Polnareff's

Album Review

The reissue of Michel Polnareff's self-titled psychedelic pop masterpiece from 1971 is both a welcome addition to the CD canon, and probably more than a little off-putting to many members of the Elephant 6 collective, as well as to Stereolab and others who have cribbed its originality and vision, and tried to claim it as their own. Others (DJs like the ever-cranky Gilles Peterson) can be imagined grumbling about how another obscure pillar of their record collections is now available to us plebians who weren't there — of course, none of them were, either. Polnareff's is composed and recorded as all of a piece. The lushly layered textures bring in everyone from Serge Gainsbourg and Burt Bacharach, to funky discotheque, along with intimations of the pop of Sandie Shaw and Françoise Hardy, The Turtles, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and, of course, Scott Walker. Tracks such as "Petite, Petite," "Nos Mots D'Amour," and "Monsieur L'Abbe" reveal that Polnareff would err on packing his tracks with everything he could fit into his grandly baroque, kitschy schema, rather than have left anything to chance. It's overblown and excessive to be sure — in a manner, it's like an early model for the excesses of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk — but it is also so bloody well-executed and produced, it cannot be anything but brilliant. This is pretentious French psychedelic soul at its most garish and essential.