Eddie Chacon - Sundown

Released: 31/03/23

I'm going to say something now, and all I would ask is that upon reading it you don't immediately roll your eyes and scroll on to the next preview. OK, here goes: Eddie Chacon was once one half of Charles & Eddie, the chaps behind the 1992 world-wide #1 smash hit Would I Lie to You. Still here? You have my utmost respect, as it is undoubtedly one of the most execrable pop songs of all time “ right up there with Don't Worry Be Happy, Cotton Eye Joe, and everything by Michael Bublé. Fast forward to 30 years later, then, and I'm sitting here suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance, trying to figure out how to reconcile the Eddie of WILTY fame with the Eddie behindSundowner, one of the most brilliantly weird and beautiful records I've heard in a good long while. It really is that good.

Between 1995 and 2020, there is no record of Chacon releasing anything, which begs the question: what on earth was he doing in those two and a half decades before reemerging as a bona fide avant-R&B/soul visionary “ the creator of the kind of music that Ariel Pink and John Maus could only dream of making, and which makes the excellent retro-future-pop weirdo Steve Lacy seem norm-core in comparison? One has to think that it had to involve a cosmic epiphany, or two. Before listening toSundowner, I would have said that, save for the diminished returns of the nostalgia-tour circuit, there are no second acts in pop music. I'm extremely happy to have been proved wrong.