Album Review: Mick Harvey - Intoxicated Man/Pink Elephants

Mick Harvey, the former Bad Seed and solo artist in his own right, has reissued two of his previous albums into the one double album, both of which are collections of songs by French writer and performer Serge Gainsbourg reinterpreted into English. Included as part of his performance at this year's Sydney festival, Harvey has stated these songs were a challenge in keeping the time and metre aspects of the music while retaining Gainsbourg's obscure meanings. Gainsbourg himself was not particularly commercially successful outside of his native France apart from his 1969 duet with Jane Birkin, Je T'aime… Moi Non Plus, sung here by Nick Cave and long-time Harvey collaborator (and early Cave ex-girlfriend) Anita Lane.

However Gainsbourg had a number of memorable tunes and wrote a number of pop songs, which have earned him a revered place in pop music – similar perhaps to what Tom Waits has done for American pop culture.Recording-wise, the reissue sounds very much like it was put together in the '90s - they were originally released in 1995 and 1997 respectively – and despite the dated drum and vocal techniques, the songs are still arranged in a way that will, at the very least, compel listeners to seek out Gainsbourg's original compositions. Coinciding with his date of birth last April (Gainsbourg, who died in 1991, would have been 86 this year), the reissue includes the previously unreleased Dr Jekyll and Run From Happiness along with many other lesser-known Gainsbourg songs, that have obviously been treated with much respect by Harvey, who clearly admired the Parisian.