Toro Y Moi must be exhausted. The experimental chillwave band have been touring since the beginning of March to promote their new album, Underneath the Pine, and their show at Local 506 in Chapel Hill this Friday was the last stop on their US tour as they head home to South Carolina for a few weeks before crossing the pond.They seemed exhausted. For a such a highly anticipated sold-out show on a Friday night during the budding of springtime in a college town, I was expecting something a bit more bubbly.
When you listen to the album, it spins and reverberates around you with Chaz Bundick's voice ridding on top of blown-out keyboard jangles and plucky guitar riffs like a convertible coasting along a back country road.
But playing live, it felt like they were on auto-pilot. There was a certain lack of connectivity with the audience that - combined with the stream of one song ellipsing into another and the lava-lamp effects moving across the stage backdrop - reminded me of all the lackluster jam band shows I was dragged to in high school.
At the end of the set Chaz smiled and politely thanked the audience as the band left without playing an encore, but then again, the crowd wasn't really demanding one.
Montreal-based opening act, Braids, were just as fanciful live as they are on their new album, Native Speaker. The dream-pop/art-rock quartet combine the feminine yelping vocal techniques of some of the best Arcade Fire songs, with the experimental looping styles of Animal Collective, and little hints of the rustic falsetto of tUnE -yArDs.
Lead singer, Raphaelle Strandell-Preston's, voice swells out in all directions through fluttering synth notes and pattering drums. It's as mythical and woodsy as a German fairytale, but also just as subversive.
