Chenaux Eric

Sloppy Ground is Eric Chenaux's strongest, most accessible and most dynamic work in years. We have long been champions of the man's inimitable talents – as a songwriter, arranger and mind-bending guitarist – and this new album should make these talents clear to the nominally attentive listener. This is a collection of beautifully fried love songs, highly original in compositional approach and instrumental texture, utterly compelling in lyrical content and delivery. As Chenaux says, "the lyrics are more concerned with what love does rather than what it means...the time moving through these tunes is not one of the beginning of love or the end or heartbreak of love (though I love that stuff too) but more often in the middle (the working middle, the in between)". Opening with the swirling drone ballad of "Am I Lovely" (and its achingly simple refrain "Asking each other/Since we’re together/Am I lovely?"), the album then breaks into the brilliant frazzled funk of "Love Don’t Change", a staple of Chenaux live shows for many years (and a very different version of which was recorded some time ago with recurring collaborator Michelle McAdorey on vocals). On this take, the unique whammied fuzz of Aimee Dawn Robinson's electrified echo harp punctuates the chord changes while Nick Fraser's phenomenal and fluid drum work relentlessly sparks the syncopation. Chenaux busts out with an exuberant guitar solo over the tune's supple funk, driving home the song's declaration of a lover's simple striving: "We could still be friends/ But we could eat sweet things at night/I want to slow this city down and be with you in still life". It's an awesome and giddy display of guitar chops, but more importantly, wholly motivated by the song's underlying lyrical and (un)sentimental intent. Third track "Rest Your Daylights" is a truly gorgeous twilight lullaby, perhaps the closest thing to a classic ballad on the album, marked by subtle slide-guitar textures winding around the main guitar arpeggios, and a perfectly restrained vocal performance from Chenaux. Side A closes with "Have I Lost My Eyes", the first of three trademark 'funk-marches' on the album, with Chenaux conjuring a Highlands-folk spirit where extended melodic lines form the compositional backbone of the piece, percussion is joined in unison to the melody's rhythmic phrasing, and the guitar behaves like psychedelic bagpipes. This re-channeling of traditional Scottish tropes works to similarly captivating effect on "Boon Harp" and "Old Peculiar", which form the centerpieces of the album's second side. Side B winds down elegantly with "Dreaming Of Stars", featuring one of the record's sweetest and most elaborate melodies, and "Sloppy Ground", the title track and album closer, with its plangent images of winter, city and memory driven by a lover's absence. Chenaux has rallied some of Toronto's finest 'out' players for Sloppy Ground, including Nick Fraser on drums, Ryan Driver on amplified melodica and synths, David Prentice on violin, Doug Tielli on 5-string banjo, Martin Arnold on electric tenor banjo, and Aimee Dawn Robinson on electric echo harp. Chenaux's own guitar work has never been more thrillingly deployed in the context of (relatively) conventional songcraft.