Get Antichrist out of your head, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM (French for MRI) is oddly disturbing in a real-world way. Inspired in part by the singer/actor’s emergency surgery after a cerebral hemorrhage, collaborator Beck takes care of most of the lyrics and songwriting, and his influence is far from subtle. Really, Beck leads this journey of the broken mind with big, MIA beats (“IRM”), Sonic Youth distortion (“Greenwich Mean Time”) and even dirty blues guitar (“Trick Pony”), while Gainsbourg’s sometimes sultry whisper of a voice gorgeously floats along, as if she’s being released from anaesthetic.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2010.