★★★★
Like a recidivist grave robber, Mick Harvey returns for a third time to pillage the rather substantial body of work left by Serge Gainsbourg.
This is a mausoleum that keeps drawing Harvey, and he shows no sign of abating in his desire to re-enliven the work of the famous Frenchman.
In his time, Gainsbourg managed to straddle the divide between aristocratic musings and drug den bohemianism. Similarly, Harvey steps too close to the cliff edge and has to catch himself from teetering over.
It is with a degree of morbid irony that this album begins with ‘The Man With The Cabbage Head’. On ‘Deadly Tedium’ and ‘Coffee Colour’, we are introduced to the seedy debauchery of late nights filled with lust.
Just like the original, ‘SS C’est Bon’ is a sucker punch of Wagnerian jackbooting with frantic lyrics and feedback. The blistering finale leads into an equally anguished ‘I Envisage’, which stumbles around with gin-soaked abandon to its sinister refrain of “I envisage the worst”.
‘More And More, Less And Less’ is similar to previous interpretive work, but kudos to Harvey for tackling a difficult subject with a degree of inventiveness and guile. There is clearly life in this project yet.
Mick Harvey’sDelirium Tremensis available via Create/Control.
