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$14.99 CD
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CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG
5:55
(Vice)
 "5:55"
"The Songs We Sing"
OK, before I begin, let's lay all of our cards on the table and
make it fair for everyone, because as someone who's worshipped
at the Altar of the Holy Serge since my early teenage years, it
frustrates me to see the legacy of the man and his family consistently
misunderstood and/or judged by only part of its merits. There
was always SO much more to the Gainsbourg name than crude, pervy
pygmalionisms and groovy scatological funk. It's always a tough
order writing about anything related to the man because of the
usual lack of knowledge of the true poetry of his lyrics -- most
simply have to rely on the hipness of the arrangements, and as
a result, most of his work from the mid-'70s onward (perhaps his
best period lyrically) goes almost entirely neglected. One such
piece of work from this later period was the 1986 LP Charlotte
Forever, a letter of love to his daughter, written and produced
for his daughter, released simultaneously with a film of the same
name -- each of which served as the younger Gainsbourg's recording
and feature-film debuts, respectively. Charlotte Forever was a beautiful record, but Charlotte decided to become an actress
instead of a recording artist.
So, twenty years later, here we are with a new record by Charlotte,
with music and arrangements by Air, lyrics by Jarvis Cocker (with
occasional assistance by the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon), drums
by former Fela time-keeper Tony Allen, and strings by David Campbell,
a/k/a Beck's dad, who provided the young Hanson with his own Sergian
pastiche when he bit Jean-Claude Vannier's Melody Nelson arrangements for a few cuts on his son's Sea Change LP. Sea Change was produced by Nigel Godrich, who acts as producer
for 5:55 as well. Everybody gets as close a chance as they'll
ever have to work with the real deal here; do they rise to the
challenge? The answer, for the most part, is yes. I'll be first
to admit that I was VERY hesitant and curious as to whether or
not I'd end up enjoying this, as it sounds like a purist/skeptic's
wet dream.
It's a beautiful album, though, one of the loveliest things Air
have done thus far, without question. It's still entirely a work
of pastiche, but refreshingly, the arrangements are much more
Alan Hawkshaw -- arranger for Serge from the mid-'70s through
to the mid-'80s on such albums as 1973's Vu De L'Exterieur and Jane Birkin's hugely underrated Ex Fan de Sixties from
1978, amongst many, many others -- than they are Vannier or Michel
Colombier. There are still touches of Serge's lush, overwhelming
mid-'60s David Whitaker/Arthur Greenslade era, but that's only
natural considering that Air actually worked with Whitaker back
in their early Moon Safari days. Cocker's lyrics on the
whole work nicely here -- again, still pastiche, but substituting
Serge's manic punning and rhythmic alliteration for the wry sarcasm
Jarvis wielded like a switchblade in Pulp. Cocker seems more confident
here, and as a result his lyrics aren't as self-consciously overarching
as they've been in the past. Some of the only misfires are when
Campbell's string arrangements nearly plagiarize from Serge's
back catalogue, as on the single "The Songs That We Sing."
As for Charlotte, she sounds fabulous, no longer possessing that
high-pitched voice which Kahimi Karie went on to inherit in subsequent
years; she nowadays actually sounds very much like her mother
Jane, and her years as an actress seem to have given her inheritance
of her mother's ability to let interpretive intuition and keen
enunciation make up for what she lacks as a singer in the "traditional"
sense. So there you have it. Recommended for Air fans, for those
who unashamedly flew the Britpop flag in the '90s, and yes, for
worshippers of the Holy Church of the SG. [IQ] |
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