Toro y Moi

With Unerthed (Hole Erth Unplugged), Chaz Bear surfaces the songcraft of 2024's Hole Erth, his eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi. Rearranged for guitar, piano, drums, and strings, the collection adds a curious postscript to Hole Erth's unexpected, inspired, madcap pivot into rap-rock, hyperpop, and Y2K emo. Daring in its own right, Unerthed reveals a deft songwriter unguarded, inhabiting lyrics and instrumentation with uncomplicated poise and clever turns of phrase and melody. It's a return to basics for the shapeshifting Bay Area artist, a chance to excavate and shed new light on the material. These elemental revelations have been at the core of Bear's project all along, from his earliest CD-Rs to the many mutations of psych-funk, synth-pop, deep house, and beyond that have kept the independent music world transfixed and guessing for nearly two decades. But Unerthed sounds it out more clearly, underscoring that there has only ever been one genre here: Toro y Moi. Before a haze-crazed blogosphere crowned "Blessa" at the top of the 2010s, Bear experimented in a more traditional mode of homespun folk akin to that of early Sufjan Stevens or Iron & Wine. He returned to it with his 2023 EP, Sandhills, and here, he taps further into that come-up story and style. The treatment is fitting for "CD-R", itself a nod to the DIY grind of his formative era, when he would burn handmade mixes and pack the trunk with merch for poorly booked tours. In place of the original's trap beats and autotuned sad boi bars are soft strums and flourishes of lap steel, with Bear's voice left wistful and clean, howling in the key of Alex G. "Everyday's a different interstate, tell me what's today? It's transcendental," the lines land differently in the open air. "HOV" transforms from a pop-punk anthem to an Americana spiritual. Where Bear delivered angst with a playful wink on the LP version, now, above arpeggiated keys and the string-backed highway sprawl, he's "biodegradable / an en