Eric Chenaux has been refining his singer-songwriter-plus-warbly-guitar bag for over a decade. Though he’d figured out his sound by Skullsplitter (2015), the breakthrough, for me, was Slowly Paradise (2018), and each album since has been a delight. His latest, aptly titled Delights of My Life, is the first credited to the Eric Chenaux Trio, which features regular collaborator Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer organ and Philippe Melanson on electronic drums. Delights might be Chenaux’s most inviting offering yet, introducing subtle grooves and soulful harmonies to his cock-eyed crooning.
Like all Chenaux’s music, the album’s relaxed tones and lyrical and slightly psychedelic melodies invite and reward the listener’s attention without demanding it. Chenaux’s sui generis songs occupy the crepuscular world of the lullaby, the torch song, and the incantation. Genre and tradition are irrelevant here; more salient is the sense of a contemplative yet experimental and playful approach that Chenaux shares with musicians like Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Billie Holiday, and Arthur Russell. Rather than compositions or improvisations, the music feels more like organic development on a mood or set of themes.Yet the songs worm their way into the listener’s consciousness one way or another. After only a couple of listens I found them emerging unbidden in moments of repose like old memories of soft nights with close friends. What’s said—and usually I can only make out suggestive words like love, clouds, inside, etc.—is less important than the sound and, even more so, the feeling of lightness and intimacy.
Daniel Glassman writes about film and music. He lives in London, U.K.