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Like Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and the Smiths’ Morrissey, Guy Chadwick has embarked on a solo career, remaining remarkably devoted to the sound he developed with his old band, House of Love. Lazy, Soft & Slow, like any House of Love album, is filled with sparkling guitar-pop songs. As a solo artist, however, Chadwick indulges a quiet side he revealed all too infrequently—but always ravishingly—in his previous band. Only a couple of the album’s songs attempt to recapture the driving sound codified in House of Love’s “Shine On.” The rest are stately and elegiac, setting Chadwick’s warm voice amidst hushed electric and acoustic guitars, uncomplicated bass and drums, and occasional keyboards, pedal steel guitar, violin, accordion, and female vocals. Chadwick’s “Soft & Slow,” “Mirrored in My Mind,” and “Close Your Eyes” evoke House of Love at its most delicate, recalling classics such as “Plastic” and “Beatles and the Stones” without quite duplicating their emotional power. Although it’s not a great album, Lazy, Soft & Slow’s low-key approach brings Chadwick the songwriting success—if not the stardom—that has eluded him in recent years, re-establishing his position as a talent whose future just might hold a

masterpiece.—Leonard Roberge