Categories : Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 4.5 / 5 Reviewer: Andrew Mitchell |
Considering Charlotte Gainsbourg’s third release, IRM was conceived while she was recovering from a brain hemorrhage and developed while filming the disturbingly violent Antichrist, it’s remarkable that the album is not a complete exercise in abjectness. But we’re dealing here with the progeny of French icons, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, two artists who made waves in the 60s and 70s with their provocative, shock inducing French pop. So like her parents, it’s no surprise that Gainsbourg jumps at the opportunity to draw from her tribulation and turn it into edgy pop music.
Particularly what allows this release to leap beyond those of Mrs. Sarkozy and the legion of breathy French chanteuses is Gainsbourg’s offbeat collaboration with American musician Beck. And while he writes and produces the majority of the album, it’s clear he’s not just playing master to muse here; IRM evokes both artists’ previous work while simultaneously sounding like a departure from anything either have released previously.
‘In The End’ and ‘Me And Jane Doe’ bring back the soft, lilting piano based melodies of Gainsbourg’s previous release 5:55 with more ominous overtones while ‘Trick Pony’, with its highly kitschy retro 60′s groove immediately conjures up Beck’s Odelay with added sex kitten growl. “Drill my brain all full of holes and patch it up before it leaks,” Gainsbourg deadpans on the heavy electronica of ‘Master’s Hands’ just as cynically as the “Can you see a memory, register all my fear” she mockingly delivers on ‘IRM’. On both these tracks, Beck replicates the medical room sounds Gainsbourg experienced during her treatment through synthesized percussive elements so masterfully that the impersonal, violating feelings hit home with a heavily mocking, tongue in cheek punch. But the most satisfying track of them all, “Heaven Can Wait” sums it all up. With it’s drawn out back porch blues rhythm, Gainsbourg takes a nonchalant stance to a near death experience and ends up evoking the kind of laissez-faire attitude that reverberated with Peggy Lee’s ‘Is That All There Is?’ Who would have ever thought a sexy, whispering French girl could provide such catharsis?
