Singer/songwriter
Marc Farre self-releases his third album, his first in eight years,
Secret Symphony. Like its predecessors,
Unsafe Songs and Man on the Sun, it enlists the French-born, America-based
Farre in the company of European-influenced musicians like
Leonard Cohen,
Lou Reed, and
Nick Cave, employing a sprechgesang style in a throaty voice over folk-rock arrangements to express highly poetic lyrics. "Harry...," the lead-off track (a revised version of "Harry Screams at the Sky" from
Unsafe Songs) immediately shows that this time around
Farre is more interested in rocking out (on the largely acoustic instruments, that is), and that he has a kinetic band behind him. Here and in subsequent songs the words can be impressionistic, but
Farre sings and recites them with conviction. Perhaps reflecting his classical background, however, he is a bit more ethereal than his influences. His voice and approach may occasionally be mistaken for those of
Cohen or
Reed or
Cave, but he is never as comically erotic or matter-of-factly vulgar or melodramatically gothic, respectively, as they can be. This is more tasteful art-house folk-rock, which means it lacks the surface impact of
Farre's more commercial predecessors, though it can be just as compelling. ~ William Ruhlmann