The folks over at Entertainment Weekly‘s Music Mix blog are currently streaming Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Chris Garneau’s new LP, Winter Games.
 
Garneau will be celebrating the album with a record release show at LPR on Friday, November 22.
 
Winter Games, which is out today, explores some dark themes. “This record isn’t about trivial shit,” Garneau says. “It’s about why love doesn’t happen right, how your person is shaped in the early stages of life. It’s about defeating parental abandonment, sexual abuse, or family rejection. It’s about people who struggle well, what it means to have these things happen to you as a child and play out later in life.”
 
But superb songwriting by Garneau and arrangements by CJ Camerieri and Rob Moose (yMusic, Bon Iver) buoy even the chilliest moments. “It’s magical really,” Garneau says of collaborating with Camerieri and Moose. “They don’t write anything down; I direct things to a certain degree, then they take over and get this big sound from only the two of them.”
 
Garneau pushes his own limits on Winter Games, aiming to “make things big and loose and free” rather than “clean and tight.” “For the first time, this record is me,” he concludes. “That’s all I know.”
 

For more on Garneau and Winter Games, check out his recent Vogue interview. And don’t forget to grab tickets for his 11/22 record release show at LPR.
 
posted by John