It’s instructive to compare Gene’s “The French Girl” with Ian and Sylvia’s original and Dylan’s live version. The folk duo are wistful (like good 60’s folkies), Dylan is reflective (like someone looking back 20 years to the 60’s), and Clark’s rendition is the most lively (baroque, as you say), but it’s also the most desolate, a contemplation of the failure to communicate at the most basic level about the most important subject.

Clark does well by Gordon Lightfoot and Phil Ochs too. Respectful but with his own spin.