LP, Constellation Records, 2018
Review
“Love will be done just as it has been.
I’ll go away away with the leaves on every tree
when I awake to the other world in me.
There’s my love and there are my leaves”
Eric Chenaux’s gentle falsetto is the most constant, tangible element on this album characterized by a permanent state of flux. The guitars are warbly and unsteady with their fluctuating tones, volume, and pitch, sometimes sounding like a warped folk LP that sat in the sun too long. Even the way they were recorded accentuates this, as the album credits sound artist Marla Hlady for “spinning microphones”. Yet, despite their experimental nature, these guitars never sound abrasive and, together with some mellow Wurlitzer, create a soft, pillowy environment for Chenaux’s romantic crooning about the nature of love, the moon, and warm nights. Perhaps this push and pull between temporality and constancy is symbolic of the idea that love is the only reliable thing in a world full of change, or perhaps it means quite the opposite, that love itself is just as ephemeral and impermanent as everything else. Either way, this music is blooming with the beauty and warmth of the kind of love that wells up from the deepest parts of ourselves; embrace it while you can, but if you try to grasp it too tightly it might slip away.
Lyrical Highlights:
“There are dreams we call The Breezes. There are loves that have fallen, but not to pieces. There are loves. There’s our love. It must be so easy doing that to me. “(There’s Our Love)
“I don’t know what’s down the road. I don’t know what pain erodes” (An Abandoned Rose)
“Slowly we know, slowly we need, slowly paradise is so alive in me” (Slowly Paradise)
“Love will be done just as it has been. I’ll go away away with the leaves on every tree, when I awake to the other world in me. There’s my love and there are my leaves” (Slowly Paradise)
