Eddie Chacon – Lay Low Review

Getting through the day with sleep in your eyes and pain in your chest is no life. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to adjust to the bright lights, other times, it can be hours. What gets you through is music. When the workers across the street are parked so that their high beams, always on, are shining through the window, we close the blinds, kick our feet up on the desk and wait to see what lands in the email tray. Eddie Chacon, welcome back. Lay Low is a departure from his previous sound, the magnificent Sundown, but his desire to keep things rolling and his commitment to fresh ideas are exceptional. We should expect nothing less. His downtempo style and beat on Lay Low hits that sweet spot of refreshingly unnerving. Slightly off-note instrumentals and the search for the good times, all come to a head with such a masterful ambition.  

Filling the gap where someone once lay is nothing new to the romanticisms of music, but Chacon finds a fresh path through. His interpretation of the world, the fiery and often bold style he has, so frequently verges on reinvention, on turning what we know into some effortless, fresh response. Let You Go does much the same with its beautifully mixed instrumental section. Misinterpretations, the act of speaking your mind but not matching it with your words, is beautifully laid out by Let You Go. A desire to connect, to continue that thread no matter how frayed it may be, is a gut punch, one of many found on Lay Low. A John Carroll Kirby-featuring single, Empire, kicks into an initially positive tone but again brings our thoughts to the loss of intimacy, the fear of saying something which may salvage it all because it would be a bold, fresh step.  

Despite the yearning in the dark, those sleepless nights Chacon muses on, there is a danceable route through Lay Low. Brief but experimental efforts the whole way through has Chacon push for a new motivation, and he finds it almost immediately. Pieces like Birds have some sincere layers to them – the sort of message you can feel has been lived in, even if you haven’t had it yourself. But for those who had, have or will, there is a serenity to the suffering, to most of Lay Low. Punchy instrumental work is the real reward for Lay Low, with standout Let the Devil In lingering in the mind for far longer than anticipated. The songwriter, torn apart and yet to be rebuilt, is an occasion of sincere vulnerability, and Chacon is not through yet.  

World-ending experiences basing themselves on the loss of another, that is the cataclysmic, never-ending tragedy found at the heart of Lay Low. Closer If I Ever Let You Go suggests there is some grasp on a passing romance which is all but destined for the scrap heap. Lay Low plays around with one formidable, broad message through its sub-half-hour sound, and it makes all the difference. Chacon is guided by a refined focus, and a sense of resisting the necessary steps to moving on. He keeps it fresh and punchy throughout, though, never repeating the same spots despite the heartbreak worn on his sleeve. Lay Low stands firm as an example of how music is not just a tool for healing, but for exorcising the rage and fury, the hopelessness too, that follows an emotionally tumultuous event.