REVIEW


peter chauncey - “Extended” (EP)

Listening to this EP feels like taking a walk with peter chauncey, side-by-side, kicking through autumn leaves. It’s like taking a slow walk, taken for the pleasure of the company, not to catch a bus or elevate one’s heart rate. It will be a walk during which you’ll feel you know chauncey in a very real way. At moments it almost feels more like walking alone, just listening to the voice in my own head lamenting, reuniting, and dancing like no one else is around.

The song “Search for Home (Piano and Voice)” is as elegant and spare as morning sunlight on pavement, before even the birds are awake. A lovely song, filled with space, unfolding in its own way, a kind of personal awakening, then breaking into a run, quick crisp notes, an octave up, making aural exclamation points. chauncey’s voice, low and soft, intimate and honest, pulls you into the song and into his journey. It is bold in its simplicity.

In “Search for Home” (Remix/Full), he takes the composition and casts it in a new light. Listening to it feels like sitting in the back of a cab, watching the lights of London go by on a wet and freezing night. Or walking the beaches of Antigua. Or threading a two-lane in a five-speed roadster, hugging the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The arrangement takes it to a completely different place, and beckons you to join it. The samba-like rhythms, rolling bass line and muted trumpet transform the song into a sonic passport to anywhere in the world your brain longs to go on your own search for home. It’s stylish and timeless, plugging directly into your brain and taking it to beautiful places.

“Everything You Know” (Piano and Voice) brings us back to the essence of a new song. We’re back in chauncey’s head, and he is in ours. Against a staccato solo piano, he sings alone, slowly, to us, or himself, or someone no longer here. So personal it almost feels like eavesdropping, chauncey’s song gives just enough to get the drift, but leaves more to the imagination, giving the listener space to emotionally inhabit the song. He’s very good at that. So much of his music feels like moments I’ve lived, too. That’s what great music does. It’s inclusive. It intuitively finds common ground. chauncey does that, while confidently laying down a style that’s all his own.

In “Share Our News (Version 3)”, he switches up the instrumentation, trading the piano for a quiet guitar arrangement gilded with sitar. I can almost see the late afternoon sun filtering through a slender curl of incense smoke, in a place in my memory where time does not apply. I don’t know what inspired the song, but it seems like a profoundly positive, reassuring song, one standing upright, arms spread, palms upturned, light radiating from it.

Things take a funky, upbeat turn with some trippy breaks on “Now or Never (Extended Version)”. The chorus here is probably the closest thing to a hook on the EP, and the song has a swagger that makes great use of chauncey’s voice, which has shades of Bowie, against some sparkly synth runs that make me want to lace up my roller skates. chauncey’s voice sails over the backbeat, choosing notes that are unexpected but feel just right. It’s a fine, uplifting way to end this personal and intriguing EP.

“Forget everything you know” peter chauncey sings. Good advice, because his EP will take you someplace new.

Ann Ford
Documentary FIlmaker
wzzqthemovie.com






Saturday, September 19, 2020, 07:40:48 AM PDT, Jackie Ryle. Ph.D.
Artist, Poet, Author, Educator, Trainer and Consultant
www.jackieryle.com) wrote:

Good morning, my friend. This body of creation is truly incredible. I tend to be very linear, so I began by listening to the tracks in order, then viewing the video, then scrolling down (this over days - the only way I can absorb anything in this surreal era). And then finding your photo (Love it) and bio, and Ann’s amazing poetic words which is a portrait of the total - which sent me back to listen again. And of course I heard so much more. In its totality, it’s almost overwhelming. Not in a negative way. More like going to the Louvre and being inundated in waves of sheer genius with every step and gaze. This is real genius, Chauncey. I’ve experienced your wise and gentle conversation, your ideas and philosophy, your poetry, your videos, your ever evolving sound, in bits and pieces over a span of decades. To see it all come together like this is like entering a darkened room filled with the joy of creation and having it suddenly filled with light. Surrounded with art in every form; filling the senses; raising the spirit; for me, resurrecting hope. I think it’s especially meaningful right now, in these times of unreality.
Thank you. I wrote a lot, yet feel without words. I hope this will be shared far and wide soon. Now is when it’s needed. I am stunned!!!