17.01.19

“Does sex even sell anymore?” muses Toro y Moi on his sixth studio album, Outer Peace. “I feel like I’ve seen it all/ Or maybe I’m just old/ Or maybe I’m just bored,” he continues, offering an ad hoc treatise for the LP, which finds the artist at odds with the disposability of our contemporary culture and his place as a creator in it. Perhaps as a sleight of hand, earnest lyrics about attempts to re-centre oneself in a hyper-attentive world are wrapped in feel-good dance grooves and head-bobbing hip-hop throughout the album, almost as if to say the substance is optional.

The Todd Terje-esque lead single, Freelance, explores the plight of the extremely-online-yet-isolated millennial who, he bemoans on New House, can’t afford to actually buy a new house. It’s no coincidence that the album’s most poignant statements are also its most sonically muted. Outer Peace ultimately strikes a cool balance between playfulness and pensivity, the energy of youth and the calm of adulthood, and introspection that avoids becoming too morose or cynical.

Krystal Rodriguez