Eric Chenaux is a very curious musician. Not peculiar-curious — more like inquisitive. His musical explorations find him deconstructing an album’s worth of Willie Nelson songs with The Reveries, or coaxing idiosyncratic, damaged guitar textures from his trusty Gibson hollow-body, or even picking this writer’s brain on contextualizing his quotes in this very article. A long-time fixture on the Toronto avant-indie scene, Eric Chenaux curates the always-inspiring Rat-drifting label while lending his guitar playing to the likes of Drumheller, The Reveries and his own solo records.

With his sophomore solo disc Sloppy Ground, Chenaux sounds as though he’s inching closer to normalcy. There’s something surreptitiously catchy about the double-
­tracked falsetto/natural vocals on “Love Don’t Change,” nudged along by Nick Fraser’s slow-grooving beat, and the perfectly realized shimmering balladry of “Dreaming of Stars.” Not to mention the visceral thrill of Chenaux’s extended guitar solos, which are an intriguing mixture of chaos and melody. EYE WEEKLY caught up with Chenaux for a few pints at the Epicure Cafe before he biked off to an early-evening rehearsal.

The new record sounds more confident, but is that just the nature of the songs? The first one [2006’s Dull Lights] was far more gentle and introspective, and this one has much more drumming…
...And those big fat guitar solos. [They’re] such a big part of a lot of the songs that I play. I take a lot of guitar solos live, and that wasn’t really on the first record. I’m a huge fan of some of the more conceptual elements of the arrangements on Dull Lights. But it’s mostly about the people. Martin Arnold, who was a huge, beautiful part of Dull Lights, was less a part of this one, so that was a big change. Ryan Driver was a big part of this record. And having Aimée Dawn Robinson playing [electric echo harp], which is a really interesting texture, is also a big part of what I like about the new one.

When you came in with the songs, was there a lot of improvising or did you know how you wanted the arrangements?
I’m sure things changed lots from my original intention. And things have changed since. It’s crazy that when you record a record, then everybody who plays on the record only really knows it after they record it. So then when you go to play it [live], that’s when things get really interesting. So [that’s why] I do like recording songs again.

Yeah, on your new record you do “Am I Lovely” which you did with Drumheller. Is reinterpretation a big part of what a lot of the [Rat-drifting] bands are attempting?
Sometimes the mutations are very intentional; sometimes time just has a way of mutating things and you don’t even know it. I think if you play material long enough, and you’re also a band who don’t rehearse once a week, and you have enough time to forget material, when you revisit it you’re bound to make it different because you can’t remember. There’s a convenience to having a horrible memory. You look at the page and it’s like, “What do I do here? Capo sixth fret?” But you don’t know why you would do that.

Keeps it fresh though.
Yeah. Depending on the project, people have different expectations. All of us play music that’s pretty composed as well. And you’re happy with how it goes, and you kind of want to continue that happiness. And then some things have a core element that you believe in. And that core element can transpose into a lot of different details when you play it.

How much did playing in punk bands shape what you do now? Or the way you approach the label?
I don’t know. I’m the same person doing all those things. There was a time when Eugene Chadbourne was punk. But it was so much more the political side, and political not in the British [sense] where everyone had the common enemy of Thatcher, but it was political on a much more social aesthetic level.

Maybe that’s what I see relating to what you’re doing, working together with this group of people, playing at the Tranzac, making recordings that aren’t elaborate — stuff that you can do on your own...
...Working with the parameters that you have and celebrating those. I guess that’s punk rock, you know. That’s maybe as punk rock as it gets. But I think punk is really nowhere near the first [to do that]. Listen to all the stuff that Sublime Frequencies is putting out. It’s only in high-production pop music [that] people tend to make stuff beyond their means; like spending six years working on the follow-up to their multi-million dollar record. And also just that hermetic solo artist in the studio with the producer, going crazy, ruining relationships, ruining friendships, really just going nuts... Music just doesn’t have to be that way. It can be a part of your life.