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| Pitchfork |
 Serge Gainsbourg had no great attachment to genre. By the time he came to rock music, in his early 40s, the French star had traced his oblique, provocative course through chanson (French vocal music), jazz, and light pop. He'd made percussive café jams about suicide and given Eurovision popstrels France Gall and Françoise Hardy songs full of blowjob puns. Later on he'd make a rock'n'roll album about the Nazis and a reggae take on the French national anthem. A pattern emerges: Gainsbourg hops from style to style, but with a terrific instinct for finding the most startling content for any given form.So it's no surprise his rock work-- the early 1970s albums, of which Histoire de Melody Nelson is the first and finest-- was so original. Melody Nelson is a collaboration with composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier, who assembled a bunch of top sessionmen for the album. But Gainsbourg and Vannier had little interest in the conventions that had accreted around early 70s rock. Like a lot of 1971 records, Histoire de Melody Nelson is a concept album: Unlike most, it's only 28 minutes long. The songs are lavishly orchestrated, yet the dominant instrument isn't guitar or organ but rather Herbie Flowers' lascivious, treacly bass, playing a seedy, rambling take on funk.Serge Gainsbourg had no great attachment to genre. By the time he came to rock music, in his early 40s, the French star had traced his oblique, provocative course through chanson (French vocal music), jazz, and light pop. He'd made percussive café jams about suicide and given Eurovision popstrels France Gall and Françoise Hardy songs full of blowjob puns. Later on he'd make a rock'n'roll album about the Nazis and a reggae take on the French national anthem. A pattern emerges: Gainsbourg hops from style to style, but with a terrific instinct for finding the most startling content for any given form. So it's no surprise his rock work-- the early 1970s albums, of which Histoire de Melody Nelson is the first and finest-- was so original. Melody Nelson is a collaboration with composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier, who assembled a bunch of top sessionmen for the album. But Gainsbourg and Vannier had little interest in the conventions that had accreted around early 70s rock. Like a lot of 1971 records, Histoire de Melody Nelson is a concept album: Unlike most, it's only 28 minutes long. The songs are lavishly orchestrated, yet the dominant instrument isn't guitar or organ but rather Herbie Flowers' lascivious, treacly bass, playing a seedy, rambling take on funk....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| Serge Gainsbourg was already the creator of one of the most lascivious pop singles of all time, the infamous “Je T’Aime... Moi Non Plus,” when he released Histoire de Melody Nelson — a short, psychedelic, operatic concept album about a brusque affair between a middle-aged lecher and an underage nymphet with “naturally red hair” (played by Gainsbourg’s then-wife, muse, and collaborator Jane Birkin). Although widely accepted as a classic album, it also has a stigma attached to it: no matter what musical barriers Gainsbourg surpassed, he always seemed, first and foremost, a dirty old man bent on shocking more than creating art. Certainly, Gainsbourg lived every minute of his life by his own envelope-pushing mantra (“For me, provocation is oxygen”), but he was also a romantic of the highest order, compared to Rimbaud while living, to Baudelaire in death. Clocking in less than 28 minutes, Histoire de Melody Nelson is a groovy, emotive, and intriguing piece that demands more than a cursory listen. Even the recording details have a strong, mysterious allure of their own (until recently, the identities of Gainsbourg’s English session musicians, now known to be Vic Flick, Brian Odgers, Big Jim Sullivan, and Dougie Wright, were uncommon knowledge). Although not terribly difficult to find (my copy is a mid-’90s import reissue) this album should be readily available in all record stores, Wal-Marts, and gas stations throughout the land, even though that would crush its caché considerably. The king of reanimating lost gems, Light in the Attic (with plenty of help from UK treasure trawlers Finders Keepers) is doing its part by reissuing and revamping Gainsbourg’s beloved record which, 38 years after its original release, still holds persuasive power as both a shock-value missive and high conceptualized musical work of art....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| Panning Serge Gainsbourg’s most celebrated concept record for being perverse is a bit like damning Bob Dylan for being coy. Sure, between lover and muse Jane Birkin’s faux (but pregnant!) nymphet pose on the cover and the album’s basic concept (old man hits young teen with Rolls, compromises her in a cheap motel and then loses her to a plane crash), you can run out of eyebrows to raise. But the magic of Gainsbourg’s Lolita is its essential surrealism juxtaposed with incredible musicianship. As the grinding guitars and trembling drum lines of “Cargo Culte” propel Melody Nelson’s 707 across the gaze of a cheering Guinean cargo cult and into the sea, the album’s undertone of macabre spirituality emerges as a thing of beauty. What’s more, Andy Votel’s encyclopedic liner notes and a Gainsbourg interview make this version the definitive reissue for the as-yet unsullied....full text |
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