'5:55' - Charlotte Gainsbourg

'5:55', Charlotte Gainsbourg's first album since 1986's 'Charlotte Forever', has that dreamy, melancholic sound at which the French seem to excel. Recorded with the French group, Air, and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, Gainsbourg's dark lyrics are an interesting revelation. What stands out, however, is the way in which she is, for better and not for worst, an alloy of both of her parents. Neither Serge nor Jane Birkin have much of a voice so what they do with it is what makes their singing interesting. Like Lou Reed, or Dylan or late Chet Baker, there's not much of a natural instrument there so it comes down to technique and expressiveness and an understanding of what the voice can and cannot do. Charlotte's not going to win any Pop Idol contests anytime soon, but in an age where there's nary a female sung pop song out there not cluttered baroquely with melisma, her breathy style, a combination of her father's almost spoken style of singing yet with her mother's higher tone, is refreshing mostly because, as was often the case with her father, you don't feel like you're being sung at but like it's just the two of you and she's revealing something very intimate. In a typical French style too, this is not a peppy album either. I can't quite picture an American who wrote such a dark and quirky album recording it this way. Air are no strangers to Serge's arrangements and there are both bass lines and a certain use of strings that recall his great sound from the early 70's. However, Charlotte sounds neither totally beholden to nor resentful of her father, a man who launched her into show business at the age of 13 and who infamously recorded a song with her at that age entitled 'Lemon Incest'. It's not as if she hasn't been singing when not in films or on the stage. She did a duet with Etienne Daho, some songs on the soundtrack for 'Love Etc', two tracks for Badly Drawn Boy, and the spoken intro to Madonna's 'What it Feels Like for a Girl', but here she is out on her own and I like it.