Marc Almond
Champagne

I would have liked to review "Tenement Symphony," a beautiful album, and it doesn't mean I won't do it in the future, but for now, I choose a new challenge, I focus on a single song, and it must be truly special. "Tenement Symphony" from '91 is a triumph of sensual rhythms and vintage melodies, Marc Almond's love for a certain type of '60s singer-songwriter pop shines through in two masterful covers, "Jackie" by Jacques Brel and "The Days Of Pearly Spencer" by David McWilliams, which are also the two most immediate tracks, those that most capture the attention of an occasional listener, then there are songs like "Beautiful Brutal Thing" and "What Is Love," powerful and swirling. In my very first approaches to this album, "Champagne" had almost gone unnoticed, a whisper, an echo that gradually became stronger until it overwhelmed me, until it occupied a very special place in my heart, larger than any other song by this Artist whom I adore nearly to the brink of reverence.

The album to which it belongs is characterized by a clear break from the orchestral, sumptuous sounds with ethnic overtones of its predecessor "Enchanted", and "Champagne" is no exception: here Marc Almond blends synth pop with chanson. An electronic backbone, extended rhythms, a melancholic yet vivid, photographic atmosphere, underscored by some perfectly apt additional arrangements, a music box, a few piano notes, distant female choirs, almost unreal. Even though it is theatrical as usual, Marc's singing appears much more sober and subdued compared to the recent past, as if to create an intimate and collected atmosphere. "Champagne" doesn't make eyes widen and mouths gape in wonder like, for example, "Madame De La Luna" or "She Took My Soul In Istanbul", on the contrary, if anything, it has a "somatic" effect diametrically opposite, and it's a song of devastating beauty, subtle, but devastating.

Champagne is not a French wine but a person, the stage name of a showman; an actor, a dancer, a high-class gigolo, something of the sort. "And they say you're doing fine, they're just playing with your mind and they never even know your name, but they all want you to