The daughter of provocative French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg and British actress/chanteuse Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg is hardly a stranger to the music world, though she has won her own distinction as an accomplished film actress. 5:55 is technically Gainsbourg’s second album, but it’s her first both as an adult and without the direct collaboration of her father. Still, after over twenty years since the release of Charlotte For Ever, Gainsbourg conjures the prevalent influences of Serge with the help of her musical dream team of collaborators — Air, who wrote the music, Jarvis Cocker and Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, helping out on lyrics, plus Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen and producer Nigel Godrich. That the result is not anything groundbreaking won’t stop the embrace of Francophiles and fans of Charlotte, Serge, and Air. For others, this album is one that may well grow on you, with somewhat hypnotic effect. Starting with the narration of a bilingual insomniac on the title track, 5:55 is a hazy album of in-between states, of a place — as one of the U.S. release’s bonus track titles offers — “Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping.”
With lush strings, piano cascades and celestes carrying Gainsbourg’s feathery vocals, this is moody music that can veer toward the self-seriousness of those satire-ready, black-and-white fragrance commercials or the playlist fodder of wannabe sophisticates’ dinner parties. But it’s the combination of disparate elements that make 5:55 work. On one side is its atmospheric sound that is undoubtedly Air-y, with the duo’s dreamy spacey underwater creations. On the other are the lyrics, which round out the album with their dark and sometimes dry edges, as Gainsbourg demonstrates in “The Songs That We Sing,” commenting on a woman in a bath of benjamins: “if the cold doesn’t kill her, money will.”
Gainsbourg’s singing and speaking, recalling Birkin in timbre and British accent, is whispery and breathy, barely even attaining a croon. The delivery is at points maddening, lulling, and seductive, her quiet delivery belying the darker turns and moments of dry humor injected into the songs’ narratives. “And if I pull this off I’ll refuse the Nobel prize,” intones Gainsbourg in “The Operation,” a standout track that presents the slightly creepy metaphor of surgery as relationship, where “our love goes under the knife.” Overall, the slightly faster songs on this mellow album sound the best, with currents of piano riffs propelling them along. Showing the most energy in the chorus of “Everything I Cannot See,” Gainsbourg builds up mantra-like lines, starting out “You’re my life, you’re my hope/You’re the chain, you’re the rope…” and you can even hear exclamation points in her crescendo. It’s an interesting detail that could have been used more often to show Gainsbourg’s more awake side, as the tracks sometimes fold dreamlike into one another, more so on the second half of the album. The talky “Night-Time Intermission” is entirely unnecessary and trying, presenting Gainsbourg posing questions to herself (with the answers coming first, ho ho!) that progress from things you might ask your new penpal (What’s your favorite color?) to more personal details (What side of the bed do you sleep on?).
Gainsbourg and Co. close up the circle nicely, from first track to last, with “Morning Song” describing how everything will be alright in the morning but this requires the struggle of making it through the night. 5:55 captures the interminable and thought-whirling feeling of those who cannot fall peacefully sleep in the wee hours. Reflected in these songs, where for all the happenings and images and cleverness, is the fact that we are left on our own to deal with our wistfulness and desires, our unveiling and the departure of others.
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