A Night In France

Throughout the 20th century, French pop music has offered an intriguing blend of the naive, the sophisticated, and the sentimental. It has never been terribly innovative -- its most popular rock stars have tended to ape American and British pop music styles. But the French Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt almost singlehandedly gave the world a new style of jazz in the 1930s, and singers like Maurice Chevalier and (especially) Charles Trenet brought a distinctively French style of popular song to worldwide audiences during the middle of the same century. This collection brings together a nice assortment of popular French music both recent and old, and although the lack of any contributions from either Trenet or Chevalier is hard to understand, there are Joe Dassin's immortal "Les Champs-Elysees" and a fun novelty tune called "Les Embouteillages" by Sanseverino, not to mention Alain Souchon's quiet and lovely "Y'a d'la Rumba dans l'Air." There is some inevitable goofiness: Pierre Perret's "Les Jolies Colonies de Vacances" is just plain silly, with its children's vocals and brass band, and "Syracuse," by Henri Salvador and Pipo Gertrude, is almost a parody of ethereal Gallic sentimentality. But Enzo Enzo's effortlessly jazzy "Juste Quelqu'un de Bien" is absolutely perfect, and the compilers also had the presence of mind to include a track from the legendarily weird Breton folk-rock group Tri Yann. As a convenient, warts-and-all introduction to the French music of the 20th century, this disc is quite effective. ~ Rick Anderson