I'm generally reluctant to participate in 6th-grade English teacher crusades against the words "pretty" and "nice"; it's a war sold on completely bogus intelligence. Sorry, Mrs. D: Sometimes these adjectives do aptly modify their subjects. In fact, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Chris Garneau's debut, Music for Tourists, could almost have been a bold assault on behalf of pretty niceness. Instead, it's a reminder that most of us self-proclaimed nice guys eventually turn into drunken a-holes.
To put it as gently as I know how, Music for Tourists makes early Damien Rice sound musically adventurous. Garneau reduces Elliott Smith's archetypal misery to the level of cliché, with Prozac-commercial poetry and a high, fluttery whisper that sounds like Elmo tickling Sufjan Stevens on suicide watch. People cry and people die-- sometimes in the same couplet-- as piano and strings lend dreary accompaniment, sheathed in sterile production work from has-been MOR folk-pop darling (and now budding Broadway composer!) Duncan Sheik.
Over meandering piano chords on "We Don't Try", Garneau sings, "It's easy if you cry, because you feel bad for yourself." And that's pretty much Music for Tourists. The album rarely misses an opportunity for tell-not-show bleakness. After a pizzicato cello opening, waltz-time "Castle-Time" reminisces about an elementary-school teacher's death, forever ago. "Let's cry about it," Garneau urges in grim multi-track harmony. Maybe if he did a little more convincing.
Sometimes Garneau waxes philosophical, too. "Our lives, they won't keep us alive," he laments on wobbly solo number "Blue Suede Shoes"-- unfortunately not a cover. But hidden track "Between the Bars" is, and cries out for a metronome as the singer takes a melodramatic shit on the aforementioned Smith's fucked-up memory. Garneau also cops a Jeff Buckley vibrato on "Black & Blue", moaning, "I wanna catch my death of cold/ 'Cause I'm scared I'm growing old." That's just terrible.
At least Garneau shares my taste in diction. On mopey blogger fave "Not Nice", he squeaks, "When you're not being nice/ You're not nice/ You're not nice/ You're not nice," brushing against a Chris Martin falsetto. The plodding indie-gypsy of "First Place!!!" adds bent acoustic guitar notes and a pack of backing singers, as Garneau describes a house with "nice things inside." But melismatic "Hymn", with electric organ replacing piano, proves more telling than any other track here: "Try and think of nice things to say," Garneau pleads. Hmm. Maybe I'd better not say anything at all.
