Super review by Cal Gibson, of The Secret Soul Society.

Some might suggest that life is a thankless journey: a long and winding road, traversing mountains, desires and unattainable objects, golden summers shading into inevitable autumns. Exile and exploitation, poverty and despair: philosophical idealists sideswiped by gladness and laughter. We are bending towards knowledge, but knowledge of what, exactly? Which brings us to the ten minutes of mutated, post-rock, jazz-adjacent vocalisms of This Ain’t Life – the twisting, turning paean to wounded pride that opens Eric Chenaux‘s deep dive into the absurdity of existence.

Joined by Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer and Phillippe Melanson on electronic percussion it’s the opening joint of seven: Chenaux’s yearning vocals delightful and restless throughout – searching, slicing through the daily mundanities – words and sounds combining to break hearts and watch the sun go slowly down.

It’s jazz refracted through eternal circlings, dripping drops of soul into a squelchy pot: wigged out circuitry and flamed out synth lines sitting next to Chenaux’s sprawling insights. It’s a heady brew – Money Mark meets the spirit of Teo Macero’s take on Bitches Brew – or Joni’s Hejira dipped in acid and hung out to fry.

I’ve Always Said Love shake, shake, shakes its way into your psyche – gentle and beautiful, an extended meditation on just what happens when love somehow blooms amidst the madness. A sincere vision, an easy load – door slams and rejections – blue skies and morning dew. As Chenaux notes: “they can’t shake shake shake shake shake love….”

These Things is generous and intelligent, a well-informed dispensation on open hearts and closed-up minds. Poetry put to work, mangled and shredded but still full of burnished beauty. The mood is hazy, Kerouac kicking back into tomorrow morning’s heartsick regret – the illusions of the old, the young and the lonely laid bare for all to hear.

The three musicians work the wild, slow sea of the groove for the entire album: a minimal, maximal yin and yang collides – this is cheap rented rooms and Tom Waits on tap, a slothful rejoinder to hateful work – a step outside the musical norm.

Time crawls and the moon brings some kind of comfort – Delights Of My Life may well be one of those flawed, beat down collections that you’ll keep coming back to years from now – a smooth synthesis of the fractured soul and the creative urge. Nothing is certain here, all is dust and dreams deferred. Love and pride and delirious murmuring: melodies and poetics and fragments of jewels. Twilight never sounded so sweet, eternal woes and oblique jealousies transformed into gentle footsteps of sound. A new bloom for the old quandaries.

The Eric Chenaux Trio’s Delights Of My Life is out now on Murailles Music.