Yours is the basket of gifts a wiser and more contemplative Chris Garneau brings with him on his return from time in the seclusion of nature. You can hear the depth of the perspective granted to him by distance and the passage of time in the sonic vastness of each track. Coming down off the mountain and the bone-chilling cold of Winter Games, Garneau sees the world has continued without him. The pain of family grappling with old wounds, the yearning for connection in relationships, the anger at a world spinning deeper into suffering are all here. This time these stories connect to mythic undertones outside of time. That something can be at once so intimate and so enormous is a paradox that Garneau walks, through his own past and off into the distance.
France, where Garneau spent part of his childhood, gives him roots. He spent two months in Lyon recording Yours with co-producers Maxime Vavasseur (of the band Witxes), & Benoit Bel (trained under Valgeir Sigurdsson & Mio Thorrisson, Greenhouse Studios, Reykjavík, engineered Björk, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Kate Nash & more). Being in the studio with Vavasseur and Bel was a profound experience for Garneau, and the results of this deep connection can be heard in the raw organic matter of the album.
His last full-length album used vicarious narratives, but Garneau returns to using his own life in his work on Yours. With this new album, Garneau’s voice becomes our voice. He achieves this not by telling a universal story but instead by diving deep into what is distinct about his own wound. He comes through as a mender of broken worlds, set apart by the anguish and generative force of creativity. Garneau gives to us, in this album, a world with red storms the ferocity of Jupiter’s eyes. He feels somehow separate from this world, as the winged beast Geryon from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, a text that served as part of the foundation of this album. Garneau hovers above this red planet and sings for those with no voice. The domestic dramas, the mundane reality of putting a body into the earth, the enormity of ecological devastation all play out on this universe. Garneau covers a lot of territory, from the sweeping vistas of a heartbroken world in the title track to the darkened corners of a no-name small town bar in “No Lord”, with haunting vocal support from Emily Jane White and Keren Ann, respectively.
Garneau has other companions bringing him back to earth. Shannon Funchess of Light Asylum lends her voice to “Torpedo”, giving the song a delicate intensity. Greg Fox (Liturgy & Ben Frost) brings drums to the cosmic expanse of “No Universe”, a track that finds beauty in the potential for annihilation to wake us up. Morgane Imbeaud of French pop-folk band Cocoon, provides backing vocals for “Gentry” and “Tower”. The result of all of these contributions is a sound that is at once full and gauzy.
Yours is a complete world that, in the end, Garneau is ready to part with. He leaves it in your hands, with all of its contradictions.
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