Franck Pourcel is another of 'those' artists who I
seem to have heard of (as being an orchestra leader and instrumentalist in the
same vein as James Last or Mantovani) via some weird alchemy but actually
know nothing much about; to put it bluntly, I couldn't name a single piece of
music he's famous for. On that basis, a 'Very Best Of' might seem as good a
place to start as any to find out about his work, but I'm not sure that it is.
Pourcel has apparently released over 250 albums in his time and having such a
wide catalogue to draw from for a 'best of' compilation would probably account
for the rather eclectic tracklist on this - The Beatles, Abba, Serge
Gainsbourgh, Irving Berlin, Glen Miller and the theme tunes from 'Bonanza' and
'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' all jockey for position in a line-up that plays out
like ADHD in the form of a mixtape.
In saying that though, the same broad brush
selection of tunes does nevertheless reveal a common denominator in
everything Pourcel touches - that is, a tendency to turn almost everything up to
11. I say 'almost' because on those tunes where he doesn't, he turns it up to 12
instead* - on the strength of these recordings it's fair to
say that subtlety is not high on his agenda and everything is over egged to
within an inch of its life. Pourcel rarely does anything radical with the tunes
themselves in the way of deconstructing them - they're all recognisable from the
off - but McCartney's previously brittle and
tender 'Yesterday' is drenched in a Tchaikovskyan wail of strings, 'Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang' becomes a Sousa march as written by Wagner for a Nazi
rally and Abba's 'Fernando' clatters with the sturm and drang of the battles
described in its lyrics.
So it goes on for track after track from start to
finish in an experience that's akin to watching television for an hour with the
colour turned full up. And what at first has a certain
novelty appeal soon starts to grate until you're longing for something to break
up the blare; it makes for some very uneasy listening. Maybe if they were
set and heard in their original contexts as whole albums of Beatles songs, film
soundtracks etc as arranged the Pourcel way than they'd be easier to digest, but
twenty of these things in one go are too much to swallow and it would definitely
be a case of 'less is more' if some of them had been pruned.
* Perhaps fittingly, half of
these recordings are credited to 'Franck Pourcel and his Orchestra' while the
other half are credited to 'Franck Pourcel and his Big Orchestra'.
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