French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose acting talent, no-frills sex appeal, and overall European sense of cool in foreign films suited to subtitlephobes (eg, My Wife Is an Actress and The Science of Sleep) should already have been enough to gain your attention, has released a new album, IRM. In case you’re not already hip to this woman’s charms, the album is getting heavy coverage as something more substantial than the typical actor’s vanity record release. Understandably, this may be in equal parts because the album was produced and written by Beck and because Gainsbourg is the offspring of kitsch appeal-gone-horribly hipster worshipped pervert/Svengali Serge Gainsbourg and his actress/model wife Jane Birkin.
I could live with those reasons, but the slew of reviews, interviews, and concert reviews I’ve seen on this release go way over the top and tell a story that’s really not that interesting. Meanwhile the publicity machine for Gainsbourg’s new release fails to examine two important details:
Continue reading »
