VOLUME 4 OF SERGE GAINSBOURG TRANSLATIONS
“Entrancing” 4* – MOJO / “Delightful” 4* – Uncut
“Superb” 4* – Q magazine / “Masterful” 4* – Record Collector
Mick Harvey has unveiled a new track, taken from his fourth and final volume of Serge Gainsbourg translations, Intoxicated Women, out via Mute/[PIAS] on Friday 20 January 2017.
‘Contact’, a space age pop song originally sung by Brigitte Bardot and released in 1968, features Channthy Kak of Cambodian Space Project and frequent collaborator Xanthe Waite (Terry) on vocals.
Intoxicated Women concentrates on the duets and songs written by Gainsbourg, mostly during the ‘60s, in a period where he was focusing his songwriting on singers such as France Gall, Juliette Greco and, most famously, Brigitte Bardot.
Here Harvey has enlisted the talents of guest singers Channthy Kak (Cambodian Space Project), Australians Xanthe Waite (Terry, Primo), Sophia Brous, Lyndelle-Jayne Spruyt and Jess Ribeiro, and the German chanteuse Andrea Schroeder plus the special appearance on previous single ‘Baby Teeth, Wolfy Teeth’ by Harvey’s son, Solomon.
Praise for Volume 3, Delirium Tremens:
“A revelation and a joy” The Guardian
“Harvey is a cool, calm, plainspoken singer; his true voice has always come through his sense of arrangement, and his ability to render exquisite beauty and apocalyptic clamor with the same brushstroke.” Pitchfork
“Harvey’s intimate understanding of Serge’s rich catalogue allows him to smother markedly different compositions with a menacing Bad seeds swagger that unites Delirium Tremens.” Uncut
Intoxicated Women opens with a stunning version of ‘Je T’aime… (Moi non plus)’ – here titled ‘Ich Liebe Dich… (Ich Dich Auch Nicht)’ – rendered in the sexiest imaginable German by Ms. Schroeder – and culminates with ‘Cargo Cult’, the closing track from the classic Histoire de Melody Nelson album. In between we are treated to a smorgasbord of Gainsbourg gems in English … with a bit of Khmer thrown in.
“After the initial recordings for [previous album] Delirium Tremens JP Shilo and I continued investigating the duets and female songs, many of which were unknown to me,” says Harvey. “So it became a voyage of discovery into quite a lot of material I hadn’t heard before. There are even a couple of songs for which the only versions existing from the ‘60s are from TV performances Serge gave.” [(‘The Drowned One’ (La Noyée) and ‘Baby Teeth, Wolfy Teeth’ (Dents de Lait, Dents de Loup)]
A recent reissue of Volume 1 (Intoxicated Man, originally released in 1996) and Volume 2 (1997’s Pink Elephants) rekindled Harvey’s interested in the Gainsbourg translations. Twenty years after the release of Intoxicated Man, work began on what would become Volumes 3 (2016’s Delirium Tremens) and 4. Recording in late 2015 in Melbourne with J.P. Shilo and the rest of his Antipodean-based live band, 10 songs were tracked at Birdland Studios. The project then relocated to Berlin, where a further nine songs were recorded with Toby Dammit (The Stooges, Residents) and Bertrand Burgalat (of French label Tricatel), who was the string arranger on the first two volumes.
The resultant recordings served to whet Harvey’s appetite for more, and almost immediately work continued back in Melbourne in order to have enough material to fill two new volumes. Along with principle musical collaborator Shilo (with whom Harvey also worked on Rowland S. Howard’s Pop Crimes) and Melbourne based musicians Glenn Lewis and Hugo Cran, Harvey enlisted the aforementioned female singers to help complete this final volume in the series.
Listen to a sampler for Intoxicated Women here.
INTOXICATED WOMEN out 20 January 2016 via Mute Artists/ [PIAS]
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