CD reviews: Charlotte Gainsbourg, the Watson Twins

Updated: February 6, 2010 - 11:24 PM

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POP/ROCK

Charlotte Gainsbourg, "IRM" (Because/Elektra)

The third release from the French actress is designed for hip, smart girls in crisis. Sultry rock with an existential edge, the intelligently composed songs flirt with catastrophe but never surrender. Given the shabby-chic texture of the album, infused with folk and terse electronica, it's apparent that Beck produced, composed the music and co-wrote the lyrics. But it's the singer's brush with death in 2007 from a water-skiing accident that substantiates the album's spectral mood. The title song, named for the French acronym for an MRI, thrums with heartbeat-like rhythms and buzzing monotones borrowed from the ER. She uses the medical lexicon to explore the psychedelic borders between the physical and the spiritual. "Trick Pony" rumbles like some nasty love child of Jon Spencer and Goldfrapp circa 2003's "Black Cherry," yet Gainsbourg rides it with gracefully lean vocals. On the enigmatic "Me and Jane Doe," she meditates on a desert landscape that could be read as the Wild West of the afterlife. Gainsbourg seems to intimately understand that the lines of existence, like the lines of genre or tone, can never truly be known, but yet she's at home wherever she goes.

MARGARET WAPPLER, LOS ANGELES TIMES

The Watson Twins, "Talking to You, Talking to Me" (Vanguard)

Harmony-loving identical twins Chandra and Leigh Watson work through a dozen torch songs crisp with scaled-back instrumentation. The sultry "Harpeth River" is worthy of a pre-meltdown Amy Winehouse, as is "Forever Me." "Tell Me Why" is sweetly straightforward; "Calling Out" recalls Carole King's "It's Too Late," and "Midnight" peaks with sizzling guitar licks and lively organ. Unconcerned with hipness, these are songs from the heart.

DOUG WALLEN, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER