E-Mail This Article to a Friend Beauty and the beast Jane Birkin’s Arabesque, Mark Eitzel’s The Ugly American BY FRANKLIN BRUNO

The phrase "the ugly American" entered the language in 1958, via William J. Lederer & Eugene Burdick’s bestseller of the same name and then the dumbed-down 1963 film adaptation starring Marlon Brando. A thinly fictionalized piece of political journalism, the book warned that US interests in Southeast Asia were being irreparably harmed by the cultural ignorance of its ambassadors and foreign-service officers. (Thank goodness our current foreign policy suffers from no such lapses.) It was anything but an anti-Yankee screed, though; the title character is a homely engineer who wins a rural village’s trust by designing a water pump from local materials.

In the decades since, the phrase has come to refer to any obnoxious American abroad, official or not. That’s what Mark Eitzel means to accuse himself of being when he co-opts it for his new album. Recorded in Athens — that’s Athens, Greece — with local musicians, most of The Ugly American (Thirsty Ear) revisits the former American Music Club frontman’s catalogue, reaching back as far as AMC’s 1987 album Engine (Grifter/Frontier) for "Nightwatchman." The title is a typical Eitzel gambit, leveling the charge of cross-cultural opportunism before anyone else gets to. He needn’t have bothered; no one will mistake him for David Byrne or Paul Simon on the basis of these 10 subtly arranged tracks. Producer Manolis Famellos doesn’t stint on the bouzoukis and Cretan lyres, but they’re just the tools of the band’s trade, as unremarkable in Athens as banjos in Kentucky.

On "Jenny" and "Take Courage," these instruments set up sweeping, tremulous countermelodies that leave Eitzel’s somber voice free to concentrate on expressive phrasing; the relaxed string-band feel helps relieve the gloom of the lyrics. But on "Here They Roll Down," the agitated swarm of a zourkas — the bagpipe’s Macedonian cousin — underlines Eitzel’s distressing imagery: "Furry bowling balls with broken eyes/They’re scared of soul and scared of open skies." That song could describe an invading army, but for a concept album about US military intervention or broader political concerns, look elsewhere. One of Eitzel’s two new songs here could be given a gay-rights reading ("If there is no way to love the one that I love/Then what good is love?") but hardly demands it. Even his references to travel and escape ("All I want is to hide somewhere") reflect existential rather than social discontent. Eitzel is still oppressed by the "Western Sky" from AMC’s 1988 California (Grifter/Frontier); it’s just hanging over a different landscape.

If there’s a less likely ambassador of international good will than Eitzel, it’s Serge Gainsbourg. Another often self-destructive songwriter maudit, he relished the role of the ugly Frenchman, especially when he had a Brigitte Bardot or a Juliette Gréco on his arm. Or a Jane Birkin. The English actress, belle to Gainsbourg’s bête for much of his creative life, has continued to champion his work since his death in 1991.

The concert recording Arabesque (Capitol import) is Birkin’s latest Sergecentric set. Like The Ugly American, it translates material familiar to fans into a foreign lexicon — in this case, that of Moroccan and Algerian music, both pop and traditional. Given that North African styles, especially the good-time music called rai, are as common in Western Europe as reggae is here, this combination must sound less exotic to French ears than to American ones. Even so, the tension between Birkin’s thin but tasteful vocals and the musicians’ expansiveness defamiliarizes Gainsbourg’s songs without destroying them. Violinist Djamel Benyelles’s presence is almost as strong as Birkin’s; his cover of "Elisa" was the project’s original inspiration. Despite his work with rai star Cheb Khaled, Benyelles’s playing here is richly lyrical rather than raucous. He’s perfect for Birkin’s choice of material, which emphasizes Gainsbourg’s romantic side over his yé-yé irreverence.

Of course, full appreciation of Arabesque is tough without a working knowledge of French. (Or this writer’s poor substitute: patience and a dictionary.) But not everything needs translating — Gainsbourg often peppered his lyrics with English impurities, to the horror of purists. His 1983 "Baby Alone in Babylone" is a mockingly grim tale of a Marilyn-obsessed starlet/suicide, with its list of "de Pontiacs, de Cadillacs, de Bentley à L.A." A song set in Hollywood, penned in "Franglish" by a Parisian Jew, based on a German melody (from Brahms’s Third Symphony), performed by an Englishwoman and five North Africans — the title may mention Babylon, but this version takes place in Babel.