Live, Chris Garneau looks just as you’d picture him by listening to his beautiful and thus-far criminally underappreciated debut record, Music for Tourists: he is a diminutive, baby-faced guy that probably gets carded at the movies. The soft and complex melodies of his songs are like warm afghans pulled tightly around you during quiet rainy days indoors or late-night brokenhearted crying sessions. Lyrically, Garneau is a master of crafting woeful lullabies that burst at their gentle seams with pathos; his soft voice conveying such a deep well of sadness that seems both on the brink of tears and brittle enough to break against a hard consonant. But at times during the night, like on the chorus of set-opener “Castle-Time,” his voice burst from it’s softness to reveal an operatic power, giving the sense that he may be hiding some of his light under a bushel. The effect of this is stirring, for it augments the intensity of his songs to hear his once-soft voice grow loud and vibrant.
Garneau employed a small backing band who used drums, cellos, an accordion and even spoons to help prop up that wounded voice and fill out the open spaces in his lush but sparse piano arrangements. The strains and mopes of the strings weaved beautifully into aching ballads “Baby’s Romance” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” while never shifting the focus from Garneau. He isn’t exactly a ball of energy—in fact he takes more of an economical approach to stage presence by moving only those parts of his body necessary for playing his songs, specifically his hands and mouth—but his lyrics made up for it as their playful imagery flitted and danced from the stage. There were echoes of Mother Goose in lyrics like, “My teacher died/Even the frying pan cried,” and in his staccato delivery of show-closer “Fireflies”: “You’re making friends with the fireflies/I have to say it comes as no surprise.” Though some classless crowd members in the back were talking at the start, Garneau is like a child, who starts playing piano in the middle of a living room full of noisy adults and, in a matter of seconds, has captivated the party and drawn nearly every ear to his sound. On stage, Garneau becomes the physical manifestation of his songs: delicate, expressive but guarded, and exuding a sleepy comfort that’s easy to love and hard to ignore.
John Frusciante
