Local Review: Anaïs Chantal – Recipe

Anaïs Chantal
Recipe
Self-Released
Street: 05.24
Anaïs Chantal = PinkPantheress + Solange

Anaïs Chantal’s music is what you listen to when you need every feeling and experience within you to be validated. The audience is full of the best kind of person—thought daughters. Chantal’s music carries with it very methodic, thoughtful lyrics accompanied by her powerful and beautiful vocal performance. Her music speaks to those with many thoughts. Throughout the five tracks making up Recipe, you feel deeply. The playful, funky beats on each track felt like bedroom pop’s cooler, older sister and her emotional, and subtly intense, vocals solidify Chantal as a true R&B artist. The blend of styles feels like the perfect amount of overlap from each. 

Chantal begins Recipe with the track “Butter,” which sounds girly, cheeky and dreamy. The most enjoyable aspect of this track is Chantal’s balance between keeping the R&B mood alive through her vocals while bringing a bit of a pop feel through the beat and pacing. This track definitely draws listeners into hearing the rest of the EP. “Butter” ends with a captivating fade-out, portraying Chantal’s attention to detail in her song writing. “Butter” feels sassy, which I love. Add this track to your “getting ready for a night out” playlist. 

Following “Butter” is “Fallacy.” If a dreamy summer had its own song, it would be this track. “Fallacy” makes you want to have a sleepover with all your friends and dance the entire night. Within the first minute of the song, it drops into a very danceable beat, reminding me loosely of PinkPantheress’ “Break it Off” and “Passion”. This beat drop is easily the best part of the EP. “Recipe (interlude)” feels very dramatic and heavy in comparison to the other more playful tracks. Her vocals are at their strongest throughout this interlude and feel reminiscent of Solange’s “Lovers In the Parking Lot.”

The fourth track, “For What?” portrays very soft vocals accompanied by a fast paced beat that seems to be the background noise intentionally accentuating her vocals. There’s a moment in this trackwhen Chantal sings, “You’ve lived a life of sin / A little secret crawling underneath my skin / The weight I’ve been hidin’, hidin’.” In this segment, Chantal’s voice sounds it’s best. She sounds effervescent and, unashamedly, I replayed this segment at least six times on my first listen. “For What?” is a bedroom pop track, bringing a heavenly dimension to this EP.

The beat that kicks off the concluding track of this EP, “Reflections,” feels very cool and elusive. I found the mood of this track to shift away from the rest of the EP. Because of this, I felt like I could feel Chantal’s emotions shifting throughout the EP, which seems to be a meticulously very calculated detail in her songwriting. The lyrics “I don’t even recognize myself / The stranger staring back at me won’t help” felt a bit corny and as Chantal’s lyricism felt so strong in earlier tracks, this bar took me by surprise and let me down. Aside from that line, this track feels emotional and powerful and this is heavily portrayed throughout Chantal’s incredibly strong vocals—which are probably at their strongest on this specific track. 

Recipe depicts the beauty of Chantal’s talent and I feel excited to watch as her career continues to prosper. You can keep track of Anaïs Chantal through her instagram @anaischants. –Kyra Cortez

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