Toro Y Moi and Esben and the Witch are two relatively unknown acts that released albums in February and played in Denver last year.
When it comes to music, the two acts have hardly anything in common.
However, Toro Y Moi and Esben & the Witch are both exciting young acts with newly released albums that deserve attention.
Toro Y Moi – the stage name of singer-songwriter Chazwick Bundick – broke out last year with well received debut album Causers of This, a thoroughly glitchy and melodramatic electronic affair whose only real sense of humanity came from Bundick’s inviting, sensitive vocals.
Toro’s rapidly released sophomore effort Underneath the Pine offers a much more organic and funky approach but still clearly demonstrates Bundick’s undeniable charm as a front man, as well as his knack for crafting a captivating and cohesive sonic atmosphere.
It is an album full of concise, mid-tempo electro-funk numbers, each utilizing an impressively eclectic palette of instruments. Pulsing electronic keyboards, jazzy guitars, acoustic and synthetic drums, and the occasional piano, horn, or string track, in combination with Bundick’s constant vocal layering and harmonization create a lushness that constantly draws the listener in and never comes off as forced or overtly cluttered.
The best tracks are “New Beat” and “Still Sound,” both undeniably funky and catchy, “Light Black” stands as a perfect combination of Toro new and old, and title track “How I Know” has a surprisingly big chorus that’s sure to floor any listener with its sublime beauty and earnestness.
Underneath the Pine is a thoroughly enjoyable and danceable record that signals the arrival of one of the new decade’s most promising young indie talents. The indisputable quality of the record assures that, while Toro Y Moi’s music may now be a “new beat” for many, it certainly won’t stay that way for long.
As for, Esben & the Witch, they are an indie rock group fresh out of Brighton, England, whose gothic sound stands in practically polar opposition to the electro-funk of Toro Y Moi.
The drums pound at a deliberately slow pace, and the guitars reverberate throughout the sonic landscape with a destructive growl, but the focus remains always on Esben & The Witch’s female vocalist, Rachel Davies, who constantly soaks her band’s instrumentations with a molten alto drone that simultaneously freezes and burns with every cascading note.
Esben & the Witch has the sound of a nightmare, one from which the listener feels there may be no escape. This is minor-key music, no doubt about it, and “Violet Cries” would not sound out of place as the soundtrack to a horror film.
Despite Esben & the Witch’s unearthly sound, its songs never stray too far from the harsh realities of human interaction, with each song representing a different emotion that one experiences in any intimate relationship.
On lead single “Marching Song,” Davies sounds positively formidable, growling: “Your veins are my trenches,/my gun is my own.” On “Chorea,” however, Davies comes off as agonized, with her voice twisting and trembling as she attempts to maintain some sort of control in the presence of an emotional monster. In the end, the monster wins, with the song culminating in a swirling vocal crescendo that is suddenly cut short – the speaker gives up.
With its debut album, Esben & the Witch have done more than simply create a collection of songs; they have constructed a well-defined sonic atmosphere, one in which the monsters to fear the most aren’t hiding away in some attic. Rather they live deep inside of you. It is a place where the familiar is terrifying, the dark is beautiful and love truly is a battlefield.
