Album Review – Chasen Wayne’s “CORPUS”

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Honky Tonk (#510.2) and Gulf & Western (#568) on the Country DDS.

Austin TX’s Chasen Wayne has never been interested in a conventional approach to country music. By utilizing jazz cords, surf tones, and making unintuitive turns, he takes country music and the intrepid listener into uncharted territory, though with plenty of familiar sounds and guideposts to immediately grip you with intrigue, and keep you engaged throughout the experience.

Chasen’s 2024 album Strange Places touched on a whole host of different sounds and approaches, zigging when you were expecting it to zag. His new album is significantly more cohesive both sonically and thematically—so much so it’s fair to characterize it as conceptualized. CORPUS is a distinctly personal album incorporating the stories of three generations of men in his family: his father, himself, and ultimately, his son, with the hope of breaking the cycle of generational mistakes.

For those unfamiliar with Texas geography, Corpus Christi is a city on the Texas coast, popular as a regional getaway, even if the gulf’s murky water makes it inferior to some other watery destinations. As Chasen explains, his parents took their honeymoon in Corpus, and he was conceived in the men’s room of Blackbeard’s Bar & Grill on the beach—a place mentioned in the album’s opening song “Honeymoon.” Wayne would later propose to his wife on the pier in Corups as well.

Infidelity and marital mistakes are chronicled in the album, along with some dramatized and fictionalized scenarios. The super twangy “Easy To Find” supposes the worst parts of Chasen’s proclivities into a scenario of juggling two women at once. “Los Angelisa” is also not 100% autobiographical, but continues the linear story on a line if Chasen continued to give into his worst inclinations. Wayne is open about his struggles with addiction to drink, drugs, and sex, but now counts himself 100% sober. CORPUS in many ways is about exorcising his addictive demons.


Similar to another Austin-based band—Rattlesnake Milk—Chasen Wayne is unafraid to allow the music to tell the story as well, including through a couple of instrumentals. Though this is a challenging enterprise many songwriters struggle with, Chasen’s backing band the Honky Tonk Machine are well up to the task of fleshing out his ambitious vision.

Pedal steel player and arranger Jamey Maness, lead guitarist Alex Riegelman, fiddle player Jared Standish, bass player Matty Roth, and drummer Conner Church really shine on this record that if nothing else, presents one tasty musical composition after another that immerses you in a universe of twang and echo that feels decades and dimensions removed from the mundane present. The element of time is deftly utilized in the music of this album, giving the songs a sense of depth that most music disregards.

CORPUS is an ambitious record, yet improves on some of the sound quality issues Chasen Wayne’s previous record had by perhaps getting too ambitious for the resources at his disposal. Whether you want to sink your teeth into the conceptualized narrative that Chasen presents, or just sit back and enjoy the killer musical accompaniment that’s arranged perfectly for a road trip, CORPUS is an audio vacation away from the ordinary.

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To learn more about CORPUS, you can read about the songs on Chasen Wayne’s Substack.

8/10



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