Toro y Moi photographed by Chris Maggio, styled by LAUR
by Ben Bonadies
You can tell a lot about a band by the way its fans dress at their concerts. In some ways style can function as a substitute for genre. Tie-dye and psychedelic rock, boot cut jeans and country, Doc Martens and punk. Everyone who comes to the show knows what the dress code is without being told.
At Toro y Moi’s stop at House of Blues, I felt I had stepped into the #ForYouPage of Boston’s 18-24 set. Chunky color block polos. Designer brands (choice item: Balenciaga Bernie Sanders denim jacket.) Jean shorts cropped both above and below the knee, bafflingly. Cross-body bags. Checkerboard.
At the merch stand, the apparel is reminiscent of the pale-yet-colorful designs lining the racks of Urban Outfitters and similarly hip retailers. The tee shirts on offer would feel right at home in the wardrobes of probably every person in this crowd, a sign of a job well done.
Toro y Moi principal Chaz Bear has made a career of placing himself a few paces ahead of the pack. One need not look far for evidence of his zeitgeistiness. Mahal single “Postman” plays during a Hotels.com ad for boutique travel destinations, places where only the coolest of the cool would dare to take a vacation. He sings about his position at the forefront of culture on Mahal cut “The Loop,” where his penchant for tastes that “border cringe” begin to lose their luster with overuse. Here, in a crowd pulled straight from the pages of a Depop lookbook, it’s hard to argue with him.
Toro y Moi photographed by Chris Maggio, styled by LAUR
Onstage, Bear is on his pop star shit. He stands apart from his band (just keyboard, bass, and a guy at a DJ booth) (no live drums!) and spent most of the night as MC, prancing up and down the stage, microphone in hand, engaging with the crowd. The staging itself is minimal but effective, just a trio of LED panels which, accompanied by front lighting, were made to look like slivers of sunlight thrown onto a wall slowly tracing their way down as the sun sets. It’s an evocative piece of stagecraft that suits the chilled out funk of the early set.
During the band’s high energy middle stretch of songs, Bear dipped into his catalog’s dancier side, and the turntable really got its chance to shine. Bear joined in at the booth to trigger samples and programmed beats, speaking to his history with house music and his Les Sins side project. Getting a big room like the House of Blues to dance is no easy feat, even at your own concert, but Bear has the right combination of fans and tunes that really activate a crowd.
As the set wound down, Bear kicked on the auto-tune in his mic for mid-tempo sing-rap experiments “Monte Carlo” and “Brand New House.” Outliers on their respective albums, these tracks feel perfectly suited to this moment in pop and to the sea of tucked in tees in the crowd: melancholic vocals, eerie synths, and the steady beat of 808s keeping heads bobbing.
“Who cares about the party?” Bear sings on “Who I Am,” “I came to see the band play.” At a Toro y Moi show, the band playing is the party, one entirely under Bear’s creative influence. The soundtrack, of course, is his. But what the guests don’t know is that they’re wearing his clothing line, too.