CENTRE-VILLE

With the double entendre of the title signifying a shift to the bland stylistic center of 1982 rock, and an abandonment of essentially rural folk for city glitz, "Centre-Ville" did nothing to stymie the perhaps inevitable collapse of GAROLOU's initial run. Displaced from a field with few professional purveyors to a weedy city lot, they abandoned all folk roots and homogenized their sound, notwithstanding a fun reggae-tinged opener and an above average ballad "Aller-Retour". Rockers like "Terre" and "Je Savais Pas" are utterly without distinction. Perhaps the album's most notable "first" is that of first GAROLOU album to contain an English lyric, on the closing "Seul au Centre Ville", the only waking moment of a piece so light that it rivals the mellowest fare by mid 1970s AMAZING BLONDEL. You'll wish you'd been allowed to sleep right through it.

It appears that the band spirited somewhat out of retirement in the early 1990s with a fine live disk that conspicuously omits anything from "Centre Ville", if only because this made so little impact in 1982 that it could not be resurrected even by occult ritual. If "Centre-Ville" isn't totally awful, it also isn't worth seeking out by anyone but unapologetic fans, who all appear to have gone uptown by this point.