Search - Mick Harvey :: Pink Elephants

Pink Elephants is Mick Harvey's second collection of songs by Serge Gainsbourg sung in English and, if nothing else, would be another fabulous guide to Gainsbourg's lyrics for non-French speakers. Among the French pop classics you get this time around are the darkly comic "The Javanaise" ("I swore that I'd be always true to my love/ Before the day that I met you, my love"), the memorably venomous "Requiem?," and the Gainsbourg-Jane Birkin sex duet "Je T'aime?Moi Non Plus" (here titled "I Love You?Nor Do I," with Anita Lane doing an admirable job faking an orgasm). But Gainsbourg was more than simply a bawdy lounge singer with an unusual way for words. He was a master of swinging bachelor pad music who combined a dizzying array of modernist pop and rock styles into his demimonde cabaret act. With his suave, manly voice and sophisticated pop arrangements, Harvey does a great job conveying both the melodramatic silliness and musical brilliance of these tracks--many of the originals of which can be found on Gainsbourg's Comic Strip.