Once

Though not their first collaboration, Once is the first co-credited album by mid-century-pop stylist Le SuperHomard (producer Christophe Vaillant) and well-cast art-pop vocalist Maxwell Farrington. Utterly anachronistic at the time of its release in 2021, it takes a deep dive, songwriting-wise, into a distinctive niche of the charts of the 1960s. With a straight face and imperfect pitch, Farrington interprets a dozen Vaillant compositions in the realm of the highly cinematic, narrative pop of Tom Jones, Rawhide, and The Ballad of the Green Berets. The Frenchman and Australian met in Paris when Vaillant introduced himself at the 2019 MaMA Festival after hearing Farrington sing an a cappella version of a Burt Bacharach tune for a sound check. The singers full-bodied baritone takes center stage right out of the gate on We, Us the Pharaohs, entering on the line A vine goes in the jungle like a line goes on a page after a breezy arrangement of strings, vibraphone-like keys, strummed acoustic guitar, and lite rhythm section is established. Other lyrics on the album contain turns of phrase such as Bites like a denture into tin and My arms are like thighs, Ive feeling out of sorts. Contemporary elements, like the synthesizer mentioned in Oysters, help Once sidestep pure pastiche, but the spirits of Hazlewood and Morricone never stray far. ~ Marcy Donelson