Charlotte Gainsbourg
5:55

THE REVIEW

How much time has passed since I first reviewed "5:55" on Debaser?
A year? Ten months? Five months and fifty-five days? Who knows. I don't go back to my reviews to check the correct date, to leave that aura of mystery that hangs over a distant and somewhat incoherent past. Why did I doubt you, Charlotte? Why?

I took your album from my collection, dusted it off, and smiled. I remembered how your record felt so "French", "Air", "electro-chic"... so little "Charlotte" that it left a bitter taste in my mouth. But I pretended otherwise, forgot my disappointment, and put "5:55" back in the player, flipping through the booklet, losing myself in the malicious lyrics that accompanied those sonic circles written in the air. 

At six in the morning, "5:55" began, cradling me in a fascinating yet poetic half-sleep. A song imbued with an almost alien mood, a hypnotic rhythm that permeates the skin. We could call it electronic of the heart: simple, edgy, yet refined and emotional.

"Five fifty five.
Five fifty five.
No Sleep Tonight.
Five fifty five".

Psychedelic pop with Air-like swerves, French-touch shaken with a decidedly feminine charm. A charm that buzzes in the following, eerie, "AF607105": flickers of "Lemon Incest" on grooves of heavenly keyboards that swirl around a sweet yet obsessive and, in gentle tones, hysterical rhythm. Already by the second track, that album I had considered a half-disappointment appears to me as a great revelation. A revelation confirmed by the magnificent "The Operation", a sonic autopsy destined to mark the boundary between "love" and "science": quicker and more incisive than the two previous songs, more effective, supported by a bass as penetrating as a scalpel in the brain. Charlotte mews, whispers, enchants. She gets into your veins and sucks your blood.

And so it goes for this entire sonic trip. Until I wake up a little, full of euphoria, to the carefree and seductive pop of "The Songs That We Sing". I twirl barefoot in an ascetic room, floating between carillons and glockenspiels. 

"I saw a photograph.
A woman in a bath of hundred dollar bills.
If the cold doesn't kill her, money will".

And then. First love: the extraordinary "Beauty Mark": an ode to a mole that becomes an anthem. Lost in my limbo of blankets, I start to whisper at the top of my lungs (and I emphasize the oxymoron) I'LL KEEP IT FOR YOUUUUUUUU, suddenly finding myself in the charming pop introspections of "Little Monsters" that elegantly enliven things. I slap myself, asking for forgiveness from that French muse who dazzled me with her bare body in the litany "Antichrist". A woman who manages to seduce with nothing, even though she is not beautiful, even though she is not part of those annoying tropes that are part of everyday life.

Then came the extraordinary "Everything I Cannot See", acoustic rock at times angry, at times dreamy, sustained by a piano that, once again, illuminates everything with a kiss that tastes jazzy. To close the circle, like a seal, the elegiac "Morning Song", intangible and devoid of rhythm, yet beautiful. Fucking beautiful.

Yes, now I am happy.

I have managed to find the right path again. I'll probably lose it again, redefining this great album as a disappointment.
But you know: I smoke daisies in fields of sunflowers, and anything can be possible with me.

What is certain is that "5:55" has become one of the albums I listen to the most these days.

Happy New Year :)