“It’s still quite raw,”

November 18, 2017 6:52 PM

Charlotte Gainsbourg Finds Her Own Voice [The New York Times] “Ms. Gainsbourg engages with her family’s glorious, tangled history as never before. On one level, it’s an album about grief, tinted by the deep loss she felt after the 2013 death of her older half sister, the photographer Kate Barry (whose parents were Ms. Birkin and the film composer John Barry). But it’s also an album about pleasure, full of pulsating disco beats and cool pop choruses that feel like Ms. Gainsbourg’s birthright. Above all, it’s an album that comes directly from her heart.”

• Charlotte Gainsbourg: 'Maybe Lars von Trier is capable of that. But he didn’t do it with me' [The Guardian]

“Gainsbourg is more confident than she used to be. On I’m a Lie, she expresses the frustrations of shyness so brutally that they become hilarious – only a confident person could sing, “I drink my embarrassment from the toilet bowl.” And not wanting to sing in French because of her father implies fear, but also a reluctance to bother unless she could better him. “Exactly! I’ve always felt that ambitious because I judge myself, and it’s never good enough. It’s not a negative feeling. It’s just giving me an excitement for next time.” She wasn’t going to tour Rest. But now she’s rehearsing in New York, emboldened by the personal boundaries she has broken so far. “Until now I was always pretending to be capable of doing it. And it was always a question of: will people see how uncomfortable I am? Now I don’t care. I don’t want to pretend that I’m comfortable, that I have a big voice. And it’s not that it’s suddenly that I feel it’s enough. It’s just that that’s who I am.” Finally, Gainsbourg says, she feels proud. It doesn’t happen very often.”

• Sung mostly in French, Gainsbourg’s gripping new album finds her in the tangles of grief. [Pitchfork Media]

“For non-Francophones, it might be tempting to brush past the French lyrics that appear on this record, and certainly, there’s a hushed urgency in Gainsbourg’s delivery that maps out her tone. But the songs on Rest are some of the first whose lyrics Gainsbourg has penned on her own, and every word craves attention. She pulls off stunning bilingual wordplay on the album’s title track, co-written and produced by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo—the English title, “Rest,” evokes eternal rest, while the French variant that Gainsbourg sings, “reste,” means “stay.” Of all the songs on the album, this one was written in closest proximity to Barry’s passing; it sees Gainsbourg simultaneously laying her sister to rest and imploring her to come back (“Reste avec moi s’il te plaît” translates to “Stay with me please”). The all-French elegy “Kate” makes a similar plea: “On d’vait vieillir ensemble,” meaning “We should grow old together.””

• Charlotte Gainsbourg Gets Personal [Vulture]

““As soon as someone asks, ‘Why did you move here,’ I have to say: ‘My sister died,’” the 46-year-old British-French actress, singer, and icon says as we double back and turn another direction, the park revealed to be just a block south of us. “I have to say everything instead of keeping things for myself. And people are very uncomfortable with that here, and I don’t care.” Not only does she say everything, but Charlotte Gainsbourg also sings everything on her fourth album, Rest. From the death of her half-sister (British fashion photographer Kate Barry) to the death of her father (the famous French singer Serge Gainsbourg), from songs about childhood wonderment and nightmares, to her own superstitions about marriage (though she’s been with her partner, filmmaker Yvan Attal, since she was 17), Gainsbourg looks unflinchingly in the mirror on her first album of her own songs (plus one penned by Sir Paul McCartney).”

• The Renaissance Woman finally takes the helm for a glittering reinvention of Ed Banger disco. [The Quietus]

“But the real evidence that Gainsbourg has seized control of her own music this time round is her writing debut. Having read from other people’s scripts and sung other people’s words for most her career, her decision to pen nearly all of Rest’s lyrics herself is a move that pays ample dividends. Sticking to what makes her feel most comfortable, she sings the majority of verses in French then switches to English for the choruses. Constantly flipping between the two prevents the album from ever feeling fixed in place, a fitting tactic for its medium-hopping, jetsetting, bilingual creator. Passages from nursery rhymes, wedding vows and Christmas animation theme songs are chopped up and repurposed in unpredictable ways; the linguistic crutches often required when writing in a second language work to her advantage to create something beguiling, unconventional and utterly of her own. It takes the McCartney-penned ‘Songbird In A Cage’ to soil things a little, with Gainsbourg’s laboured enunciation of his clunky lyrics harking back to 5:55’s overly performative style.”

• Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest (Official Music Video) [YouTube]
• Charlotte Gainsbourg - Deadly Valentine (Official Music Video) [YouTube]
• Charlotte Gainsbourg - Ring-A-Ring O' Roses (Official Music Video) [YouTube]

posted by Fizz (9 comments total)

I heard Deadly Valentine yesterday on the radio as I was driving, and luckily came to a red light where I could quickly grab my phone and identify it with Shazam. I would've been really unhappy to have missed the chance to identify it, though I probably would've just pulled over.

What a hell of a song, definitely helped along by Guy-Manuel's precise, yet deeply groovy production.

Charlotte Gainsbourg made me so grateful yesterday that I got stopped at a red light.
posted by tclark at 7:00 PM on November 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm on my second listen of Rest and I can already tell that this is going to be on repeat for the foreseeable future.
posted by Fizz at 7:07 PM on November 18, 2017

The video for Deadly Valentine made me cry.
posted by spacewaitress at 7:55 PM on November 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

I concur -- I literally just finished watching it, and now I want to know who directed it so that I can see what else they've been up to.
posted by mr. digits at 8:01 PM on November 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I concur -- I literally just finished watching it, and now I want to know who directed it so that I can see what else they've been up to.

I'm pretty sure Charlotte directed the video herself.
posted by tclark at 8:16 PM on November 18, 2017

At the risk of being hackneyed Je t'aime. Thanks for the heads up.
posted by unliteral at 5:31 AM on November 19, 2017

I love her music and it's great to see this album getting so much attention.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:47 AM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

The video for Deadly Valentine made me cry.
posted by spacewaitress at 9:55 PM on November 18

Omg, same. That was so beautiful.
posted by ZakDaddy at 10:13 AM on November 19, 2017

'Deadly Valentine' has been caught in my head all day. It's such a good song.
posted by h00py at 9:51 PM on November 19, 2017