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Gallant Vibes

Thirteen tracks from a singer whose falsetto got him a Grammy nomination and whose taste in collaborators is stranger than almost anyone's in R&B.

Gallant

Christopher Gallant grew up in Columbia, Maryland, studied at NYU's Clive Davis Institute, and moved to Los Angeles. His 2016 debut Ology earned a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album and established him as one of the most technically gifted male singers of his generation.

The falsetto is the immediate thing — enormous range, deployed with real control — but what makes him interesting is the production. Gallant's records are built on unstable, harmonically ambiguous foundations, closer to art pop than to R&B convention, and he has never made an obvious play for radio.

He also had one of the more memorable career moments available to a young singer: a televised performance of "Weight in Gold" alongside Seal and Sufjan Stevens, which is a sentence that should not make sense and does.

What to listen for

"Compromise" with Sabrina Claudio is the most immediately beautiful thing here — two voices with similar textures, deliberately blurred together.

"Dynamite." with Brandy is the co-sign that matters most. Brandy is one of the most technically accomplished vocal arrangers in R&B history, and her appearing on a young singer's record is a statement.

"TOOGOODTOBETRUE" features Sufjan Stevens and Rebecca Sugar — an indie-folk composer and the creator of Steven Universe. That is not a normal R&B guest list, and the track is genuinely lovely.

"In the Room: Cruisin'" with Andra Day takes on the Smokey Robinson song, and "Sweet Insomnia" with 6LACK is the moodiest.

"Weight in Gold"-era material and "Scars." are the vocal showcases, and "Forever 21" and "Hips" show the pop instincts.

"Pulling Away" with Sinéad Harnett is the British connection.

Go deeper

Ology (2016) is the album and should be heard whole; Sweet Insomnia (2019) is the follow-up.

For singers in the same territory: Moses Sumney is the closest artistic parallel — another male falsetto working well outside R&B convention, and Aromanticism is a remarkable record. Sampha, Serpentwithfeet and Bilal complete the picture.

And Sabrina Claudio is worth following independently — her catalogue occupies similar atmospheric ground.

One last note on the collaborator list. Brandy, Sufjan Stevens, Seal, Andra Day and the creator of Steven Universe is not a list anyone assembles by accident, and it tells you how musicians hear him — as a singer worth writing for rather than a genre act. That regard has never quite translated into commercial scale, which is R&B's loss more than his.

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