Brel's most famous work, `If You Go Away", is particularly ill served by Almond's treatment. 
He romps through the song as if it were some errant show tune being wrestled to the boards by Lloyd-Webber's wife, the lonely ache at its heart replaced by an overdone swoon of synthetic emotion. 
Too often throughout Jacques, Almond mistakes Brel's quiet fatalism for the absence of drama, and attempts to rectify the situation, punching up songs whose emotional power <tag "515648">derives</> from more subtle accretions of energy.   

