Paris In The Spring

Framed as the sonic afterechoes of the notable French political uprising of 1968 crossed with a looser sense of genre experimentation between previously rigid borders, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs’s overview of late 1960s and early to mid 1970s semi-experimental French pop casts a fairly wide net chronologically. (Of course, there’s also the extra factor of any lyrics not being understandable to non-francophones, your reviewer included among them.) But given how this time has been often summed up in US/UK circles as maybe a Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin-only zone, Paris In The Spring absolutely serves as a fine introduction to a striking series of performers and songs in a generally moodier, shadowy mode. Both those artists understandably appear, of course, but beyond that it’s everything from striking instrumental pieces by François De Roubaix and Karl Heinz Schäfer to established singers like Nino Ferrer, Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Fontaine and Bernard Lavilliers staking out more adventurous sounds. Stanley’s liner notes, as usual, provide thorough, quite excellent details and context.