Histoire De Melody Nelson

Spin (p.95) - "[A] bizarre, beguiling concept album....With progressive composer/arranger Jean-Claude Vannier's cinematically swooning strings, loping bass, and twangy guitars." Q (p.44) - "[N]ow a firm cult favourite, this bonkers slice of Gallic dirty-talk offers a very different kind of French lesson." Uncut (p.100) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "MELODY NELSON is generally regarded as Gainsbourg's career high....Like LOLITA, HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON is a kind of oratorio of desire..." Magnet (p.114) - "HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON's skeletal, jazz-like structure - with bass frequently playing the role of lead instrument - influenced a generation of indie-rock tastemakers." Blender (Magazine) - "HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON is where Gainsbourg's provocateur streak takes on something resembling grand scale. Lush and languorous..." Pitchfork (Website) - "The arrangements seem to respond almost intuitively to the twists in Gainsbourg's language and narrative, to the point where they're carrying as much storytelling weight as the words." Record Collector (magazine) (p.90) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "Hired to backdrop Gainsbourg's spoken delivery, a whole host of British session musicians provided the rock element, while expert string arranger and medium-term collaborator Jean-Claude Vannier provided one of the most inventive, affecting orchestrations of a psych-into-prog era overdosing on them." Record Collector (magazine) (p.90) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "28 minutes of art-house rock that still stands unrivaled in the history of all recorded music." Signal To Noise (p.78) - "[I]ts audacious blend of libidinous slow grooves, distorted rock guitar, and massive orchestration turned it into crate-diggers' gold."

You don't need to speak a word of French to understand Histoire de Melody Nelson -- one needs only to look at the front cover (with its nearly pornographic portrait of a half-naked nymphet clutching a rag doll) or hear the lechery virtually dripping from Serge Gainsbourg's sleazily seductive voice to realize that this is the record your mother always warned you about, a masterpiece of perversion and corruption. A concept record exploring the story of -- and Gainsbourg's lust for -- the titular teen heroine, Histoire de Melody Nelson is arguably his most coherent and perfectly realized studio album, with the lush arrangements which characterize the majority of his work often mixed here with funky rhythm lines which underscore the musky allure of the music. Perhaps best described as a dirty old bastard's attempt to make his own R&B love-man's record along the lines of a Let's Get It On (itself still two years away from release), it's by turns fascinating and repellent, hilarious and grim, but never dull -- which, in Gainsbourg's world, would be the ultimate (and quite possibly the only) sin. ~ Jason Ankeny