There is a scene at the beginning of the ‘70s cult classic The Warriors where underworld messiah Cyrus calls the gangs of New York together for a midnight summit. The topic is city domination and the crowd is quickly dissolving into chatter until Cyrus reminds the crowd how impossible the gathering itself is.
“The Moonrunners are standing right by the Van Courtland Rangers…and nobody is wasting nobody.” Gloriously pulpy, ‘70s movie bloodshed should’ve followed as members recognized their enemies around them, but for a moment, the crowd was completely in the palm of Cyrus’s hand.
Of course, the gloriously pulpy, ‘70s movie bloodshed followed a couple scenes later, but that’s beside the point…
The crowd at Paradise was certainly more docile and devoid of bedazzled team attire, but Toro Y Moi’s pull of fans certainly made as much sense as Cyrus’s summit. Baseball jerseys chatted with top-buttoned Urban Outfitter purveyors. Grey haired fathers mingled with collegiate guys in letterman jackets without apprehension. And ultimately, the nervous energy that most fans would carry for a band making their biggest stylistic shift four albums deep into their career was wholly absent.
The album in question, this year’s What For?, outed the once-chillwave forefather as a full-on progressive pop enthusiast, grabbing influence from the endearingly cheesy synthwork of your dad’s Steve Miller Band LPs and ditching the sample-heavy gaze of past LPs. Singles like early summer anthem contender “Empty Nesters” were practically designed for his well intact festival crowd, but the question facing leader Chaz Bundick was whether the rest of his retro-inspired set would unite such disparate factions of Toro fandom.
In front of a Merriweather-aping backdrop, psychedelic shoegaze openers Vinyl Williams showed no signs of hiding any nostalgic notions. Taking equal cues from Tame Impala and The Horrors, Williams would have floating off into guitar pedal heaven if it wasn’t for their drummer remaining fully locked, pulling everyone back in just a few blissful feet off the ground.
Toro, by comparison, roared directly in with the racecar-sampling “What You Want” to an equally deafening roar from the crowd. I’m pretty sure Chaz Bundick has never been without a goofy smile during Toro’s live show, but his grin was contagious whenever he swapped keyboards for What For’s guitar-heavy tracks. Running through the entire album during the massive 19-song set, standouts like the strutting “Buffalo” and syrupy “Lilly” took on a dancier edge under the direction of Toro’s phenomenal live band, which found room to expand on For?’s already lush sound.
“Massachusetts is just bringing it these last two nights,” the coy Bundick added for explanation of the supersized set, although no one was even remotely complaining. During the woozy “Ratcliff” though, Bundick repeated the line, “rock and roll is here to stay” in mantra, which could’ve been misconstrued as an identity crisis rather than an affirmation in the wake of the encore.
“So Many Details” and “Say That”, both cuts from the more PBR&B-favoring Anything In Return, clearly left the fuzzy confines of What For?’s rock worship to invite the Paradise to a night-ending dance party. This should’ve split a room between fans of old and new, but, if anything, it solidified Toro’s Cyrus-like grip on the audience as the entire room let their limbs loose without embarrassment.
In the swirling, chameleon-like world of Chaz Bundick, all dancers, rock purists, and opinions are welcome, although it’s almost inevitable that any of your shaky opinions will give way to some truly horrible, dad-level dance moves burning inside you.
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