Though not their first collaboration, Once is the first co-credited album by mid-century-pop stylist
Le SuperHomard (producer
Christophe Vaillant) and well-cast art-pop vocalist
Maxwell Farrington. Utterly anachronistic at the time of its release in 2021, it takes a deep dive, songwriting-wise, into a distinctive niche of the charts of the 1960s. With a straight face and imperfect pitch,
Farrington interprets a dozen
Vaillant compositions in the realm of the highly cinematic, narrative pop of
Tom Jones, "Rawhide," and "The Ballad of the Green Berets." The Frenchman and Australian met in Paris when
Vaillant introduced himself at the 2019 MaMA Festival after hearing
Farrington sing an a cappella version of a
Burt Bacharach tune for a sound check. The singer's full-bodied baritone takes center stage right out of the gate on "We, Us the Pharaohs," entering on the line "A vine goes in the jungle like a line goes on a page" after a breezy arrangement of strings, vibraphone-like keys, strummed acoustic guitar, and lite rhythm section is established. Other lyrics on the album contain turns of phrase such as "Bites like a denture into tin" and "My arms are like thighs, I've feeling out of sorts." Contemporary elements, like the synthesizer mentioned in "Oysters," help Once sidestep pure pastiche, but the spirits of
Hazlewood and
Morricone never stray far. ~ Marcy Donelson