Even when he was being feted as one of the key players on the late-00s chillwave scene, it was clear that Chaz Bear’s achilles heel was that his production skills comfortably eclipsed his ability to write actual memorable songs. A decade on, his seventh album as Toro y Moi suggests that not much has changed. Woozily maximalist psychedelia meshes with disengaged, treated vocals, funk basslines (Postman) and lo-NRG disco (Millennium), and it all sounds suitably opulent. Every so often, the disparate elements coalesce into something special, most notably on the gorgeous Days in Love, which would have sat nicely on Tame Impala’s Lonerism. Almost as good is the gently seductive Goes By So Fast, which echoes English Riviera-era Metronomy.
Just as frequently, however, the disparate elements remain resolutely just that, and the resulting sketches sound frustratingly half-baked. It’s possible to listen to Foreplay several times in quick succession without it leaving even the faintest trace in the memory. Likewise, Déjà Vu is so instantly forgettable it might have been better titled Jamais Entendu. Mahal is ultimately too uneven to be an album to particularly cherish.
