There is a thrill of discovering an artist that no one in the English language talks or knows about, and I suspect that Gérard Manset is such a songwriter/arranger/singer. I can find very little information on Manset in English, and according to Discogs, he has at least 23 albums under his name. From 1968 to this year, 2018. I have heard his music I think through a drunk period on the Internet, and going through YouTube for music discoveries. In my collection, I have two albums by Manset, including "Rein À Raconter" (Nothing to Tell).
Generally speaking, and what I have heard, Manset's songs are all in French (duh!) and feature massive orchestrations, but usually with a loud electric guitar in the mix. There's nothing pastoral about his sound, both his voice and instrumentation is forceful and not knowing what the songs are about, makes me (or the listener) get an emotional reaction. I sense anger, and a typical album by him is at the very least eight songs. So, there's room for the music to build up to tension or a release of some sort. In other words, his music is sexy.
What impressed me the most is his melody writing, but also his arrangements which is masterful, and more intuned to classical than somewhat a 'wall of sound.' Manset shares an intensity with Jack Nitzsche, but he doesn't work on a big canvas like Nitzsche. The music or album sounds like a man alone dealing with a demon or two. Manset does the production as well as the writing and arrangements, so he's very much a solo artist in that sense. The sounds that stand out is his vocal delivery which reminds me a bit of Jacques Brel in its intensity, and the sound of his electric guitar against the grain of the lush strings. A remarkable artist, who I gather is popular in France, due that his releases are on large record labels, and for sure needs to get more attention from the English speaking world.
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