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.
Yet even relatively pared down and hushed, El Radio is steeped in affectation, from its vaguely cabaret bent to its mopey singer-songwriter tropes. "Over and Over" and "Hands on the Radio" are certainly pretty, but they're also so precious it's almost unbearable, and not in the emotional way. On "Things She Said", Garneau almost sounds like he's playing a character, not in the story-song sense but like a secondary performer taking a solo turn in the spotlight in an off-Broadway musical. The winsome "No More Pirates" benefits greatly from Garneau's tidy arrangement, but it, too, sounds like a beat in a story we don't get.
In fact, like friend Duncan Sheik, that may ultimately prove the best place for Garneau's particular talents. In the context of the LP, Garneau's songs typically connect only on the most facile of levels-- those easy sad chords, plinking piano keys and the like-- but in service of a story, a narrative, they might gain a little more meaning. Ending the disc with "Black Hawk Waltz", another soft, minor key instrumental, gives El Radio its conclusion, but little that preceded it leaves enough of an impression to enhance or amplify the album's erstwhile final punctuation. For music that aims to ply the heart, El Radio ultimately lacks in noticeable passion, leaving the listener lingering outside Garneau's little world, waiting to be let in.
