightest standouts (and likely fan favorites), they don’t actually speak all that well to where much of the album goes. Bundick builds a lot of these songs out of thick, iterating piano chords (Innervisions style) while also situating them in a kind of dated, almost nautical setting that can be too murky and harrowing to be rightly called ‘life-affirming’ (or some other such Wonder-ish term). Remember those short Sven Libaek pieces from the Life Aquatic soundtrack? Or “Bennie and the Jets?” I hear a similar 70s vibe and windy sense of adventure at work here, minus much of the whimsy.

That’s not to say that Pine is a dark album, but it is a conflicted one that inadvertently pines (!!!) for ‘simpler’ times the way the heavily filtered sounds on Causers of This did. “This is where I want you to take me when I die…underneath the pine on a bed of leaves,” goes a titular line from “How I Know,” as Bundick drapes his thin voice in ride cymbals and propulsive chords, but the ache extends beyond his words in places like the careening wails of “Got Blinded” or the spooky dissonance of “Good Hold.” There’s no doubt his songwriting is improving, but one only needs to get through the album’s first track—the slow-built groove “Intro Chi Chi”—to be reminded of his exceptional knack for production and arrangement. Where on Causers he used synth-y bedroom aesthetics to his advantage, here he transcends them by crafting a record that feels wholly analog, a one-man band that sounds like five veteran players.

This is how Pine earns both its greatest and most back-handed complement. It’s probably one of the best sounding records you’ll hear all year, what with its sophisticated soul-pop constructions playing so wonderfully against its ear-hugging production. But if that sounds like a tacit criticism of Bundick’s presence as a writer and performer, well, I think the shoe fits. The widening divide between his often wounded, mewling, far-off singing and the effusive energy and detail of his music throws into relief the variance in levels of confidence across disciplines. Like I said at the beginning of this review, though: all this means is that he hasn’t quite arrived at his wheelhouse, an idea that makes that much more sense when you remember he’s still only 24 years old and on his second album. In the mean time, Underneath the Pine is a highly enjoyable listen that provides more than enough reason to stick around for whatever Bundick’s going to do next.