CICI ARTHUR - Way Through

What I hadn't anticipated was the musician stepping into the field with a multi-handed project under the name Cici Arthur: a trio rounded out by the excellent Joseph Shabason and Thom Gill. "Way Through" also marks Cummings's shift from occasional musician to full-time one. Suddenly out of work because of the Covid crisis, the Canadian singer-songwriter poured all his energy into this new project. Old friend Owen Pallett assembled a 30-piece orchestra, and with contributions from Phil Melanson, Nicholas Krgovich and Dorothea Paas, Chris rounded out the team.

With one eye on Frank Sinatra and one ear on Antonio Carlos Jobim, Cici Arthur craft a set of elegant, enchanting songs. The arrangements, sophisticated yet essential, are free of mawkishness or saccharine tones, and the melancholy carries the scent of lived experience and poetic emotional fragility. A track like the title track, with a few other touches, could sit comfortably in the songbook of the most gifted contemporary singer-songwriters, but the elegant string-and-horn arrangement evokes Michael Franks, Donald Fagen and Cole Porter.

The substantial sonic staging is underscored by a splendid "Cartwheels For Coin", where amid hints of drum machine, naive refrains and echoes of Burt Bacharach and Hoagy Carmichael, Cummings reveals the almost cinematic nature of his lyrics, central to the harmonic balance of songs as moving as they are intense.

Albums like "Way Through" belong to another era, where perfection and refinement move in lockstep, evoking those songs we learned to love hearing from our parents (something like "Moon River", to give you an idea). Amid potential evergreens that sadly will never get the right setting to catch the public's attention ("No Fight Or Flight") and familiar-sounding songs graced with a sensual saudade ("Felt In An Instant"), the songwriter crafts small gems like the melancholic "Stolen Joy", a track that leaves its mark thanks also to a delightful instrumental interlude.

Chris also proves adept at handling a breezier, more swinging "Damaged Goods", with an interplay of voices and instruments that carries the charm of the Donald Fagen of "The Nightfly".

Cummings, Shabason, Gill and Pallett always stay skillfully within the bounds of the singer-songwriter tradition, even daring to introduce dissonance and modern textures on "Prior Times" (the keyboard solo is gorgeous), and offer an interesting, fresh take on folk-pop-jazz, navigating between yacht-rock, easy listening and soul without ever losing sight of their final destination: a musicality that's knowing and sophisticated, yet pragmatic and delightfully retro.