CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURGIRM
(WEA)
***½ (out of 5)
When last we saw Charlotte Gainsbourg, she was busy smashing Willem Dafoe’s testicles and drilling a hole through his leg in Antichrist. Beck, impressively undeterred, has joined up with her to produce and write her new album, her follow-up to 2006’s excellent 5:55 (which in turn was produced by frequent Beck collaborator Nigel Godrich). But even though she might seem like a secondary creative force on the album, Gainsbourg’s fingerprints are all over every song... or maybe it would be more accurate to say “brainwaves” — the album’s title is French for “MRI” and many of the songs were inspired by her recovery from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2007. (“Take a picture what’s inside,” goes the title track’s chilly, evocatively fragmented lyrics. “Ghost haunting my mind / You’re packed like a spider / Capillary to the centre / Hold still, press a button / Look through a glass onion.”)
The songs on IRM are like a series of brainscans, come to think of it — it takes a lot of study to interpret them correctly. My favourite track is “La Collectionneuse,” which starts out sounding like a cover of “Life in a Northern Town” but soon evolves into something much more unusual. (Does it have anything to do with the Eric Rohmer movie of the same name? Beats me — I might have to call in a specialist.) Even on the album’s most languid tracks, you can see Gainsbourg’s synapses firing, though, and they make a beautiful lightshow.
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