Jacques Brel – Infiniment (2003) [SACD]

I am not a dedicated French Chanson listener, but then this monsieur Jacques Brel plays in a different league altogether. The Brel songs touch your inside, they are clear, poetic, touching, captivating, raw, soothing & eternal. Above all, Brel’s songs are about honesty towards oneself, about authenticity. This compilation is a pretty good collection of his ‘greatest hits’.
Brel must certainly be an acquired taste. It’s ironic that it took a Belgian to represent something that for many is uniquely representative of France’s cultural identity. The student movement of the 60s. La vie en terrasse. Something that is uniquely Parisian. Intellectual. Intense. Sombre. Stubborn. The rolling ‘rrr’, the somewhat nasal tone. The protest song. The song about people (Marieke, Jacky, JoJo) & places (Orly, Amsterdam, Bruxelles) & both for & against his Flemish roots. Many of these songs are very atmospheric. So if you want to have something ‘French’ in your music collection, look no further. I do not know whom to compare Brel to, outside of France that is. This is a pretty unique sound. Brel tells you stories. The intensity with which he tells them is palpable in every one of these. As I said, you have to be in the mood for it, but when you are it hits home.
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Formidable. Intense. Extremely influential. Virtually unknown outside Europe. These all describe Jacques Brel. This 2-CD ‘best of’ captures the essential otherworldliness of the Belgian expat’s music that simultaneously baffled & captivated France for two and half decades. So why should you care? If you’ve ever listened to David Bowie, Pulp, Nick Cave, Scott Walker or Ray Davies, you’ve heard the man’s influence, and what an influence it was… While the rest of the world was singing along to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” & Beatlemania, Brel was dominating French airwaves with entertaingly sordid tales of catching STDs in an Army brothel in the tune “Au Suivant”.
This double-SA-CD’s sound quality is variable because of the limitations of recording techniques of the 1950s & 60s, but even the original mono tracks are tastefully reverberated in 5.0 surround in a way that should be a blueprint for others seeking to bring monophonic recordings into multi-channel format. Sure, tape hiss is a bit high on some songs, but this doesn’t detract as much as you might expect.
Lest I give the impression that all the songs were done on 4 or fewer tracks, the songs done in the 1970s on 16- and 24-track all sound terrific–crisp, clean and inventive placement of instruments.