Written and recorded by Marc Anthony Thompson.
He’d only just arrived and we were missing him already: in 2010, when the American singer Marc Anthony Thompson, aka Chocolate Genius Incorporated released his fourth album Swansongs (his first on the French label No Format), he declared that it would be his last, at least under that name. It was a big loss, one to be lamented: surely but discreetly, Marc Anthony Thompson had established himself over the years, through numerous releases, as an indispensable soul singer who kept faith with the music that had inspired him as a teenager (AlGreen, Sam Cooke and all the other giants of the same ilk), whilst managing to avoid the pitfalls and formulas of easy imitation, of retro revivalism. In terms of genre, this man has taken every liberty imaginable, with his warm, subtle and often heart-shredding voice, flirting with indie rock, embracing the blues, folk and funk. After two albums released in the 80s under the name with which he was baptized, and three others under the moniker Chocolate Genius (Black Music in1998, God music in 2001 and Black Yankee Rock in 2005), he signed with Nø Førmat! (a name and an aesthetic that suit him well) for his swan song.
And that’s what scared us. Then...bounce back: he’s taken his time (it’s been five years since Swansongs) but...yes...Marc is back with a brand new album called Epilogue 1: Truth vsBeauty, whose title gives a nod and a wink to that end that wasn’t, in fact, the end of Chocolate Genius IncorporatedIsn’t an epilogue usually the final act, the conclusion?
So what’s this Epilogue 1 ? “Let’s just sa y it’s the beginning of the end ” , he jokes. “I always try to make each of my albums seem like the last...but also the first.”
Epilogue 1: Truth vs Beauty is, in effect, a new departure. First because Chocolate Genius Incorporated has turned a page and moved on from his trilogy of autobiographical albums, with their songs about family and the loss of people close to him. But more importantly, because he’s found a new way of making music. For the first time in his career, he didn’t just go into the studio and record an album. To be honest, he didn’t even expect to record an album at all. In between various other pursuits (writing music for theatre, touring as guitarist inBruce Springsteen’s band, a move from New York to northern California where he opened a restaurant with his family), he continued to write songs, like a hobby, or more like an intimate diary, and record them alone at home, playing all the instruments himself.
It’s those songs that Nø Førmat decided to release, hand-picking twelve from more than thirty. As such, considering the truth and beauty of their epiphany and the moments of inspiration in which they were fashioned, their recording is another kind of story altogether, a different kind of adventure. Some were born in the state of New York, and others in Los Angeles, in Marc’s childhood home, which he inherited from his deceased parents.
"I returned to the same methods that I used to write my very first songs, when I was a teenager. Back then I used to record them on a cassette player, in my mother’s bedroom, doing everything myself. This time round I found myself in the same place, in the same room, the difference being that the cassette player had become a laptop computer. There’s a piano, a chimney, a floor, I know it all very well...I slept in the room that I recorded in. It was very comfortable, and the spirits of the family were with me.”
According to Marc, Epilogue 1: Truth vs Beauty isn’t an album that’s ‘well leafed’,like a family photo album. But it’s still very personal and intimate. In the first few seconds you can hear the sound of water: that’s Marc’s faithful four-footed friend(who has died since) having a drink in the bathroom where he was trying to record.
These twelve songs sound the same as Chocolate Genius Incorporated has always done: that’s to say, they sound like only he can sound and reflect the wealth and variety of his inspirations. They float and glide between genres and references. Even when he was little, that was already his way: “ I remember, when I was younger and used to sing all alone in my room, my mother would ask ‘who are you trying to be today?’ She wasn’t teasing me or anything; it was just her way of saying that I was learning from all kinds of other people.”
Marc’s fifth album is a meticulous patchwork of underground soul, DIY rock, low-fi R’n’B, and disarming folk, veiled and tender. It’s American music in the widest-sense, like a panoramic photo taken during a full moon, with a very long exposure and plenty of sensuous care for detail, tonality and colour. It’s a record to listen to in the car, when you’ve already come to the end of the road, parked on a beach opposite the sea. Or in the wee wee hours, during a sleepless night. Or after love, when the sensation of exhaustion can’t be disentangled from that of well-being. Chocolate Genius Incorporated plays every instrument, but he also plays with light, with emotions, with space and time, with the flesh. Twelve songs, beautiful in their skin, that send out shivers, that penetrate the surface, go straight to the heart and hit the bulls-eye. If this album is the beginning of the end for Chocolate Genius Incorporated, then we’re already dreaming of hearing the follow up.
