Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson

8.5 - France - 1971

A somewhat bizarre concept album from everyone's favourite dirty Frenchman. In this episode, the lecherous narrator is driving around drunk in his Rolls Royce and hits a young teenage girl with whom he has an affair until she leaves to fly back to Sunderland but then her plane crashes and her body is retrieved by a New Guinea cargo cult. Or something. It's best not to think about it really. The worst moment is when, just after striking the girl with his car, the narrator, having seen under the young girl's skirt, remarks that her hair must be naturally red. Eep.

Still, despite all that cringy creepiness, Melody Nelson is a very fine album, not the least because of the terrific arranging work by Jean-Claude Vannier. Gainsbourg's lascivious muttering is backed by a wonderfully lush orchestral arrangement and a rhythm section made of some of Britain's finest session players (the drumming work by Dougie Wright is exceptional throughout). A couple of tracks -- "Valse de Melody" and "L'Hotel Particulier" -- suffer a bit in comparison to the gorgeous melodicism of the other tracks ("Ballade de Melody Nelson" is a definite highlight), but the only real weakness of this album is its cruelly short sub-half hour running time.