Alt-R&B artist Chiiild "retuned" his memories to make the genre-defying Better Luck In The Next Life

Chiiild wants to get “back to the basement.” For his new album Better Luck In The Next Life, which dropped on March 3, the Montreal-bred, LA-based, alt-rock/alt-R&B crooner/producer felt a driving urge to return to the feeling of creating without barriers. “I wanted to go back to the days before I left Montreal, where I would sleep till 6pm, then be up all night going from studio to studio or be at my personal basement studio,” Chiiild reminisces. “We would get a six-pack of beer and make whatever for the sake of impressing each other. There were no rules, no industry to tend to.”

This type of music-making intention might make you think that Chiiild, the current Spotify Indie Frequency playlist cover star, has taken a left turn from the self-described synthetic soul style he’s become known for and made him an “artist to watch” when he released his debut EP in 2020. However, his path actually led him to an even more digestible sonic space. A dive into the trip-hop of Portishead and Tricky, blended with the R&B stylings of his teenage obsession with the production duo the Underdogs and his true sonic upbringing of alternative radio and artists like Incubus and John Mayer, resulted in an atmospheric collage. Chiiild’s new genre amalgamation is sure to bring more listeners onto him — as he taps into equal parts nostalgia and forward-thinking, yet earwormy, fusion. 

“I grew up listening to alternative radio, and that in itself means every big band’s pop song,” Chiiild says, explaining how he reached back to find his current sound. “It’s like Coldplay’s most refined version of Linkin Park’s most refined version.” 

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He then had to choose which elements from his other influences he wanted to toy with to make them fit within this framework. For example, with trip-hop, he says, “Some of it is really out of tune, but I was like, ‘If I just gave it a little more room, it would feel a bit sweeter.’ I’m retuning my memories in a way.”

[Photo by Vincent Gravel]

This sentiment aligns directly with the emotional core of the album. Chiiild explains that Better Luck In The Next Life references the many lives we live within our singular on-Earth existence. He is attempting to tonally re-contextualize a frenzied artist’s reality through love and career. Now that he is reflecting on, rather than living through, a trying time, he can look back on it with a new perspective. “You don’t know the journey you’re on,” he says. “You don’t understand what it’s going to take. But now that you’re on the other side, you realize that it was really chaotic, and you’re at peace all over again.”

That initial peace, he attained at the beginning of his career in early 2020 when he dropped his breakout debut EP, Synthetic Soul. When he looks back, he describes the process of creating that sound as a “train of thought, which evolved into its own genre.” The thought process back then was all musical, trying to combine something “soulful and traditional” with something that was “super synthetic, almost Daft Punk-y.” In order to find a new feeling of solace, he had to process his life through a new and organic soundscape thought pattern.

That began when he tapped into his love for grunge-sounding guitars, and the way that they played off his naturally soft voice — despite never considering himself much of a singer. “When this project started I was just going to produce and get other people to sing,” he says. “But part of making this was accepting that, wholeheartedly, I’m actually a singer.” In discovering records like the classic 1964 Jazz album Getz/Gilberto by Stan Getz and João Gilberto, he realized you don’t have to sing at people. He says, “I started to prioritize emoting over everything — tone and feeling over ability and range.” Thus, the idea was born. 

After landing on his production and vocal tones, he had to sync them with an engineering and lyrical pathway. Chiiild opted for a more full musical space, inspired by the direction his track featuring R&B crooner Lucky Daye, “Good For Now” took. He says, “The art [I found] was in the ambience.”

Then with the lyrics, he did the opposite to achieve a deft balance. “I don’t like putting words where they don’t need to be,” Chiiild says. “I’m the kind of person that gets talked out of songs so easily. Someone will have all these beautiful lines, and then say something so stupid. I’m just like, ‘You could have just left it blank.’” 

Better Luck In The Next Life is an album with so many repeated mantras you could even call it a seance. What type of space could this seance be held in? Chiiild has an answer for that, too. “I love feeling the room where the song is supposed to be listened to,” he proclaims. “With ‘Surfing The Silver Lining,’ I wanted to do something that felt like you were in this jazz bar and could see the cigarette smoke. ‘Into the Deep End’ is at a beach house with tropical weather, but it’s not too warm — you’re definitely in a bedroom with the French doors wide open to the water. ‘Better Luck In The Next Life’ is taking the train. ‘Bon Voyage’ is at a hotel. ‘Good For Now’ is probably on a date — a night that doesn’t end, that you don’t want to end, going from spot to spot. ‘Hell and High Water,’ that’s in London at night.” 

This journey through different spaces could feel discombobulating in an album context. But it doesn’t because Chiiild knew exactly what he was doing. “This was the first time that I made a record in its entirety, knowing that it was going to be a record,” he explains. “The last one was just a collection of songs that I sequenced in an order. This was the first time I was like, ‘Oh, no, we’re making an album.’”

Because of that, Better Luck In The Next Life feels much more like a lengthy vacation sequenced by a top-of-the-line travel agent, and his genre-defying sound helps take you there.