Outer Peace sounds exactly as zen as you’d imagine, and its new sounds and introspective lyrics show that for Toro y Moi, serenity can still come with a sense of adventure.
Chaz Bear (fka Chaz Bundick) is a man on mission, and that mission seems to be proving that he’s the chillest guy around. How chill? For starters, when he launched his main project Toro y Moi in 2009, he found himself in the ridiculously-named “holy trinity of chillwave” alongside Washed Out and Neon Indian. While the perplexing label “chillwave” proved to have a great deal of sticking power, Bear has since moved well beyond the hazy synths and looped samples of his debut Causers of This. He’s edged into R&B (Anything in Return), toyed with hip-hop beats (Michael, as “Les Sins”), dabbled in psychedelic rock (What For?), and most recently went minimalist (Boo Boo). Yet no matter the style, Bear’s chillness has remained the defining constant.
With this characterization in mind, it’s hard to think of a more appropriate title for Toro Y Moi’s sixth studio album than Outer Peace. Bear’s music has long suggested he’s already found “inner peace,” but as he explains, “usually the peace is within, so to have peace on the outside is the challenge.” To this end, Outer Peace sounds exactly as zen as you’d imagine, but this doesn’t mean settling; the album’s new sounds and introspective lyrics show that for Toro y Moi, serenity can still come with a sense of adventure.
The first glimpses of Outer Peace suggested that Toro y Moi might have come full circle on the whole “chillwave” thing. Opening track “Fading” undulates with distorted synths and howling vocal samples over a drum machine, and its warm tones will remind you why the subgenre was often associated with the summer. Lead single “Freelance” has enough distortion effects to lean into chillwave, but its funky bassline, house beat, and distinctive synthesizer melodies make it a beast all its own. You won’t even care about categorization anyway on this track, as Bear’s vocals totally steals the show. Here, he goes between using his voice like an instrument to transform syllables into beats (as in “walk on the water-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah”), to singing very candid lines like “no more shoes and socks I only rock sandals/I can’t tell if I’m hip or getting old.”
The grooves on Outer Peace are an unexpected highlight, injecting a dose of vitality into Toro y Moi’s normally decaffeinated electronic music. Standout track “Laws of the Universe” has the most prominent bassline of any Toro y Moi song to date, which combined with its scattered synthesizer sounds more like a Daft Punk or LCD Soundsystem effort than something Bear would make. Speaking of LCD Soundsystem, this track contains what is probably not the first ever lyrical shout-out to James Murphy, but what is definitely the first ever reference to 90’s Nickelodeon claymation sketch “Prometheus and Bob.” The track “Who I Am” is the closest Toro y Moi has come to ever making straight-up dance music, with Bear singing in a pitched-up tone over synthpop instrumentals that echo Miami Horror. “Ordinary Pleasure” takes a step in this amped-up, funky direction as well, with a bass part that’s on par with “Laws of the Universe,” but its glam chorus of “maximize all the pleasure” makes it sound a little like an off-kilter condom ad.
The other half of Outer Peace consists of slower, more R&B-sounding tracks that feature guest vocalists and/or Bear singing in auto-tune. He’s touched on this style before with “Windows” and “Inside My Head” on Boo Boo, and to be sure, tracks like “Baby Drive It Down” and “Monte Carlo” on Outer Peace could arguably have fit right in on that album. However, of all of Toro y Moi’s past works, Outer Peace most closely resembles his oft-overlooked 2015 mixtape Samantha. For instance, you may be taken aback by Outer Peace’s “Miss Me,” where guest vocalist Abra takes the helm and Bear is only present in the form of his sparse beats, but this guest-in-the-limelight setup was the foundation of Samantha. Additionally, this mixtape showed Bear’s penchant for experimenting with hip-hop sounds, which is strongly audible on Outer Peace’s “New House.” While each of these tracks are enjoyable individually, listeners might grow a little tired of the auto-tuned signing on the album, especially when faced with the back-to-back of “Monte Carlo” and “50-50.” Toro y Moi may have played with this direction before, but it truthfully feels a little disappointing compared to the inventiveness of his previous styles, especially when accounting for the glut of auto-tuned singers over R&B-esque beats out there now.
Much of Toro y Moi’s previous lyrics were centered on love and relationships, yet Outer Peace is decidedly more focused on more at-hand issues. For starters, Bear is apparently starting to feel his age around the younger, hipper crowd. He questions if he’s getting old not only in the aforementioned “Freelance,” but also wonders “Does sex even sell anymore? I feel like I’ve seen it all, or maybe I’m just old” on “Ordinary Pleasure.” The dance beat of “Who I Am” masks an identity crisis, with the song’s meta-commentary of “this might be my brand new sound, psychedelic, oh, wow” and the deeper “add an accent to your sound, now I don’t know who I am.” Elsewhere, his concerns are more material, like the transportation woes heard on “New House,” “Monte Carlo,” and even “Who I Am” with its sample of a flight attendant’s instructions. Now older and married, Bear’s concerns seem to have gone from heartache to how a new house is “something I cannot buy, something I can’t afford,” which is a refreshingly honest take.
You’re likely to find some degree of Outer Peace’s titular gratification on its tracks, no matter which side of Toro y Moi you prefer. There’s a step into dance music for those who prefer funky beats and a livelier sound, a generous helping of R&B and hip-hop for those who liked Boo Boo and Samantha, and even some throwbacks to chillwave for those who yearn for the Toro y Moi of years past. These facets aren’t all balanced though, and taken all together, there’s probably something on Outer Peace that will harsh your mellow. Still, Chaz Bear remains king of the chill for now, and you know that undeath his placid persona is a real knack for constant musical reinvention.
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