Those who seek to pigeonhole music – this is jazz, that is pop, this is hip hop – have their work cut out for them with Fear and Love, Together … !
Vocalist, saxophonist and keyboard player Chase Ceglie has crafted a nearly un-categorizable album, melding electronica, pop, R&B and ambient. He’s also thrown in a bit of jazz and rock for good measure.
If you want some antecedents, look to Brian Eno’s ambient experiments, Enya’s stacked vocals, Fabian Almazan’s Alcanza (which is tonally similar), or Todd Rundgren’s A Capella, where every sound was made by Rundgren’s voice, often sampled and processed.
Ceglie has credited the likes of like Rundgren and Prince for their solo recordings, where the vocals and instruments were all overdubbed by the artist, and he did much the same here.
His light vocals are often tempered by reverb, giving them a ghostly feel. Yes, that includes the treatment on “Ghost,” but it’s true throughout Fear and Love, Together … ! Chase Ceglie often drifts into a falsetto that’s hard to understand, particularly when it’s paired with synthetic violin or other such sounds.
“How can I keep from singing?” Ceglie asks rhetorically, on the tune of the same name. The bubbling synth bass and his breathy vocals there are hallmarks of the entire album.
“Intermezzo” is just that, a musical interlude with synthesizers and airy voice samples. The following “Losing My Mind” is built on sax and honky-tonk piano lines that harken back to the ’50s: Think King Curtis and Jerry Lee Lewis, though it’s doubtful the Killer would have ever allowed himself to be pushed so far into the background.
The concluding “Baby” sounds much like the rest of Fear and Love, Together … !, including its stop-and-start ethos. That includes the unnamed track just ahead of it, featuring one minute and eight seconds of silence.
While Chase Ceglie’s recording is not avant garde in the sense of being standoffish, it is undeniably esoteric. It’s a challenge for the listener to grasp words, rhythms or melodies. Best to approach Fear and Love, Together … ! with open ears and an open mind.
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