Chris Garneau - El Radio reviews
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| Pitchfork |
 Chris Garneau's El Radio begins with the mournful sound of minor-key harmonium and strings, drawing out sad chords our brains seem hard-wired to respond to. Garneau knows this. These melodramatic chords and melodies wended their way through his debut Music for Tourists, and his follow up El Radio is rife with them as well. Simple progressions, heart-on-sleeve lyrics, Garneau's own little boy singing-- his innocence and earnestness is apparent, but at the same time if he makes this stuff sound easy it's because, generally speaking, it is easy. (see: our brains, hard-wired).
While far from pastiche, El Radio does explore, at least in passing, such familiar territory as chamber pop and theatrical Eastern European-flavored showtunes, and if there's anything working in Garneau's favor it's that he works within these frameworks with an ear for space. With kitchen-sink indie at its apex, Garneau often goes the other way, stripping his songs down to their minimal components. Songs such as "Dirty Night Clowns" or "Fireflies" might have a lot going on in them, but they're by no means cluttered, which keeps the focus keenly on those simple melodies and Garneau's almost androgynously high (though rarely keening) voice....full text |
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| Blog.limewire |
| New York-based singer/songwriter Chris Garneau was championed early on by the members of notorious miserablists Xiu Xiu, and his first album contained a cover of an Elliott Smith song, which should clue you in to the fact you’re not dealing with some rough-and-ready, happy-go-lucky rocker here. Garneau’s second album, El Radio, finds him delivering quirky, sometimes inscrutable, consistently striking lyrics in a gentle, tremulous tenor, with a prevailing feeling of sadness and dislocation. That disoriented feeling is echoed by the production, where Garneau’s piano-led tunes are seen through a sonic funhouse mirror that artfully obscures their edges, achieving an agreeably unmoored effect. The arrangements are unpredictable, as the listener is led through one left turn after another, from the abrupt appearance of a clip-clop percussion track disrupting a meditative mood to a telephone-like touch of distortion added to a vocal. There’s a bit of avant-cabaret sensibility to El Radio as well, and though the album’s likely to appeal to fans of low-key troubadours like M. Ward or Cat Power, that dash of elegance ultimately serves to set Garneau apart from the pack....full text |
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| Fabrikalink |
Where can I start with Chris? If you have a hard time crying or feeling anything in the recent past, I assure you that after you listen to Garneau's lyrics and soulful voice, you will definitely feel again. On his latest album, although, he goes for a more playful carnival-like tone. For the newbies I will recommend you listen to his rendition of Elliot Smith's "Between The Bars", as an appetizer. But let's talk about "El Radio", shall we?
He can usually do enough emotional damage with his piano, his voice, and maybe a cello, but in this album he goes all out and includes a much richer sound. "Dirty Night Clowns" is fun and playful, as if we were in the middle of a circus. "Hands On The Radio" could be an instant favorite--but maybe this is because hearing his piano and soft vocals again rings so close to his old album. "No More Pirates" has soft trumpets and drum rolls, making you feel like you're a wooden doll living next to a revolution. This song has a reprise towards the end of the album, much softer and dreamlike. "Fireflies" sounds like old school child songs... with an almost dark macabre tone to it. The rest of the songs in this album are exquisite as well as the ones I mentioned, so give it a listen:...full text |
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