Toro y Moi, Panda Bear, Nourished By Time played Roadrunner – 2/12
Three artists in complementary modes of dreaminess took over Allston’s Roadrunner last week.
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I was recently roasted in the comments section of the Boston Globe 2024 albums of the year list for applying the tag “hypnagogic pop” to Cindy Lee’s monolithic masterpiece Diamond Jubilee, and you know what, I’m here to defend “hypnagogic.” The term evokes a certain dreamy, out-of-time psychedelia and can loosely but accurately cover a wide swath of music in a know-it-when-you-hear-it kind of sense. Genre tags are a fun shorthand in the realm of music writing and chatter, and I say the weirder and more silly-specific they are, the better. Long live hypnagogic.
I bring it up because I think last Wednesday’s bill at Roadrunner, featuring chillwave forerunner Toro y Moi, Animal Collective’s Panda Bear and neo-alt-R&B luminary Nourished By Time, falls under the umbrella. Three artists making distinctly different music, but operating in something of a shared language of vibes.
Since rising to prominence alongside contemporaries like Washed Out and Neon Indian amid the chillwave-wave of the late ’00s, Chaz Bundick’s Toro y Moi project has traversed hazy bedroom psych, synth-funk and even cloud rap circa last year’s Hole Erth, and he treated an eager Roadrunner crowd to all corners of his sound alongside a three-piece band last week. Clustered tightly together at the center of an otherwise sparse stage (not unlike how Neil and Crazy Horse were setting up in huge spaces during that last tour), the foursome focused on grooves and feel much moreso than stagecraft – not that their audience minded.
And speaking of stage setups, I headed into the Panda Bear portion of the evening fully expecting the traditional configuration of Noah Lennox totally solo, perched behind his signature podium of synths and gadgets. It was practically shocking to instead see him fronting a sunny-sounding four-piece psych band. Other hallmarks of the Animal Collective extended universe persisted though, including a setlist heavy on yet-unreleased material and a few oldies (including Tomboy favorite “Slow Motion”) reworked and reshaped. It was a neat twist that suggests some intriguing possibilities for Panda’s forthcoming Sinister Grift LP.
As for opener Nourished By Time – aka Baltimore’s Marcus Brown – I last caught him at Berklee’s postage-stamp-sized Cafe 939 last year, and those woozy, singular songs more than confidently made the jump to a real stage and a booming soundsystem at Roadrunner. Brown has the songs and the charismatic aura to sell them; he’s undeniably a guy to keep your eye on.
Scroll below for photos from the whole evening.
