Brigitte Fontaine
's first album, arranged by
Jean Claude Vannier
(who had also done arrangements for
Serge Gainsbourg
), is her most normal and accessible record. It's still not terribly normal by
pop
standards, its arty songs dressed up with period Continental orchestration and quirky melodies and vocal deliveries. These can both hark back to
Edith Piaf
-styled material, or look forward to slight
avant-garde
/
experimentalism
. At times it sounds like the kind of thing
Francoise Hardy
might have done had she continued to develop along adventurous lines and keep pace with
progressive pop
and
rock
trends in the late '60s. In fact, songs like
"Une Fois Mais Pas Deux"
sound rather close to
Hardy
's best late-'60s material, but
would have never done anything as goofy as
"L'Homme Objet,"
with its music-box backing, or as odd as
"Eternelle,"
with its tribal male backup vocals and rhythms, and
"Blanche Neige,"
with its overdubbed tropical bird effects. ~ Richie Unterberger