GALLANT

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“I want to be a better human.” Can you buy happiness on Craigslist? These are both thoughts that passed through Christopher Gallant’s mind as he worked on Ology, his début album which also serves as an introspective study of himself. “I really just wanted to challenge myself to dig even deeper and dissect myself even more, and learn more about myself in the process,” he says over the phone, having just landed in New York for his album listening party. His voice is deep and soft, and he takes his time reflecting on his preparations for the LP. “I can’t really talk to people face-to-face,” he admits, “so with this album, I guess I was coming off the realization that being very honest and letting people in a little bit means something to somebody.”

Looking to escape the anxieties of New York and the music industry, the Columbia, Maryland-raised singer moved to Los Angeles in 2013, where he was discovered by manager Jake Udell. Gallant, who performs under just his last name, self-released the haunting, future bass-filled EP Zebra in 2014, detailing his struggles living in New York during and after his time at NYU (where he study music anthropology and sociology), trying to express his feelings “in the only way” he knew how. Mining the rough, future beats of Zebra, STINT, the album’s primary producer whom Gallant found on SoundCloud, worked to put Gallant’s voice, namely his falsetto, front and center.

And his voice is what ties the album, which also forms a study of his musical influences, together. The radio DJ Zane Lowe, who made the soulful single “Weight in Gold” his first World Premiere on his inaugural Beats 1 show back in June 2015, inadvertently turning all eyes onto Gallant, recently described the musician as existing in a “creative schizophrenic place,” which Gallant confirms. Fitting somewhere in the center of Venn diagram of soul, R&B, future bass, drum & bass, and pop, Gallant’s sound has been dubbed neo-soul, alt-R&B, and more. “Weight in Gold” is reminiscent of vintage soul records with a twist of Prince, which was enough to catch the attention one of his heroes, Seal, who ended up covering the song for Gallant’s “In the Room” YouTube series.

“I realized that when I was writing it, I was basically putting myself up on a chalkboard and dissecting every element that I could,” says Gallant of Ology, quickly adding, “in a non-narcissistic way.” Tackling confessions of loneliness, self-doubt, and regret, the album is like a series of diary entries sung as streams of consciousness. The lyrics of the Nineties R&B and gospel-influenced “Bone + Tissue” read like verses of encoded scripture, but Gallant is clear that his intentions are to “try to subvert religion having any place in society.” Begging for affirmation, he sings, “And anytime I bite the hand that feeds, won’t you lie through your teeth and tell me I’m a monument to more than bone + tissue?”

The visual identity for Ology centers around a golden sad face overlaying a current photograph of Gallant and symbolizes growth when juxtaposed with Zebra’s cover photograph of himself as a somewhat depressed child. “The gold sad face is supposed to represent optimism and the emotion and the pursuit of really knowing something greater,” Gallant explains. “I think there’s a lot of mental wandering or meandering going on. I think a lot of the time I had this picture of this environment in my head and I would just kind of paint that environment. Sometimes those environments cross over and they’re vast deserts, empty swamps, things like that, and to me that has something to do with, not just loneliness, but searching for something, where you can’t really see anything around you upfront. You have to look for it.”

You can visualize that questing in lyrics for songs like “Open Up,” which was the first track Gallant and STINT made together. He sings, “Can I trust that you won’t mind my sanity slipping away? Why don’t we open up? If you’re thirsty, let me lead you to the Maranjab, plant trees in spite of those rays and leave you in the sun until you’re soaking, throw you in the fire till you’re frozen.” Gallant also collaborated with Jhené Aiko to write “Skipping Stones”—a metaphor for occupying time—after an introduction from producer Adrian Younge, whose unique psychedelic soul sound is all over the track, in a partnership facilitated by Red Bull Sound Select, which also released the single earlier this year.

Demonstrating Gallant’s wide-ranging interests, the song “Miyazaki” pulls its name from the acclaimed animator and director Hayao Miyazaki of Spirited Away fame. “I love Japanese culture and anime and while I was working on ‘Miyazaki,’ I had that whole world playing in the background,” says Gallant. Backed by a hook borrowed from Groove Theory’s 1995 hit “Tell Me,” he delivers a Nineties R&B-inspired throwback so smooth you almost miss its premise; it is a reflection on nostalgia, documenting a sliver of time, specifically what Gallant was experiencing one year ago. “It felt like an interesting moment that I feel I’ll be able to look back on and remember,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to shroud anything in code. I was really just trying to say I felt like a better version of myself before, and was thinking about returning to the way things were.”

The album’s closing track, named for the Hindu lunar god Chandra, sounds like a twisted Disney song. A sorrow-battling ballad Gallant wrote alone on the piano “out of pure loneliness,” it was further influenced by Phil Spector’s dark, pseudo-cinematic production style. It’s an anguished finale spurred by emotions Gallant couldn’t fully grasp that arose from listening to the Spector-produced, Carole King and Gerry Goffin-penned Crystals track “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss),” about King and Goffin’s real-life babysitter, who took her marital abuse as a sign of affection. “Writing this song that kind of sounds like a Disney song, but what I’m talking about is a little bit…it just wouldn’t make it into the movie,” says Gallant of the song, which is one of the most significant to him on the album. “It’s clearly about being completely at the end of your road.”

“There was no real beginning, and when it was over, there was no real conclusion or end,” says Gallant on writing Ology. “It was just this rambling and this pursuit,” he adds, before comparing the process to running a rat race. “I really just want to be better all around. I want my friendships to mean more and I want to get more out of every day.” He’s accomplishing this goal in part with his current North American tour with label-mate ZHU, which began this week in Oakland after two breakout Coachella performances. “I just want to see if I can lower my inhibitions and not worry about judgment in the same way that I do when I write.”

Ology is out now. Gallant performs May 11 and 12 at Terminal 5, New York.