Slowly Paradise is a particularly apt name for Eric Chenaux’s latest album. Listening to its gently swaying rhythms and mellow, watery tones feels like watching a creaky musical barge float slowly down a southern river, or a folk trio kept to a barely languid pace by the weight of the tropical heat. It’s a strangely bewitching combination: Chenaux’s sweet, swoony voice singing lyrics about wind, waves, moonlight, and trees, while he coaxes the most beautiful and extraordinary sounds from electric guitars, both amplified and unamplified, and assorted electronics, with assistance from colyricist Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer and sound artist Marla Hlady on spinning microphones. Chenaux slips and slides and bends the notes into wonky mirror images of themselves, but it’s all so gentle and delicate that it never seems to get close to dissonance. There are six deceptively pastoral tracks, but the closing one, “Wild Moon,“ is the most entrancing, with a softly pulsing keyboard heartbeat underlying ringing bell tones, while Chenaux sings “come away with me,” and adds guitar effects, twinkling keyboard tones, and a guitar solo of increasing speed, complexity, and emotional intensity, before the bell rings again as it fades away into the distance.
Mary Dickie is a Toronto music and arts journalist whose work has been published in a variety of different publications over the past couple of decades, including Impact, Eye Weekly, Maclean’s, ELLE Canada, The Toronto Sun, FASHION magazine and IN Toronto. She is also a member of the Polaris Music Prize jury.