{"id":46275,"date":"2022-01-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/hiya\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:08","slug":"hiya","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/hiya\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiya"},"content":{"rendered":"

When last (and first) we encountered Charlie Recksieck, it was as half of the duo Leaders In The Clubhouse<\/a>, whose smart-alecky songs I described as \u201cvery much in that Fountains Of Wayne \u2013 Ben Folds vein,\u201d with a bit of an irascible edge. The same applies to his solo moniker Chuck Charles; this is brightly rendered, upbeat power-pop, thoughtfully arranged, with lyrics that are sometimes clever, sometimes serious, and sometimes both.<\/p>\n

What he doesn\u2019t take seriously is himself. In my notes for this review I scribbled \u201cRandy Newman for dummies,\u201d but immediately felt that phrase was too negative to include, only to find this quote on Charles\u2019 own website: \u201cChuck Charles was once referred to as \u2018the stupid man’s Randy Newman\u2019. We like that.\u201d Alrighty then!<\/p>\n

\u201cMy TV Friends\u201d is a good choice to kick things off, a bouncy tune about a lonely TV addict who\u2019s looking forward to getting home at the end of the day to see all of his on-screen friends. The undercurrent of sadness and alienation is both emphasized and offset by a snappy arrangement including horns and harmonies. \u201cAll Those Pretty Colors\u201d follows, a tune about coveting comic books. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m a reader and former collector myself, but would I write a song about that? I doubt it, but Chuck\u2019s is pretty good.<\/p>\n

\u201cKey To A Door\u201d offers hints of another possible source of inspiration: Jimmy Buffett. Charles is once again talking about serious things in a funny way, masking vulnerability with punchlines. Track five, the elaborately named \u201cLike A Maggie\u2019s Positively Leopard-Skin Homesick Blues\u201d is where you realize you\u2019re dealing with someone whose filters are out of commission; it\u2019s a rollicking 11-verse Dylan homage-slash-parody that goes on for (gulp) eight full minutes. <\/p>\n

From there you get a playful take on patriotism (\u201cIndependence Day\u201d), a bluesy tune (\u201cUgly Butterflies\u201d) that lets guitarists Andy Machin and Mike Mannion stretch out while doing their best Clapton\/Harrison imitations, and a loungey interlude that sets up the distinctly less jokey second half.<\/p>\n

In its own way, second-half-opener \u201cLebanese Prison\u201d is emblematic of this album; mixing and matching musical styles under a lyric that\u2019s a four-minute extension of a single idea\u2014comparing the unpleasant situation the narrator finds himself in to a Lebanese prison. It works as well as it does only because of the specificity of that point of comparison. <\/p>\n

\u201cLift\u201d is a notably effective description of the relationship between performer and audience; the performer\u2019s gift is to give their audience a lift. It\u2019s a simple idea that he does a nice job with here while giving it a yacht rock musical frame. \u201cThe Naked Truth\u201d is a bit of a speed bump\u2014a sad sack litany of bad breaks and indignities that overstays its welcome\u2014on the way to the one cover here, a solo piano rendition of The Killers\u2019 \u201cRead My Mind\u201d that works shockingly well. <\/p>\n

\u201cWere You Close\u201d has a definite Fountains Of Wayne vibe, that slightly delusional lovable loser persona, but sweeter, goofier and sadder. Then \u201cOh My\u201d plays it straight for a big love song, tapping a full horn section to bring it home, before we close out in melancholy form with the elegiac, distinctly Ben Folds-ish \u201cSo Long,\u201d an imaginary conversation with a young acquaintance who died too soon.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, it must also be said that 15 tracks and 64 minutes of Chuck Charles might be too much of a good thing; cutting three or four songs could have resulted in a stronger and more focused album. Such quibbles aside, Hiya<\/i> is an affectionate and often clever homage to sharp-penned songsmiths like Randy Newman. Despite its various gags and feints, at heart it\u2019s a serious venture crafted with loving care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10709],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46275","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-chuck-charles","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46275"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}