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Charlotte Gainsbourg
IRM review
:. Genre: Rock
:. Year: 2010
:. Country: France
:. Official Site: Charlotte Gainsbourg
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For her third album, the fearless French actress (she was last seen in Lars Von Trier's provocative Anti-Christ) and daughter of French music legend Serge Gainsbourg (Histoire de Melody Nelson) and singer/actress Jane Birkin, substituted the breezy electronic pop of Air (5:55) for the artistic wizardry of Mr. Beck Hansen.
A fan of Serge Gainsbourg, Beck is smart enough to not just use Charlotte to pay homage to her illustrious father. While there are obvious nods to the man, mostly through his fondness for mixing various music genres and making bold melodious moves, Mr. Hansen's reverence is made with a strong sense of humor, as he makes Charlotte render a haunting cover "Le chat de la rue des artistes", a song by Jean-Pierre Ferland who is known as Quebec's Serge Gainsbourg.
For the most part, IRM sounds like Beck's work with a French touch. The Silver Lake musician seems to have found his muse, delivering some of best work by finding a perfect balance that sees him preserving his emblematic music signature — yes it sounds like Beck — while creating songs that perfectly match Ms. Gainsbourg's persona.
From the exotic broken folk of the opener "Master Hands" to the glorious "Heaven Can't Wait", the bravado of "Trick Pony", the T-Rex-like "Dandelion" and the rousing "Voyage" — my favorite here — there is no filler. The duo delivers a surprisingly strong album, which can be seen as a beautiful cross of American and French cultures, LA and Paris microcosms — which is certainly why it resonates even more with yours truly. As a result, IRM should not only appeal to fans of Beck and hipsters alike but also to old Francophiles, thus making is skip across generational gaps as well.
Ed Dantes
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