Charlotte Gainsbourg 'IRM'

by thawking on Apr 07 2010, 01:00PM

Charlotte Gainsbourg
IRM
(Warner)

IRM is Charlotte Gainsbourg’s second album – the third if you count Charlotte For Ever, home to the notorious 'Lemon Incest' and released when she was 15 – and it’s been winning strong reviews since its initial release in the US late last year. Listening to it, though, you can't help but think those write-ups came from reviewers more beguiled by the Gainsbourg brand than the fairly nondescript music contained herein.

Having a famous parent is clearly an advantage, although it also cuts both ways. If Charlotte Gainsbourg was plain old Charlotte Smith, she most likely wouldn’t have been making this record in the first place. But then, her musical endeavours are forever destined to be compared with the output of her father, legendary French bon vivant Serge Gainsbourg – and, on the strength of this album, at least, such comparisons aren’t gonna be particularly favourable.

IRM isn't bad – Gainsbourg can hold a tune, and even the fact that her voice goes flat every so often is endearing in an ingenuous way. Largely, her vocals recall her mother Jane Birkin’s – less high-pitched, but with a similar breathy, unadorned air. And the music – 100% written by Beck, incidentally – hedges its bets by trying to cover as many bases as possible, from breathy Francophone pop (‘Le Chat du Café des Artistes’) to unexpectedly grinding quasi-industrial (‘Trick Pony’).

Beck also produced the album and co-wrote the lyrics, which are this record's downfall. Unfortunately, unlike her father, Charlotte is no lyricist – or at least, she's one in need of a decent editor. Despite the fact that there are some good ideas here, largely, the lyrics just don’t work. For every striking image – the “grail made of cinder block” that turns up in ‘Vanities’, for instance – there’s a clunky, mawkish couplet. Even the French lyrics are a bit ham-fisted – the aforementioned ‘Le Chat du Café des Artistes’ suggests that "when we stop laughing, that's when we stop living".

Still, the music is pleasant enough, and if you don't overanalyse IRM, it's an enjoyably lightweight listen. This is destined for dinner parties in houses where Carla Bruni’s output’s been black-banned since she married Nicolas Sarkozy. But there's not a great deal more to it than that.

Tom Hawking