Garlick by Hugues Aufray (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Garlick

Artist name: Hugues Aufray

Year: 1972

Number of discs: one

Label: Atlantic Records

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Who owned it: This appears to be in French, so I assume my mother owned it, because she is the family’s only Francophone.

Buy it on Amazon: $70.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no idea what this is.

What I expected

As I mentioned, it appears to be a French record and it’s from 1972, which is around when my mother spent a year in France, so I guess some French pop, maybe rock.

What it was actually like

This was mostly soft rock and folk rock, and none of the songs were offensive or bad, but a lot of them had varying levels of Oompa Loompa in them. I think it can be easy for people accustomed to American and British popular music to forget how dominated continental-European music is by the Oompa Loompa sound.

Two of the most Oompa Loompa songs on the record were Moi je choisis la liberté and On n’est pas heureux, which had an interesting use of flute. Fleur d’oranger (instrumental), which was not technically instrumental since there were a lot of La-la-las in it, was also in that category, and had a variety of harmonica, bongo drums and tambourine, fading out into church bells.

Fais-moi un lit dans ton grenier was a country song with steel guitar that was slightly Oompa Loompa, and A Propos d’un détail had Oompa Loompa guitar, but was only slightly country, and had spoken vocals that were really annoying.

The non-instrumental Fleur d’oranger had passable singing, but great banjo. Who knew that French people could play the banjo? I thought this was the best song on the record, while the worst was Adieu, a totally forgettable piano ballad.

The weirdest song was New Baby, whose lyrics definitely mentioned “new baby” a lot, but everything else was in French, and I felt like Ghost Dog trying to follow it.

O Maria had a very prominent organ, making an interesting and unusual sound that was moody and dark.

Boeuf gros sel (instrumental) started out with atonal piano, then turned into joking laughter, then turned into a blues song with harmonica and tambourine, that I thought was pretty good.

Lila 1ère partie Le bal au bois du Loup and Lila 2ème partie Perdu dans La forêt were ok soft rock songs that sounded like they had an accordion.