Marc Collin – Hollywood, Mon Amour

In which the Nouvelle Vague mainman, with the assistance of various female vocalists, reinterprets songs from 80s movies and intends to reveal the beauty beneath the bombast.
Firstly he plays safe, taking on Blondie’s Call Me. It’s slowed down and with a calypso feel, but it was such a great song to begin with it’s no surprise it still sounds lovely. Following that Eye Of The Tiger becomes a sumptuous lounge pop thing, which works pretty well, When Doves Cry is another safe bet, but the pretty much acoustic version is beautiful and A View To A Kill does the trick of stripping away the bombast of Duran Duran’s original and making it something Parisian and sparkly.
Yael Naim helps out on Flashdance and turns it into a weepy torch song; it’s an amazing transformation. Footloose is lively and boppy and very fun indeed thanks to Cibelle, while Juliette Lewis shows and hitherto unknown tenderness on This Is Not America, which is gracious and mysterious. Nothing much is added to Arthur’s Theme, and while Reality is fine, but not knowing the original it’s difficult to say what they’ve done to it.
At this point it’s worth saying, that while Collin renders most of the tunes in a loungecore style, there’s still enough variation and style to avoid the repetitious reworkings of the likes of Mark ‘More Trumpet’ Ronson.
For Your Eyes Only is rendered fairly bland, but the album finishes with Leelou doing Don’t You Forget About Me as if she was Tori Amos trapped in a music box. While the album isn’t a resounding success there’s enough moments to make you think again about the originals.

Hollywood, Mon Amour is out now on [PIAS] Recordings

Album website here