Cedric Noel is a songwriter, bassist and producer based in Montréal. His output is diverse, varying from melodic pop and r&b (recorded under the moniker Special Solace) to ambient minimalism and improvised soundscapes, and each release shuffles these styles into new forms to explore the intersections between genres. The result is a recombinant genre, built from elements salvaged from many others, capable of great variation and change.
The latest Cedric Noel album, nothing forever, everything, falls somewhere toward the indie pop end of the spectrum, though draws upon folk, electronic and devotional influences too. Opener ‘New Recording 3’ gives a good impression as to what expect, hushed folk brought to life with ambient light and searching lyrics. “And am I the subject to it everyday?” Noel asks in the mellow meander of the track’s first half “If I’m told it’s too melancholic to sing about it this way / But it is real isn’t it? / So why bother to give in?”
From here the song grows with the simplest swells of synths, a sound delivered with church organ purity. It is the first true sight of the authenticity of the release, a sensibility that might well stem from the process in which the tracks came to life. “Written in the middle of a bizarre and heavy time last fall, I sat down with the title written and wrote seven of the eight songs in two evenings as a tried to create some kind of emotional and creative release through the form personal concerts for myself,” Noel explains. “It’s a swell thing to get to do from time to time and helps to process whatever has happened in a period of time.”
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The immediacy of the recording process creates both a common spirit that binds the songs and also an organic sense of variation. There’s a downbeat cast to ‘light in yr eye’ that even the closing crescendo cannot escape, a tone quite different to the hesitant, sincere ‘changerr’, or the reflective and melancholic ‘when i wish i could sit cross legged’.
Each of Noel’s variations in style feel like an attempt to overcome the difficult circumstances in which he wrote the songs. The mantra-like simplicity of ‘first snow’ finds comfort in quiet and stillness, while ‘caught second’ welcomes Corey Gulkin and passes questions back and forth in attempt at an answer. The hazy pop of ‘everybody wants to love me’ mirrors the uncertainty of the lyrics, though there’s a powerful clarity below the surface, a suggestion that understanding can be found in the very airing of the questions that plague us.
The record closes with the title track, a bright song washed with synths that typifies the nothing forever, everything spirit. It’s one of the calmest of the collection, sung from the other side of the creative outpouring and the comfort it brought. The songs provide no clear salve to the woes, no sudden epiphany, but rather a new understanding of the situation. The sense that nothing is as simple as it appears. That no clear binary exists between possessing something and losing it. This is signified by the closing refrain, the album’s title chopped and changed into a series of statements. Just as Cedric Noel shuffles genres to find new value and meaning, the song reconfigures the phrase to delve into the real divergence and nuance of lived experience.
Nothing forever, everything
Everything forever, nothing
Forever nothing, everything
Forever everything, nothing
Nothing forever, everything
Forever everything
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nothing forever, everything is out now and available fro the Cedric Noel Bandcamp page.