I haven’t been posting recently because I’m still sick, unbelievably. Thankfully my flu and fever has subsided, and I now just have an irritating cough and runny nose, but things could be better. Practice tonight for the Isolators show a week on Saturday (yikes).

Michel Colombier: 'Capot Pointu' (CD; Magic; 1969)
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This pop instrumental album from Michel Colombier, one of Serge Gainsbourg's most frequent collaborators, makes for a strange listen. It contains some undeniably cool moments, but overall suffers from cluttered arrangements and sound, and could fairly be classified as overproduced. In fact, some of the arrangements strongly remind me of another record that was accused of being over-produced, Billy Nichols's 'Would You Believe', which was finally released a couple of years ago after 30+ years of mystery and rumors about it being “England's 'Pet Sounds'.”

The opening track, Lobellia, is undeniably catchy, with a very cool piano line. However, the 'ba ba' wordless singalong vocals by FR David (yeah, I think it's the same guy who had a hit with 'Words' in the early 80s) are a little bit much to take (a bit like Steve Marriott's backing vocals on Billy Nichols's 'Would you Believe'). Two of the tracks are co-written with Serge Gainsbourg, but neither jumps out as being especially good. I'm rating this as 6/10, because it has enough musical variation to make me think it will grow on me. I hope it does.

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