Chris Garneau 美国 Vogue 杂誌专访 (英文)

MUSIC Chris Garneau Debuts "Oh God" and Talks About His New Album and Lady Gaga by Jacob Brown El Radio (2009) was Brooklyn singer Chris Garneau’s second album, but for most of us, it was our first time hearing his delicately sweet and deeply emotional voice. El Radio also established Garneau as somewhat of a cult favorite of sensitive-boy crooners. As it often happens with quiet releases, Garneau played his tour and then slipped away. So it’s with great excitement that today we are able to debut “Oh God,” a gripping new single from his upcoming third release, Winter Games. While there’s plenty on the new album for fans of his last, a number of the songs inhabit a bigger, almost stratospheric aesthetic—none more so than “Oh God”—which possesses a new sound that positions him to a much larger audience. With characteristic eloquence, Garneau answered a few of our questions from his newly pastoral existence in upstate New York, and surprisingly reveals the influence Lady Gaga and Phil Collins have exerted on him as of late. Some of the songs on Winter Games have a really new sound, while a few of them feel very grounded in your last album. Can you talk about where the newer sound is coming from? What’s influencing you? This was the first time that I really enjoyed the recording process. I left Brooklyn in fall of 2011 and moved upstate to a farm where I became its caretaker. I lived on 40 acres and raised animals pretty much alone, except when my boyfriend came up on weekends. I found that being out of my normal surroundings was a much more profitable experience and became one that was also much more experimental. I could make any amount of noise at any time of day or night and no one would ever hear me. Living and often, for me at least, making work in the city was very much about keeping up with peers, things being clean, tight, and fitting. You’re an artist who makes a cohesive album with a specific emotional trajectory. How would you describe Winter Games in this regard? This record started as an exercise in memory. I asked several close friends and family to write down any kind of memory they had of winter, going as far back as they could. I was specifically interested in what things felt like to them during winter seasons, and especially as children. I was interested in learning about people’s relationships to other humans who surrounded them at younger ages, and how those relationships were possibly affected by winter, cold, darkness, etc. The memories I received served as inspiration for some of the first songs I wrote on this record. Can you comment specifically on “Oh God”? It has an energy that pulls the record into better shape. I wanted to keep it very simple and was enjoying the synth factor as well as the Phil Collins shout-out. I was just having fun, really. It is also the only full band song on the record, which is a nice contrast from the rest of the lengthy, ambient tracks that make up most of Winter Games. There seems to be a lot of Francophone appreciation on this album. I lived in France for a few years when I was younger, and I’m on tour there more than anywhere else, so I guess it’s my soft spot. I wrote a set of lyrics in French a few years ago for a song called “Pas Grave,” which initially existed as a nine-minute, very ambient, open soundscape where I played cellos that sounded like whale calls, lots of pitch shifts, ethereal high choir vocal arrangements, etc. Then I wrote another song to the same set of words a couple years later, which became the current, more pop/jazz-based piece “Pas Grave.” There is also a short, spoken introduction to “Our Man,” which actually starts the record off. It was supposed to sound like a film noir clip. And embarrassingly enough, I was semi into that Lady Gaga video back a few years ago where they were sitting around in some apartment smoking and speaking in French—I don’t even remember which one it was. I’d love to get a feel or an image of your writing process. Your music and lyrics are always so visceral, it’s hard not to want to know what your process is like. It’s really difficult to be extremely specific because there is the abstract variable between me and the material—but maybe that’s a defense mechanism I use to be less specific about the material when the truth is that, of course, it is about me and my issues. Abuse, neglect, greed, misogyny, family, life failure—it all continues to be reigning themes in my work; I can’t seem to avoid any of it. I can say with certainty, though, that this record is more sonically and fundamentally me than anything from the past. It feels very real—and a part of me is very scared by that. But also confident that, for once, maybe I know what I am doing. Winter Games is out on November 12.

Chris Garneau Photo: Michael