Posted on: March 8, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Mar 23 2008 8:00P Music Hall of Williamsburg (with Xiu Xiu) Brooklyn, New York
Mar 27 2008 8:00P Black Cat (with Xiu Xiu) Washington DC
Apr 2 2008 8:00P Canal Room (Headlining) New York, New York

Village Voice – “[Music for Tourists] It’s soft, honest, and wholeheartedly intimate”

Time Out NY – “His strong command of the piano and quirky operatic voice call to mind Regina Spektor. Like her, he combines classical sensibilities with folky ones, inviting cello lines and harmonium drone into his ballads”

NPR Song of the Day – “Garneau relies on minimal instrumentation — a smattering of piano and cello, to go with his dangerously beautiful voice — and the result is a chilling disquiet”

Stylus – “Garneau charmingly spins the most banal aspects of everyday existence into whimsy”

Chris Garneau’s voice lies somewhere between liquid and matter on the scale of all that is and ever was. He is certainly a rare bird. When he’s not spending his free time at the town fairs, Chris can be found at his piano, singing haunting strains and playful stanzas, both as refreshing as amber pints of beer on humid summer evenings. His music is uniquely Brooklyn in substance, but in his musical valise he carries souvenirs from his former residences of Boston, France, and New Jersey, all of which inform his style. With his brow alternating between a doleful furrow and a mischievous arch, Garneau communicates simply and frankly about issues ranging from reverberating sorrow to Hamburger Helperâ„¢.

The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter has released his debut full-length “Music for Tourists” on Absolutely Kosher Records after Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu brought him to the label’s attention in spring of 2006. Most of “Music for Tourists” is the bare essentials. Some tracks were recorded live in the studio, others mildly produced
with a few simple and organic layers. When all was settled, Garneau emerged with thirteen songs and a hidden fourteenth track–a cover of Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars”–all of them hard-won and beautifully crafted.

A music video for “Relief”, directed by Daniel Stessen and Dori Oskowitz (filmed in LA summer 2005) is like a memory pulled from that gloaming of sleep between dreaming and wakefulness. But the memory has been sharpened and placed at an all-night diner, where poorly-disguised transvestites, rumpled-suited businessmen,
hipsters, truckers and young lovers gather to take refuge from the city outside.

Garneau’s first national tour begins May 12th in Chicago at the Old Town School of Folk Music. On tour, he will be accompanied by right-hand man Saul Simon-Macwilliams playing drums and harmonium, Eleanor Norton playing cello, and Coco Magoo on upright bass.

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