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Archive for the ‘Charlotte Gainsbourg’ Category

Steven Heighton–“The Dead Are More Visible” (The Walrus, December 2007)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Beck, Boredom, Canadian Content, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Death, Fears, Hockey, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Short Story, Steven Heighton, Threats, Violence, Yuck! on June 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG-KEXP in studio May 11, 2010 (2010).

Charlotte Gainsbourg is a fascinating individual.  Between her acting and her singing, she’s had quite a life.  And even moreso since she had a near fatal accident.

That accident formed the nexus of her album IRM.  And this interview and performance is done in support of that disc.  IRM was made with Beck.  Beck’s not here, and the songs are more stripped down, but they sound really good in this format.

Gainsbourg sings the Beck-sung-on-IRM “Heaven Can Wait” and really makes it her own.  The other three songs here work very well in this more acoustic setting.  “Me and Jane Doe” is practically acoustic already and “Time of the Assassins” and “Trick Pony” are reworked very well.  And Charlotte is a charming interviewee as well.

It’s another excellent in-studio performance from KEXP.

[READ: March 31, 2011] “The Dead Are More Visible”

I read all of The Walrus stories when I received the magazines.  I wondered when I would completely recognize a story when re-reading them now.  Well, this was the first one that I remembered parts of vividly.  And why not–there’s a search for a missing eye on an ice hockey rink.  That’s hard to forget.  However, I didn’t remember the ending and in fact, my memory added many more details than actually occurred in the story.

The beginning of the story, which is very different from what I just described, was less memorable but perhaps more interesting.  The story opens with a woman reflecting about her graveyard shift job.  In this case the job is literally a graveyard shift, because the park she works in has a graveyard within it. However, her job is not really scary–she is there to make the ice for the upcoming skating season.  It takes several nights of very cold weather and she must go out in all her gear and fill up the rink, several tousand litres of water at a time.

While the ice settles, her time is her own–to listen to music and read. She gets a few hundred pages read a night (dream job!)  She prefers romance and horror novels.  The introduction of horror novels into the story foreshadows a bit about the scene ewith the eye later on, although for this is not a horror story. (more…)

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Stephen Marche–“Lucy Hardin’s Missing Period” (The Walrus, November 2010)

Posted in Beck, Bjork, Canadian Content, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Funky Web Sites, Pregnancy, Sex, Short Story, Sinéad O'Connor, Stephen Marche, Stereolab, Technology, The Walrus on December 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG-IRM (2009).

Charlotte Gainsbourg is Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter.  Segre is, of course, known for his risqué songs–although Charlotte doesn’t fall into that same camp.

This is her third album.  Her first was released when she was 13.  The second was recorded with the band Air.  This album was written by and recorded with Beck.  And it’s a fantastic forum for her wonderfully complex voice and also just a great album of varying styles and textures.

IRM is the French abbreviation for MRI (she had a life threatening accident and was subject to many MRI’s). In fact, track two, called “IRM” is an electronic workout with sounds not unlike what you might hear in an MRI.  But the album is very diverse, from whispering vocals to soaring altos.  She has some scary/creepy songs as well as some sultry tracks.  Gainsbourg is also an actress and I like to think that her skills in film have allowed her to inhabit so many characters in these songs.

“Le Chat Du Café Des Artistes” (written by Jean-Pierre Ferland) is the only cover on the disc, and man is it great.   Whether it’s the French lyrics, which add a cool Stereolab-ish feel to the proceedings or the outstanding keyboards which are creepy and alluring at the same time, I don’t know, but this song alone makes the disc worthwhile.

Luckily there’s a lot more great songs here, too.  “Heaven Can Wait” is a duet with Beck (although really, Beck takes the lead).  It sounds like a great Beck track with a stomping acoustic guitar feel.

“Me and Jane Doe” follows with a sound like it belongs on the Juno soundtrack.  It gives Gainsbourg a great opportunity to show of her vocal tricks, since she sings with a flatly American accent.  “Vanities” is a beautiful string-filled track which emphasizes Gainsborugh’s voice (and has a kind of Bjorkian symphonic sound to it().

“Trick Pony” is a heavy electronic dance track, bringing an amazing sonic change to the proceedings of the disc.  And “Greenwich Mean Time” is a nasty sounding song where Gainsbourg is not afraid a to sneer at the listener.

The disc ends with “Dandelion,” a kind of slow blues, “Voyage,” a tribal track  (sung in French) and “La Collectionneuse,” which is not sung in French, but which is a piano based song that kind of creeps along on the edge of sinister.  The end of the song has spoken French words at the end and it sounds not unlike an early Sinéad O’Connor song

It’s rare that you hear an album full of so much diversity which actually holds together so well.  Gainsbourg doesn’t have an amazing voice or a voice that makes you go “wow,” but what she has is a really good voice that she can manipulate to convey a lot of styles, and I think that may be more impressive than an eight-octave range.

[READ: November 4, 2010] “Lucy Hardin’s Missing Period”

It’s hard to talk about this story as a story because of the gimmick that is attached to it.  This is a choose your own adventure story, albeit for adults.  In the magazine itself, there are two paragraphs.  You have to continue the story online here.  The technology involved is superb (you can save your story so that when you come back you can pick up where you left off) and each time you click to go to a new section, it fills in right after the section where you were reading so that the finished story looks like a complete (printable) story.

I tried two different stories and it became obvious that there are hundreds of story segments to choose from.  I’m rather amazed at the author’s ability to create what appears to be so many different stories parts out of these few characters (although I suppose realistically there can only be a half a dozen or so outcomes, no?).  And yet for all of that, I didn’t find the story all that interesting.

(more…)

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