CD Reviews

Marion Maerz | Burt Bacharach Songbook

Bureau B (2009)

By GUSTAVO TURNER | March 10, 2009

3.0 Stars

Marion was a minor German pop star in the 1960s, one of a crowd of yé-yé girls who sprang up all over Europe as the ingénue counterparts to macho belters. After a couple of odd hits (one of them penned by Ray Davies of the Kinks!) improbably marketed as "Beat-schlager," Marion's producer surnamed her after the month of March and masterminded an album of Burt Bacharach covers sung in German.

Arranged and played by the cream of local jazz session men, this legendary 1971 album was a commercial failure but has developed a cult following incongruous with Frau Maerz's current German fame as a mainstream show-biz diva, Eurovision connections and all. Coiffed and tailored like a Jane Austen heroine, she gives the familiar material a very different vibe from Jackie DeShannon's foxiness or the authoritative gospel inflections of Dionne Warwick.

Once you get used to the polished Europop sound of the period, you can find gorgeous moments here, such as a sober "Walk On By" that reveals Bacharach as the Mies van der Rohe of pop, his international style as polished and adaptable to language and geography as those imposing glass boxes.

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