Onscreen, she can radiate emotions like a filament about to erupt, with a tenderness and honesty that give her work its gravitational pull. Likewise, in Gainsbourg’s other career as an actress, she has managed to avoid all of the ego-trappings of movie stardom, instead working with a seriousness and purity that seem to belong to a different era. Her songs have a quality of relaxed elegance and unerring good taste. It showcases a voice that at times seems to almost hide, never drawing too much attention to itself, but inviting listeners to explore the music’s charming, oddball melodies, which draw on jazz, new wave, cabaret, and electronica. Her new album, Stage Whisper (Elektra), is a double CD, one disc featuring live performances and the other previously unreleased material.
Gainsbourg completed her debut album at 15, and since then her list of musical collaborators has included Air, Beck, Jarvis Cocker, and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. Her first song, a duet with her father, was called “Lemon Incest,” which, not unexpectedly, caused considerable controversy in France. Raised in Paris by überhip pop-star dad Serge Gainsbourg and his muse, the English actress and singer Jane Birkin, Gainsbourg made her musical debut at the age of 13. But if she did, it would be impossibly cool. Charlotte Gainsbourg probably isn’t the kind of person who’d have a résumé.
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