Chris Garneau El Radio (Fargo)
3/5
By: Bronya Francis
Chris Garneau is most well known for his MySpace-famous song ‘Baby’s Romance’ which first emerged a few years back in 2005, resulting in Garneau gaining a certain cult status amongst the scenesters of the social networking world.
El Radio could be seen as a coming-of-age album for the part-French, part-American musician, most noticeably because he projects a more confident side to his voice at times in this album compared to the addictively unceasing boyish tones of ‘Baby’s Romance’. The first track strikes you as a particularly more musically mature approach as Chris uses a small ensemble of classical instruments to create an overture to the album, eventually entering with his androgynously inflected tones. Disappointingly in this track, ‘The Leaving Song’, his voice bears an annoying resemblance to the whiny James Blunt.
However, breathe a sigh of relief when the second song ‘Dirty Night Clouds’ is introduced by a typically-Garneau piano accompaniment, which is a reminder that he is from the class of mid ‘00s internet-grown singer-songwriters (Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor et al). Frankly, this sounds weirdly like a song from a broadway musical, and here as well as at other occasional points in the record, Garneau fails in his attempt to reach into his ancestry by experimenting with folky French instrumental flurries, which simply sound out of place, unfittingly paired with his gentle whispering vocals. Luckily Garneau saves himself by the next track, ‘Raw and Awake’, which despite being as urgent as an old man driving his L-reg mini Rover at fifty miles per hour on the M3, has the ability to keep the listener hanging on to his every word, and every chord. That, there, is skill.
Chris Garneau creates music that makes us girls swoon; he breathily confesses “I hurt somebody,/I love you too,/I love you underneath the moon,/I love you underneath the moon.” Oh how so utterly romantic! Even though throughout this album there are fewer slow-paced, grippingly amorous tunes than his last ‘Music For Tourists’, the weight of El Radio thankfully just about remains like his originally dreamy approach. On the one hand, he deserves praise for trying to weigh out his usual song writing with more upbeat tracks. However the moments that grip you the most on the album are when Garneau’s lone voice wonders lightly into your ears with no need for support from any instrument. And it is for these glimmering seconds that the Chris Garneau’s El Radio deserves a suitably mousy ripple of applause.
Artists in this article: Chris Garnea
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