Vinyl is a timeless thing. Being retro on a compact disc or an infernal download just seems, although fashionable these days, to be a bit suspect verging on the derivative. Then again, if you intend to do a civilised pastiche of a musical form remembered now only by the connoisseur then that black vinyl disc is the right way to go. It also helps when you carry off such a venture with an obvious degree of affection as Fabienne DelSol does here with her third solo album “On My Mind”
No doubt stopping only to don a miniskirt and boots (God bless Nancy Sinatra!), Ms Delsol revives the yé-yé thing with not inconsiderable style and, not content to merely emulate such genre icons as Sylvie Vartan and Eileen, she also takes a shot at nailing some west coast style psych-pop while she is at it. This, admittedly unbalanced, approach adds some perhaps intentional quirkiness to what is actually a nicely chosen set of proper pop songs. It is kind of amusing to think that I was actually impressed by the presence of songs that you can actually sing along with (providing you are alone in the room, of course – you don’t want to scare the cat again) but such a concept is uncommon these days. Of the yé-yé style songs, “Pas Adieu” and “Ce Jour La” stand out while the best song on the album was the lightly psychedelic and positively groovy “Faraway Spaceman Blues”.
The sound quality is pretty much as you would expect when such a carefully aimed pastiche of times gone by has been created and no vinyl mastering credit is given on the sleeve (nor could one be deduced from the run out groove either) so I suspect there won’t be much difference between the vinyl and the compact disc in sound quality terms.