Eric Chenaux – Guitar & Voice

Its title gives Chenaux’s fourth album for the Constellation label a rather orchestral air. And Guitar & Voice is perhaps best considered as an orchestral suite of sorts. The album’s nine songs are neatly divided into two distinct forms: four sung ballads and five instrumental pieces. Musically, however, the album is quite literally Chenaux’s guitar and voice throughout.

The instrumental pieces are played on an effect-driven bowed-guitar, and touch on a broad, disparate range of musical eras, from Medieval and Baroque (Glitzing for Stephen Parkinson, Simple/Frontal) to late sixties/early seventies psychedelic dirges and drone (Sliabh Aughty). But while these instrumental pieces can be admired from a technical and experimental standpoint – and Chenaux’s guitar-playing is exceptional – they cannot help but be resigned to the status of interludes in the face of the four breathtaking ballads.

As exceptional as his guitar playing is, the real highlight here is Chenaux’s voice. He can seamlessly veer from fragile and lilting to wonderfully rich and expressive in the space of a single song (Dull Lights, White or Grey and However Wildly We Dream). With the ballads, he typically also opts to pick and strum a nylon-stringed guitar with minimal harmonic effects, lending these songs a more traditional (yet still somewhat experimental) folk-based sound.

Guitar & Voice works as a ‘suite,’ as it requires the instrumental pieces to help balance the ballads, providing them with more emotional resonance as a result. But a slight shift in focus – toward (an extraordinary) Voice and away from Guitar – could have made for a truly remarkable album.