Album Review: Mick Harvey - Delirium Tremens

Finally Mick Harvey has picked up where he left off 20 years ago with Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants, both English translations of Serge Gainsbourg's works.

It's an understandable wait for part three of such a significant project, with Harvey's Bad Seeds and solo work still holding sway over the man's career. But thank god he found time to drag the dark, haunting French sentiments in Delirium Tremens into the now.

Where does a Francophile begin with such a catalogue of much-loved songs to choose from. Harvey has chosen to run the gamut of Gainsbourg releases for this third piece of the puzzle, capitalising on the kitsch, the melancholy and the offbeat wordplay that made the French icon just that. Harvey's gravelly vocal and dark stamp is heard and felt from the very beginning in The Man With The Cabbage Head's fuzzy rock, and the focus he pulls to Gainsbourg's wizardry with words never ceases to enthrall from there on. None of the distinctly French sentiments in Coffee Colour or A Violent Poison (That's What Love Is) are lost; rather they're refreshed for new sets of ears.

Leaving aside the instant pull to this album as a collection of Gainsbourg ditties, Harvey has also crafted a sound here that undeniably honours the legend's originals and yet seems to be equally his own. Those crashing, distorted guitars and chanting chorus in SS C'est Bon, gentle strums and keys in More And More, Less And Less, and The Decadence's atmospheric waltz make for an endlessly interesting listen.