While the squares relive the Forties, the cool kids are twisting to the cabaret-derived Europop of the Sixties. Pop Romantique gathers artists obscure and not so obscure to pay tribute to that era with covers (of songs by Serge Gainsbourg, Francis Lai, Michel Polnareff and Francoise Hardy) and simulations (Kevin Ayers writes his own; Lloyd Cole translates a Bob Dylan tune in a joke too delicious to give away). The result is a good-natured, irony-free affirmation of youth music's timelessness -- ever impassioned, heady and naive. None of the singers' accents is anything to write maman about -- the exception being the laconic French group Air, who back Hardy on her wistful "Jeanne" -- but every band acquits itself admirably. The standouts include numbers on the rocking side: Cole's "Si Tu Dois Partir," Luna with the bouncy "La Poupee Qui Fait Non" and Heavenly's bang and crash version of "Nous ne Sommes pas des Anges."

On Chrominance Decoder, her eighth solo foray into the world of French pop, April March (the nom de disque of ex-Pussywillow Elinor Blake) has pulled off a perky act of retro conjuring, cute and listenable but finally meaningless. Rather than just acknowledging her debt to the girlish, faux-innocent ye-ye music she admires, March re-creates it wholesale, writing original time-warp tunes and singing in crisp, breathy French and English. Unlike more-progressive borrowers, March posits a musical universe untouched by rock, hip-hop or the merry scramble of postmodern appropriation. Her forgeries are expert -- "Mignonette" is a perfect pink bubble -- but March's intentions are too petty and derivative to constitute much more than masterful impersonation. (RS 807)

ARION BERGER

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(Posted: Feb 8, 1999)