Lucky Cloud

They say if a song emerges fully formed from the ether, chances are it's your own truth getting out ahead of you. When Chet Zenor received Foreground’s title track over the course of an afternoon, he seized upon it as a centerpiece for his first LP as Lucky Cloud. It's an apt choice for the jazz-inflected indie rock record’s tender themes: coming of age amidst chaos, finding a focal point in confusion, and the thrill and terror of actually receiving the attention you’d asked for. But it just so happens that Foreground is also a suitable title for a debut from a songwriter who's previously only been known as a sideman: Lucky Cloud’s debut offers us the first deep look at Chet Zenor’s musical identity apart from his onstage and studio work as a staple Chicago guitarist (Squirrel Flower, Hannah Frances, Minor Moon).

It’s a process that would require Zenor to step forward from a comfortable degree of shadow into a new and vulnerable limelight. Largely recorded in a single three-day 2020 session, Foreground took Zenor the ensuing four years to complete – partly to add the rich orchestral flourishes that adorn the album’s outer stereo field, but mostly to reckon with the fact of hearing his voice reflected for the first time. The result is a record that’s as vulnerable as it is vast, seeing Zenor and his collaborators wield their dense musicality to contrast moments of frenetic, carousel-like anxiety with lucid moments of peace and emotional clarity.