When the French electronic musician David Grellier landed one of his songs on the soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film Drive, it must have felt a little like a prophecy fulfilled. Grellier, better known as College, has been taking cues from Hollywood aesthetics since the beginning of his career. The sleeve of 2008’s Teenage Color EP could pass for a knocked-off John Hughes poster; the cover of his debut album, Secret Diary, echoes imagery from Risky Business, Body Double, and Flashdance. The sound of those early recordings is no less faithful to silver-screen staples like John Carpenter (particularly his Assault on Precinct 13 score), Tangerine Dream (specifically, their sultry Risky Business contributions), and zapping and squelching synth-poppers Yaz.
But once you’re known for a filmic style, those associations can be difficult to shed. Grellier has let moving images—or at least the imaginary stills from the neon-tinted mood board in his mind—do much of the heavy lifting on his music. On 2011’s Northern Council and 2013’s Heritage, his two-minute sketches often came off frustratingly half-finished. It was easy to wonder if he was resting on his laurels—or even getting tangled up in them. Just as Drive’s “A Real Hero” was inspired in part by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who wrangled US Airways Flight 1549 to a water landing on the Hudson River, *Northern Council *features a track titled “TWA Flight 450”—which, coincidentally or not, is also the number of another flight rescued from the brink of disaster.
In its mood and its discipline, Shanghai is the most focused work that Grellier has done. Where previous albums often felt like collections of excerpts scooped up from the cutting-room floor, Shanghai’s 15 tracks fit together so snugly that they could easily be repurposed for an actual film score. He has largely jettisoned the percolating synth-pop of earlier albums, instead favoring slow-moving synthesizer bass, airy pads, and plenty of empty space. A less-is-more approach prevails: There are rarely more than three discrete elements in play at any given moment, and few tracks stretch beyond two-and-a-half minutes. With the exception of “Hotel Theme Part I” and “Hotel Theme Part II,” two organ variations that lend a sense of déjà vu to repeat plays of the album, tracks don’t necessarily repeat themes or even specific synthesizer patches, but in their muted colors and economical gestures, they all feel like parts of a greater whole. Like a roomful of minimalist canvasses, each one feeds off the others.
At their best, his patient miniatures waver between wistful and distant, leaving plenty of room project your own emotional states. Album opener “A Strange Guide” has sunrise chords and scene-setting crickets; “Bloody Palms” lingers on bittersweet major sevenths, lilting and understated; the regal “Hotel Theme Part I” evokes Philip Glass’ organ thrum. Only the album’s lone vocal cut, “Love Peas,” featuring a singer named Hama, breaks the mold: A soft-focus swirl of plucked strings and hushed legato. It’s pretty, almost cloying, and its wide-eyed sparkle comes closer to the work of M83, another Frenchman with a penchant for ‘80s blockbusters.
The only problem is that none of it is quite enough; there just aren’t enough musical ideas here to sustain an entire album—at least not if Grellier wants to aim for anything more than background listening. Take “Briefcase,” a single coldwave arpeggio extended for two minutes, or “Mansion Road,” a brooding bit of keyboard noodling: These aren’t songs, they’re cues in search of a scene. The album is meant as an homage to 1920s Shanghai—a tribute to “a fantasized and blurry period of time,” as the press release puts it. But that is barely the kernel of an idea, and the music doesn’t develop it beyond the level of an elevator pitch. There’s nothing specific to China, or the 1920s, in his synths or tentative melodies, and the ill-advised album cover—a pastiche of the old movie-poster trope where the male protagonist clutches a woman to his chest—doesn’t do the project any favors. Whatever he was going for, it comes off instead as an Orientalist cliché. Next time, instead of looking abroad for inspiration, Grellier might do better to start closer to home—to find his own story to tell, one that doesn’t require moving pictures in a darkened room to bring it to life.
