Eddie Chacon – Holy Hell
Picture the scene: you’re floating around your Frank Lloyd Wright bungalow a little lovelorn, but not so lovelorn that you can’t shuffle out a little two-step to the stereo and make yourself a cocktail. Here’s the world suggested by the bone-dry funk of Holy Hell, the lead single from the second album by Eddie Chacon. You might know him as one half of 90s duo Charles and Eddie (of Would I Lie to You? fame). After the band split in 1997 and Charles Pettigrew died in 2001, Chacon entered a wilderness period, wrestling with his ego and motivation for making music before stopping altogether. After meeting pianist and producer John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Blood Orange, Harry Styles), Chacon made the remarkable comeback album Pleasure, Joy and Happiness in 2020. Next year sees an equally fantastic follow-up, heralded by a song so addictive it put the rest of my Spotify Unwrapped in the shade. The sublime drums snap like turtles, the synths bubble as languidly as lava lamp orbs; Chacon’s ghostly croon rises to a brushed-velvet falsetto, just ready to go up in flames as he entreats a lover to choose between pleasure and pain. Laura Snapes
Véyah – Almost
In a year of over-hyped yet under-powered new pop star albums, it was a far less-radio-played new singer-songwriter who scratched that top 40 itch for me. The 18-year-old Indian-American Véyah kicks off her punchy debut single, Almost, sigh-saying the never-not-relatable “He’s such a fucking idiot” before telling a brief story of a dalliance that was luckily cut short before it got serious. She’s mad (although not as mad as she gets on later single h8 u) but mostly relieved, focusing on the positives that come from a negative (“I guess there’s some good in a goodbye”). There’s something undeniably Ariana Grande-adjacent both about her slick, silky R&B vocals, but also about her enjoyably middle-finger-up attitude. A watch of an impressive acoustic video on her TikTok,…