Rest, her fifth and latest album, sees her fully embrace her life, her music, her fame, and indeed her position.
On Rest, Gainsbourg doesn’t just reveal her pain, but monumentalizes it, lays out a red carpet, and invites people to watch. Her refusal to be sequestered by grief is, quite literally, a death-defying feat.
Like Charlotte Gainsbourg’s entire musical career, Rest is imperfect, but it’s intriguing enough that you can’t help but pay attention. And now that she’s pouring more of herself into her songs, her work feels weightier, more complex, and more compelling.
Rest is her gateway out from the darkness, a way of coping with her fragilities, a processor of emotions, her loss, and also her most personal work to date, simply, where Charlotte is finally able to be Charlotte.
Evolving elegantly into the worlds of electronics and synth pop, Gainsbourg is as fascinating as ever while more accessible than ever before.
The influence of Gainsbourg’s famous musical parents, both Serge and mother Jane Birkin, has been a constant in her music, but on Rest, she seems less daunted by her lineage, and she begins to bend it to her own ambitions.
Rest took seven years to come out, its long gestation fuelled by grief, and the finished product is nothing short of cathartic.
A lesser musician might not be able to handle the album's shift from funereal ballads to celebratory dance and pop, but Gainsbourg makes it all sound natural -- and more purposeful than any of her previous music. With Rest, she grows more fearless as an artist while facing her losses, and the future, with courage and love.
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.
Fifth album Rest reads like a open transparent diary of Charlotte’s inner perspective of the most important events in her life.
Rest is nothing if not truthful, and the album’s success lies in its ability to draw the reader in through its candid depictions of Gainsbourg’s ‘human, all too human’ experiences.
It’s a confident and compositionally strong work ... that is only slightly undermined by its inevitable pretensions.
On her first LP in seven years, singer-actress Charlotte Gainsbourg exudes the same droll, distracted sense of uneasy whimsy she's brought to her screen performances and previous music projects.
The pacing of Rest and the length of its songs make it a grower of an album that, over time, ensconces listeners in the sonic layers and personal lyricism of Gainsbourg.
Her breathy, ethereal vocal is charged with grief and longing, while the ballsy electro-pop accompaniment drives confidently forward, moulding to her voice.
With tighter editing, Rest could have soared, but perhaps the personal nature of the songs made those ruthless cuts impossible. Even so, there are many individual moments to treasure. Charlotte Gainsbourg has evolved as an artist, and Rest is a flawed but worthy statement.
The constant changes in tone that come with such disparate collaborators mean that the album never settles into a comfortable groove the way 5:55 or IRM did.
With its cinematic strings and glacial synth arrangements, Rise is certainly rife with theatricality – but rather than play-acting at the role of singer, Gainsbourg’s patchwork embeds the answers to those questions, and many more, deep within.
Rest may ultimately prove too wispy and too understated to make too much of an impression.
My favourite nepotism baby !!
This is the first album I've listened by Charlotte Gainsbourg and honestly I'm impressed. I've never really seen a movie of her but she's kind of an icon here in France, though her music should definitely more played, because this is stunning. I only needed one listen to know that I loved it and to have the memories stuck in my head, but Rest still has its unexpected and subtle musical moments like a true good art pop album does. The instrumentals composed by ... read more
-After some time, I don't find it amusing anymore to start my reviews with "Quickie" for short reviews or finding titles for longer ones. Right now, it feels like I'm forcing myself to do it so I'm done.-
I've recently listened a lot to Charlotte Gainsbourg's music.
I didn't went through her entire discography yet and still have to listen to "5:55" and "Stage Whisper".
"Charlotte For Ever" was released when she was 13 and I'm not sure whether or not ... read more
Nice mix in the language(English & French) even though i don't know any French but i love the accent in the songs =)), a good and smooth of dancing, with sad lyrics as i could understand from the English =) i really loved Ring-A-Ring O' Roses very much with Lying with You, Kate and Deadly Valentine(which got very good bass-line), so i can state that at first the record was amazing and then i got lost a little bit (doesn't mean the songs were bad but not as good as the beginning of the ... read more
My favourite nepotism baby !!
This is the first album I've listened by Charlotte Gainsbourg and honestly I'm impressed. I've never really seen a movie of her but she's kind of an icon here in France, though her music should definitely more played, because this is stunning. I only needed one listen to know that I loved it and to have the memories stuck in my head, but Rest still has its unexpected and subtle musical moments like a true good art pop album does. The instrumentals composed by ... read more
Achei o álbum doce no começo mas se tornou um pouco cansativo com o passar das faixas tanto que eu fiquei meeeh da metade ao final, apesar de ser a grande maioria em francês que é minha língua favorita, me decepcionou bastante até porque não lembro muito mais do álbum e eu escutei faz 2 horas!!!
1 | Ring-A-Ring o' Roses 4:30 | 90 |
2 | Lying With You 3:19 | 90 |
3 | Kate 3:41 | 90 |
4 | Deadly Valentine 6:05 | 92 |
5 | I'm a Lie 3:29 | 91 |
6 | Rest 3:39 | 92 |
7 | Sylvia Says 4:28 | 91 |
8 | Songbird in a Cage 4:33 | 91 |
9 | Dans vos airs 3:33 | 90 |
10 | Les crocodiles 3:17 | 91 |
11 | Les oxalis 7:59 | 91 |
#5 | / | FLOOD |
#11 | / | Albumism |
#13 | / | Earbuddy |
#13 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
#15 | / | Under the Radar |
#17 | / | Pitchfork |
#24 | / | Les Inrocks |
#24 | / | The Independent |
#29 | / | BrooklynVegan |
#31 | / | The Guardian |