Product Description

Brimming with lust, drama, and dark humor, HISTORIE DE MELODY NELSON is widely acknowledged as Gainsbourg's masterpiece. The 1971 release was criminally ignored outside France-despite the godfather of French pop's decade of cutting-edge songwriting. It's now something of a cult classic, and artistsas diverse as Air, Nick Cave, and Portishead have all citedthe album as an influence.
Don't be put off by the "concept album" tag. There are no goblins here. Instead, Gainsbourg concentrates on his favourite subjects-sex and death. Thestory line concerns a chance meeting between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl that develops into a passionate affair. Never one to shy away from controversy, Gainsbourg plays his character with consummate sleaze. Remember, this man wrote the playfully obscene "Les Sucettes" for young, innocent France Gall (who thought she was singing about lollypops). Most of the lyrics are intoned in Serge's seedy seductive whisper, intertwined perfectly with the cinematic music. From the slow, smoky funk of "Melody" through intricately arrangedballads and the final apocalyptic "Cargo Culte" (featuring a 70-strong choir), there's never a dull moment. In lesser hands, this would be an overblown mess. MELODY NELSON, in itssubtlety and invention, remains a testament to Gainsbourg'sgenius.

Track Listing

1. Melody
2. Ballade De Melody Nelson
3. Valse De Melody
4. Ah Melody
5. L'Hotel Particulier
6. En Melody
7. Cargo Culte

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14292 in Music
• Released on: 2001-02-05
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Amazon.co.uk Review
This, Gainsbourg's first conceptually realised album, is one of his finest moments. The seven tracks here, recorded in 1971, detail his infatuation, lust, blossoming love for and loss of a (very) young girl named Melody Nelson. In "Melody" he knocks a girl off her bike in his Silver Ghost Rolls Royce and, intoxicated by this red-headed English teenager carrying a rag doll, begins a relationship with her. Set to a fragile breakbeat and bowed guitar, the music is majestic, preening. A guitar shimmers dangerously close to a violent outbreak of feedback before settling back into its reverberating motif; strings erupt and soar like a bird of prey. "Ballad Of Melody Nelson", the single off the album, is lilting and light-spirited, buoyed by chiming string arrangements and crystalline acoustic guitar. With its waltz speed and structure, "'Valse De Melody" evokes carefree summer days and the giddy excitability of a fresh romance. "L'Hotel Particulier" narrates the memory of a secret liaison, ending with reconciliation in a Rococo-themed bedroom. It gives way to "En Melody", a brash funk instrumental overpowered by whinnies and snorts let out by Jane Birkin in the midst of sexual horse-play. Like a dream, the album closes with "Cargo Culte"; like a demon brother it adds an atmosphere of doom and gloom to the airy infatuation of the opening track. On returning to her native England, Melody's plane has crashed. In Gainsbourg's imagination, she has become a living sacrifice to a mechanical cargo cult. All that is left are the tortured and twisted bodily remains of his love. Consequently, the guitar melodies have become deliberately detuned, and a 70-piece gothic choir lends a funereal aspect to this requiem for the doomed romantic. --Chris Campion

Customer Reviews

A short album about lust...
Serge Gainsbourg's L' Histoire de Melody Nelson is a 28-minute concept album that fuses elements of rock, funk, cabaret and lounge-jazz, with more subdued moments of poetry, atmosphere and orchestration. As a record, it pretty much sticks closely to Gainsbourg's key-themes, such as drunken debauchery, feckless seduction, and soul-destroying lust, with the singer managing to convey some truly heartfelt and heart-breaking moments of deep emotion within that intoxicating haze of excess, caricature and over-indulgence. The fact that it can be categorised as a concept album shouldn't put anyone off making the purchase (especially if you're already interested in Gainsbourg's work), with Melody really standing as one of the few song-cycles that manages to side-step pretension (a few others off the top of my head would include Astral Weeks, Song Cycle, Village Green Preservation Society, Promenade and In The Aeroplane Over The Sea), conveying an emotionally engaging story that is both fun and through-provoking, without feeling the need to indulge in ten-minute long instrumental pieces, or a message about nuclear war.

As with all Gainsbourg's work, Melody is a personal expression wrapped up in a guise of canny song writing, devilish arrangements and dips into pure lyrical melodrama. The central concept sees Serge stepping into the role of a middle-aged businessman, who develops some intense feelings of lust for English teenager Melody Nelson (...after he accidentally knocks her down with his car!!!). The album then goes on to chronicle the seduction and eventual relationship, with Serge narrating in a sleazy whisper - over an evocative and constantly free-flowing bed of acoustic guitars, subtle-pianos, heavy-bass riffs, pounding drums and waltzing orchestral flourishes - a doomed romance of innumerable proportions. It all sounds great to me... like a soundtrack to a film that was never made, with Gainsbourg conveying a multitude of character emotions (going from apathetic, to lustful, to gentle and perverted) that are always mirrored perfectly by those forceful musical arrangements. I'm not going to pretend that I understand every lyric that Gainsbourg croons (seeing as I only have a slight grasp of the French language), nor will I pretend that such rudimentary understanding is integral to the enjoyment of this album. For me, every single word spoken by Serge is understandable... because his voice is so packed full of warmth, character and charisma.

Like all the great albums, L' Histoire de Melody Nelson has a sound and ideology of it's own, which means that such notions of language and location are stripped away by the feeling that is instilled within the listener through the combination of the words, voice, soul and music (yes, yes... forgive the hyperbole!!). After all, aren't albums like Revolver, Pet Sounds, Let it Bleed, Astral Weeks and Blonde on Blonde just as potent and popular in France, Italy, Germany, etc, as they are in English speaking countries like here and in the U.S.? Think about it. There's also a detectable influence from this found on albums like the Great Escape by Blur (something suitably moody like The Universal, or even End of a Century from Parklife), as well as most of the 90's albums from Pulp (This is Hardcore has a definite Gainsbourg feel), The Divine Comedy's A Short Album About Love (something like In Pursuit of Happiness and I'm All You Need), the work of Nick Cave and Tom Waits, and of course, a track like Paper Tiger from Beck's great album Sea Change (so the album should be even easier to comprehend now than it was back in 1971).

My favourite moments from the album would be Melody, Ballade de Melody Nelson and Cargo Culte, though in all fairness, it is wrong to pick favourites!! This is an album that should be experienced from beginning to end in one unbroken sitting, as the listeners allow themselves to be drawn into the central relationship, consumed by the passion and melodramatic excess, and eventually spat out on the other side of heartache. Throughout the record, Gainsbourg is writing and performing (some of vocal delivery is more akin to acting than singing... as he creates a character, a mood and an emotion, etc) at an extremely high-calibre. The arrangements and overall band performance is great too, particularly the bass, which creates a deep and hypnotic groove that you could get lost in, and those strings, which suggest Latin and also middle-eastern influences, are perfect, managing to capture that grand old rainy day melancholy, in the most cinematic sense!!

L' Histoire de Melody Nelson is a fine album that has aged perfectly and makes a lot more sense now with the references of recent bands and pop icons dipping their toe into the seedy world of Serge, whilst mining a similarly libidinous path of excess on a road to emotional despair. Ultimately, the album shows Gainsbourg's influence on contemporary music and cements his reputation as a poet and performer far greater than the drinking, chain-smoking and on-camera propositions to Whitney Huston would suggest.

It really is that good
What you get here for your money is a guitar/bass/drums power trio playing groove based backings that veer towards the looser side of music, luscious strings that have never accompanied such a band in such a perfect way before or since, and a pervy frenchman trying it on with a young english lass.

This album is great. It's great in the way that Can and Faust are great. It's great in the way Miles Davis is great. Buy it.

Musical Genius
It is little wonder that so many musicians - from many different countries - cite the late, great Serge Gainsbourg as a major influence. Aside from the attitude, the scandals, and all the drinking and women associated with any self-respecting musical star, his music and lyrics were so original, so out-of this-world, that one cannot fail to to see the genius therein. And 'Histoire De Melody Nelson' is, to my mind, his masterpiece. The sensuous vocal and words and the varying music come together to tell a story of doomed love with a young girl. So many different themes and ideas come together before the finale that it is hard to believe that so much has been packed into 28 minutes. When Gainsbourg died, the British Press remembered him more for his drinking and his naughty behaviour - but this album reminds us of just what a musical genius he was, and why he is such an icon in his home country.