Highly Recommended

Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM

(2010 / Because)
female vocalists / indie / singer-songwriter

Although to many Charlotte Gainsbourg's most memorable contribution to recent cultural happenings will be her horrifying, yet wholly commendable lead performance in Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (which won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes last year), her work as a recording artist is not to be overlooked. Having made her debut with her father, Serge, in 1986 (Charlotte For Ever aka Lemon Incest) Gainsbourg left it some twenty years before getting back to recording music, and came up with the excelent 5:55, a collaboration with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Air, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon. Although critically and commercially well-received in France, the album seemed to have been criminally overlooked in other territories. IRM seems to have garnered more press on these shores already, probably due in no small part to Beck's involvement with the project. In many ways this is as much his project as it is Charlotte's: he produces the record and writes the vast bulk of it, using cues and starting points directed by Gainsbourg. (boomkat.com)

My Rating: 7,5/10