What For?
Carpark Records
What For? is Chaz Bundick’s latest 10-song venture into indie-pop-rock as Toro Y Moi. Bundick’s work has been lathered in self-doubt from day one; he stuck to simple, playing-softly-in-the-back-of-an-urban-coffee-shop chillwave from 2010’s Leave Everywhere to Anything In Return (2013).
There were moments within his retrospective, June 2009, where Bundick dropped the uncomplicated pleasantry that denominates indie-rock, sounding like a much more carefully curated craft in comparison to his earlier works. What For? gives us the sense that, gradually, Toro Y Moi is finding its artistic footing, however Bundick is still a by-product of mass-produced caricatures of Ariel Pink and Tame Impala, without any self-defining, dividing aspects. Buffalo doesn’t fall too far from that tree, but it certainly takes on a much more psych-pop methodology (vaguely likened to Tame Impala’s Innerspeaker) where we can better feel for Bundick’s principle creative intention.
Bundwick is a potentially brilliant artist, and though What For? has not transgressed beyond a popular culture mimic, perhaps some day Toro Y Moi will breed something as prospectively phenomenal as he very inherently could.
CLAUDIA NATHAN
