VARIOUS ARTISTS Sing And They’ll Sing Your Song

MEgAPHONE MUSIC 7/10 A varied collection of folk, psych and French alt.rock from Gallic label This compilation not only serves as a sampler for Stéphane Bismuth’s French rock label Megaphone Music, but it also provides a gateway to a curious leftfield, literate, French rock aesthetic. Anglophone listeners might know Megaphone as the label that uncovered some rare, home-recorded tapes by the doomed American folk singer Karen Dalton and also paired the errant Liverpool singer-songwriter Mick Head (of Shack and The Pale Fountains) with Love’s Arthur Lee, and both are represented here. There’s a big, dramatic, romantic orchestral waltz by Michael Head & The Strands, “Something Like You”, along with selections from Dalton’s ghostly early 1960s freak-folk albums Cotton Eyed Joe and Green Rocky Road. Elsewhere there are terrific examples by maverick French auteurs. Multi-instrumentalist Simon Dalmais ekes some emotional depths from Alan Price’s “Poor People”; Julian “Lecube” Barbagallo (now the drummer with Tame Impala) is behind a wonderfully shambolic anthem from 2009 called “Shoot The Nanny”; while Mickaël Mottet is the one-man band behind Angil’s “Dolaytrim”, which sounds like Robert Wyatt fronting Mogwai. Best of all is an intense, pedal steel and acoustic guitar version of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Ballade De Melody Nelson” by French duo Teppaz Et Naz. Extras: None.