Gold Initial Charm

Toro Y Moi and other outsiders of bedroom pop inch their way in

16.12.09

A backyard shed, a basement, a kitchen, a cabin in Shenandoah National Park--bedroom pop needn't be recorded in a bedroom. Emergent songwriters Kurt Vile, Tickley Feather, Ducktails, and Toro Y Moi--all making indie music characterized by a certain manner of lo-fi production and devil-may-care attention to conventional song structure and genre that comes less from aesthetic rebellion than genuine outsiderness--have all put their music to tape in the above spaces. They are not converted studios or the locations of engineer friends' recording setups, but places where the artists could be/had to be alone.

Together, they comprise a movement, what's been dubbed "AM pop"--more as a term relating to recording quality than the actual music made during AM music radio's heyday, save for an immense pool of Beach Boys love--bedroom pop, or just pop music recorded in a deep well. And as Kurt Vile joins with Matador Records, Tickley Feather and Toro Y Moi join with Washington, D.C.'s Carpark Records (Dan Deacon's home label), and outsider-cum-bedroom pop impresario Ariel Pink joins with indie standard 4AD, all within the last half of 2009, it's a movement with traction. Beach House, part of whose initial charm way back in 2006 (when its self-titled album, recorded in two days in a basement, was released), was spareness and the not-quite-empty aural spaces of music recorded on the cheap with feeling, has a new home on Sub Pop.

Source: Baltimore City Paper