Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest

The Quietus

When it was announced that Rest would feature contributions from Connan Mockasin, Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Paul McCartney (not to mention production from the magic fingers of Ed Banger’s SebastiAn) my first reaction was, somehow, disappointment. Since her father Serge wrote her 1986 debut (Lemon Incest) most of her music has been created and defined by men around her. 2009’s IRM sounded a lot like Beck making an album using someone else’s voice, while Gainsbourg’s affected English accent drew a little too much attention to Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics on 5:55. So surely, many of us thought, by drafting in such groundbreaking musicians for her fourth release, she would crowd out her own, more fragile identity?

There was no need to be concerned. As suggested by its Horses-aping sleeve, it is Gainsbourg at the reins here. Her voice, coquettish, wistful, haunting or all three at once, dominates the mix. Each collaborator follows her cues and cadences. SebastiAn in particular, known largely for 2011’s hyperkinetic Total, reveals himself to be a master of subtlety and an inspired choice of producer for an album that requires a light hand at the tiller. When he periodically muffles those trademark Ed Banger piano stabs and rubbery basslines on ‘Sylvia Says’ and ‘Deadly Valentine’, it feels as if the listener is transported out of his usual Parisian club environment, straight to the smoking area where Gainsbourg can murmur secret promises in their ear.

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.

Images of flight and heavenly ascension linger on the record’s three most emotionally loaded songs: ‘Lying With You’, ‘Kate’ and ‘Rest’. Here Gainsbourg uses her newfound voice to grapple with death both recent (her sister Kate died in 2013) and latent (I’m sure Serge would be infinitely chuffed that his daughter wrote him a eulogy titled ‘Lying With You’). Perhaps it took the move to New York from her hometown of Paris to elicit a personal album from Charlotte Gainsbourg; as a notoriously shy individual she might have needed a sliver of that anonymity the city offers. That said, given that it boasts a Gainsbourg, one half of Daft Punk and an Ed Banger alumni on its credits, Rest is still the most French record you’re likely to hear all century.

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Pitchfork 87

Sung mostly in French, Gainsbourg’s gripping new album finds her in the tangles of grief. It is at once scorchingly intimate and fantastically oversized.

The Guardian 80

(Because Music)

Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new album is the first she’s written the lyrics for, and, perhaps as a result, gives her voice its broadest palette yet as she tries on different roles: child, ingenue, diarist, diva. There’s creepy nursery rhyme on Ring-a-Ring O’Roses, classic French chanson on Lying With You, trippy sprechgesang on Songbird in a Cage (guest-written by Paul McCartney in full acid mode: “flying through the sky, all our senses reeling”), and disco on Deadly Valentine and Sylvia Says. A few of the melodies that she and producer SebastiAn alight on resolve too neatly, running their course as predictably as a romcom. Equally, it is this firm resolution that makes Les Oxalis and the title track so satisfying – and the latter is the best thing she’s ever done. With a funk bassline muffled as if by goosedown, she finds the heretofore untapped erotic potential of Aled Jones’s Walking in the Air, whose lyrics she quotes in an ASMR-triggering whisper.

Drowned In Sound 70

Intimate? Yes. Embarrassing? No, and you get the sense that any fear of embarassment is really rooted in a fear of oversharing or making the listener uncomfortable – which would only be a danger if the delivery was apologetic. But it's not: her breathy, ethereal vocal is charged with grief and longing, while the ballsy electro-pop accompaniment drives confidently forward, moulding to her voice.

Despite past lyrical collaborators taking Gainsbourg's experiences on board when writing her words – Beck produced and wrote almost all of the songs on 2009's IRM about Gainsbourg's experience suffering from a brain haemorrhage – this is the first time she's fully taken to the floor herself. So it's no surprise that she transports us back to 1991 in 'Lying With You' when she witnessed her father's death. As well as describing his physical position as he died, she recounts her own movements: "My feet are hovering above ground, ready to follow / My mouth is whispering in raptures, celebrating you". It isn't a mournful song; the lilting persistence of the synth accompaniment together with a vocal lightness makes it warm – accepting, even.

Elsewhere on the album, you can hear the influence of French producer SebastiAn loud and clear: 'Sylvia Says' and closer 'Les Oxalis' have the foot-stomping disco vibes you'd expect from the Daft Punk and Justice remixer. Six-minute 'Deadly Valentine' continues in this vein, only with a darker edge. The video with Blood Orange's Dev Hynes shows a couple at various stages of romantic commitment from childhood to old age. The track name aside, Gainsbourg's robotic delivery of the religious vows together with SebastiAn's relentless, ominous bass undermine the idea that this song has anything to do with one perfect love.

'Rest', is part lullaby, part elegy. As elsewhere on the album, the context is integral to understanding lyrical or production decisions that might otherwise have sounded strange, or even cheesy. Following the loss of her older sister Kate, Gainsbourg retreated from Paris and moved to New York where she finished this album. This title track both hopes for rest for her sister, but also for herself, from her grief. It's full of childhood references and childlike pleas – quoting lyrics from The Snowman with an accompaniment that sounds like an arcade game, and pleading "Reste avec moi s'il te plaît / Ne me laisse pas t'oublier" ('Please stay with me / Don't let me forget you'). So yes, these are intimate lyrics and stories told first person for the first time – and not just intimate, but vulnerable, self knowing, open and loving. And definitely not embarrassing.

The Guardian 60

(Because)

Previous albums have enlisted lyric-writing help from Jarvis Cocker, Air and Beck, but Gainsbourg’s fourth is notable for being largely self-penned (with a little help from Paul McCartney on Songbird in a Cage). French DJ SebastiAn’s slick production makes for a very polished sound that’s easy on the ear, helped by Gainsbourg’s whispered, breathy vocals which alternate between French and English. The opener, Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses, sounds far more sophisticated than a song using a a nursery rhyme as its refrain has any right to, and Deadly Valentine also engages. Too often, though, style triumphs over substance, and too many songs flail in their own restrained elegance. Worse, the hidden track featuring a child mangling the alphabet is painfully self-indulgent rather than cute.