Eddie Chacon - Pleasure, Joy and Happiness [Japanese Edition] (2020)

It's mystifying that this half-hour recording of modest and intimate ballads is the first true solo album from Eddie Chacon. While he is known most for his and Charles Pettigrew's pop-soul confection "Would I Lie to You?," a global smash in 1992, the singer/songwriter's career is filled with too many twists, obstacles, and turns -- including shelved albums for major-label Columbia and, no kidding, Luther Campbell's Skyywalker Records -- to be neatly encapsulated in a listicle about one-hit wonders. Involved with music since the mid-'70s, he left the business in the early 2000s, returned in the late 2000s as one-half of the whimsical Polyamorous Affair (with wife Sissy Sainte-Marie), and after another long retreat got the urge to make music again. Through a mutual friend, Chacon was introduced to John Carroll Kirby, an unstinting collaborator -- primarily a keyboardist and composer -- who counts Norah Jones, Blood Orange, and Solange among the dozens of artists who have sought out his talent. Kirby's percolating machine rhythms and gently rippling keyboards, always sounding as if they're on a serene kind of quest, are wholly in sync with Chacon, whose sweet, soul-steeped voice has acquired some ruggedness that suits his sparing words of wisdom, reflection, and heartache. Taken at face value, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness is somewhat deceptive as a title, since it's revealed to be more an objective than it is emblematic of the album. Most often about some form of romantic grief -- regret, betrayal, uncertainty, miscommunication, and resulting crisis -- the tracks flit between fragmentary musings and more traditionally structured songs. Chacon is effective with both approaches. In "Wicked World," he simply repeats "Loved you, it was wrong/It's a wicked world, can't control it," recalling Marvin Gaye at his most vulnerable. That repetitious tracing is just as powerful as the comparatively voluble "Hurt," where memories and revelations spill out like a slow-motion catharsis. This could be a perfect final act, an unexpected one-off that sounds out of time and in a space of its own, but then it would be a shame if Chacon and Kirby didn't continue their affiliation.