What for? I’ll give you what for! Once I’m done figuring out where Chaz ends and the van begins…

It’s been a while since I’ve done a New Music Monday, hasn’t it? Well, guess what? It won’t happen today either. Because today is Sunday, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait to post this on Monday and miss out on getting a post completed for May in the process! But for all in tents and porpoises, consider this a New Music Monday. [Yes, you read that right: this one’s for all the campers and highly intelligent sea mammals.]

Well, now I’m babbling — so on to some great new music…

So what’s this awesome new tune that has stirred me from my bloggy slumber? It’s the first single off the latest album by the multilingually named Toro Y Moi (“Bull and Me,” in Spanish and French), otherwise known to his friends and family as Chaz Bundick. The song is “Empty Nesters,” and his new album is What For?, released this past April — it’s his fourth album as Toro Y Moi (he released another under the name Les Sins), hence the probable pun of “For”/”4” in the title (it also happens to be taken from a line in this song). “Empty Nesters” is currently my pick as best song of 2015, a high-energy, superbly upbeat, and very power-poppy tune, unlike anything else I’ve heard this year, but quite reminiscent of other things I’ve heard in years long gone.

“Empty Nesters” is a distant cousin of Todd Rundgren’s 1972 classic, “Couldn’t I Just Tell You,” which is way up there on my list of best songs ever. I’m not necessarily putting this song on that sort of pedestal, but to even be mentioned in the same breath as Rundgren’s song is certainly saying something. It derives from a similar musical kineticism, if not a similar desperation in its subject matter. I’m not entirely sure I know what “Empty Nesters” is about, but it seems to be about the difficulty of finding your direction in life after leaving home, either when heading off to college or moving out on your own. But it’s one of those songs that’s as easily enjoyed without interpreting the lyrics as it is when you do, so attach your own meaning or none at all and put this great soundtrack for the Summer of 2015 on repeat.