Michel Polnareff's self-titled psychedelic pop masterpiece from 1971 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. ~ Thom Jurek