Only Your Eyes

France has been known to exercise a certain reverence for some extremely noxious things (Jerry Lewis movies, blocks of cheese, Johnny Hallyday's musical career), but rarely has it indulged in transistorized blasts of American garage rock, as Bloom does on this 7" single, the first release on France's Pop the Balloon label. The label would soon become one of the finest European pop labels as the decade progressed (and an important home for neglected American pop obscurities and underground legends). Here, though, Pop the Balloon inaugurated their label by dipping into snotty, circa-1966 garage-psych (bong) waters on "Only Your Eyes," with additional nods to keyboard-quirky early American new wave. It's irresistibly in heat (complete with wolfman howl). The flip-side ballad doesn't catch the same fire, featuring folky guitars, faux-brass synth, and France's national instrument of choice (the accordion, of course, sounding surprisingly Cajun here), but the A-side has enough steam for both.