Charlotte Gainsbourg: 'IRM'

For her third album, Gainsbourg has teamed up with Beck, who here produces and contributes some song-writing on an album which is purportedly intensely personal.

'IRM' is the French acronym for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a disorienting procedure for brain scanning that Gainsbourg underwent after suffering a brain haemorrhage. If pre-release interviews suggested an exposing and raw record, the result is more distant and more dignified. Beck’s signature style is all over this album, and he seems to act like some kind of emotional bouncer, keeping us at bay with a knowingness and arch pop sensibility.

The combination leads to something intriguing and frequently beautiful. 'Les Cafe Des Artistes', for example, seems a relatively straight dusky pop tune; that is until a synth-string section intersects and creates a vibe that is all film noir and red lipstick. Elsewhere, on 'Trick Pony' or 'Looking Glass Blues', for example, Gainsbourg seems to be straying into alt rock territory that exudes fuzzy bass and flippant mischief. These tracks are such a marriage of ideas that they could almost be on a Beck album themselves. The same is true of the spooky and burlesque piano stride of 'Heaven Can Wait', a fed up and intoxicated rumble that has tales of leaving one’s credentials in a Greyhound Station.

Like a Beck album, this record is diverse, ranging wide in style and mood. 'Voyage' is Chinese folk for the soundtrack to a film; sung in French. It is mystical and flighty, but never in a measure that suggests Gainsbourg has become carried away with the idea. It is a sexy kind of abandon, and just when you think it might be looking a little po-faced or earnest, Beck goes and slips in the sound of a doorbell. Even the more delicate moments are mediated by pop perfection; witness the gorgeous drawl of 'In The End' and the whispered 'Time Of The Assassin', which bursts to live as something lush and vibrant.

The title track is surely the emotional centre-point here, and it is all ambivalence and passive aggression. A whirring, buzz-saw effect burbles away while Gainsbourg reflects on the intimacy of having parts of your insides carefully photographed for expert analysis. “Take a picture, what’s inside?” she monotones, and the parallel with emotional exposure is obvious. This is not only a great time to sing about the journey “from the cortex to medulla” but also an opportunity to try and reflect something of the clinical austerity of that experience. As if a subtle expression of Gainsbourg’s worst fears, the end of the song opens up into a swirling void that is almost too much to handle.

Gainsbourg has created a record that is surprisingly smooth and decidedly lovable; steering admirably away from pretensions and the temptation to sound excessively pared down, 'IRM' is a rare piece of delicious song production.



Released on 25th January 2010 by Because.

Written by Huw Green.