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"The 59-year-old singer of Charles & Eddie fame is back with a second album of tightly written melodies and abstract tracks that draw you in to a rich, heady world.

The question that haunts Sundown is whether the unexpected success of Pleasure Joy and Happiness can be replicated: a sense of anticipation attends its release that clearly wasn’t there before its author’s status was upgraded from one-hit wonder to low-key R&B legend. The answer turns out to be a qualified yes: it replicates its predecessor’s success precisely because it doesn’t try to replicate it, taking a noticeably different route to invoking a mood of hazy calm. The sound has shifted. The drum machines have largely been replaced – or at least augmented – by live percussion; there is brass and woodwind alongside the samples and electronics; it feels jazzier.

On Far Away and Haunted Memories, Chacon, now 59, sings over muffled clusters and runs of electric piano notes, like a particularly inconspicuous improvised solo that runs throughout the track. The sound of Same Old Song exists on the cusp of pillow-soft early 70s soul and the era’s spiritual jazz. Chacon has mentioned Pharoah Sanders as an influence on the album, although the Lonnie Liston Smith of Astral Traveling might be a more obvious comparison – and its electronic washes and drones stop it shifting into the realm of homage or pastiche. And with its spiralling synth solo and 80s groove, you could append the descriptor “jazz funk” to single Holy Hell without anyone getting too upset, while noting that it is jazz funk of a distinctly warped cast.

The tone of the songs has shifted, too. Although a vein of melancholy still runs through the album – “I’ve been thinking too much,” it opens, “I’ve been barely hanging on” – it’s more obviously tempered by optimism, albeit optimism of an ambiguous variety. “We’ve got each other and that’s a start,” offers Holy Hell’s equivocal assessment of a relationship. “We can keep on shining / But we can’t stop the hands of time.” Meanwhile, The Morning Sun’s component parts seem to pull towards slightly different ends: the blissed-out lyrics and breezy sax at odds with the slightly discordant, faintly ominous synth weirdness that’s going on underneath them.

Tightly written melodies – as on Holy Hell or Step by Step’s appealingly rough-hewn take on a vintage slow jam – vie for space with more abstract tracks. Haunted Memories feels as if you are eavesdropping on a jam session at the precise moment when a song starts to emerge through the mist. The title track moves in the opposite direction, gradually, joyously unravelling. Regardless of the setting, Chacon’s voice sounds fantastic – his falsetto on Comes and Goes is particularly gorgeous – and the effect is the same, potent and affecting: it’s an album that pulls the listener in close and envelops them in its rich, heady world for its entire duration.

When Pleasure, Joy and Happiness was released, Chacon talked about it as a culmination, half an hour of music into which he’d poured everything he had: “a perfect representation of who I am”. It made you wonder if it was a one-off, a curio unlikely to be followed up. Soothing, moving, occasionally disquieting and utterly immersive, Sundown suggests its predecessor was something else entirely: merely the first step of an entirely unlikely and entirely delightful career renaissance." - The Guardian

“Low-key R&B legend” Eddie Chacon’s first album with Stones Throw, Sundown, is out now. Twelve new songs, produced by and written with John Carroll Kirby.

Eddie’s story is by now well known: after achieving stratospheric success as one half of the duo Charles & Eddie, whose hit “Would I Lie To You” topped charts around the world, Chacon took over two decades away from the music industry. Meeting John Carroll Kirby in 2019 inspired his return to music.

Sundown is about “being humbled by how little time we have on this earth.” Eddie said to Crack Magazine: “I was away from music for over 20 years. As you get older, as an artist, youth culture becomes very intimidating. You start to ask yourself, ‘Is there a place here for me? Where do I fit into this?’”

After releasing the 2020 album Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, which was a word-of-mouth hit, Eddie realized he had more left in the tank. Eddie and John recorded Sundown at 64 Sound Studios in Northeast LA. The first half was created in Ibiza, Spain for a few weeks. A fan and his family lent Eddie their “Villa Can Rudayla” after following Eddie’s return, wanting the space to inspire creativity.

“I didn’t want to fight my age. I wanted to make something that you’d have to be my age and have the life experience that I’ve had to make,” Eddie said in a recent interview with The Fader. “But sometimes when you embark on something it’s almost as if you need to give yourself permission… I wanted to do something that was tender and kind. And I also wanted to do something that was counter to the pop industry. I wanted it to be a meditative experience.”

- Stones Throw Records