Mick Harvey is possibly one of the musicians relating who I’ve got what we could define as a true devotion. In any case I consider him as he was actually one of the most skilled musician into the world of alternative music of the last thirty years. His contribution to the story of The Bad Seeds and to the carreer of his long-time band-mate Nick Cave is evident. They’ve generally been considered as they were inseparables and as Mick Harvey actually was the man who standed into the shadow and working behind the scenes for Nick, whose the personality on the other hand it’s properly enormous. This doesn’t of course mean that Mick Harvey he was just going to be defined as he was one of the musician of Nick Cave. It has never been so. They were actually like they were yin and yang and Mick I consider he was the true column on which the whole project, along with Nick Cave himself, was fundamentally constructed. Not a case than later his departure, the quality of the production of The Bad Seeds has sensible decreased. Also in the last album Nick found new contents and some way espressed finally himself into a new characterisation we have never seen before. Because he has never showed it to us. But the reason about this are longer to be concerned and I also discussed them into the review of the album. No reasons to talk about them right now. What’s relevant in fact this case it’s the fact Mick Harvey has finally concluded something he started more than twenty years ago. Of course it’s not relevant the fact he has ended this project. What absolutely cares in fact it’s the fact he made what I consider as another brilliant record. He published his two first solo albums on 1995 and 1997. He later hadn’t released new solo album for about ten years (the first one, ‘One Man’s Treasure’, a great album indeed, was released in practice after he departed from The Bad Seeds). In any case the first two were in practice both of them instalments of a project of translating Serge Gainsbourg’s songs into English. A project that’s of course substantially an homage to the fundamental French artist and that the grown-up in Melbourne, Australia, musician reprised only in the end of the 2015 when he recorded with his Antipodean-based core live band and with the help of Toby Dammit and Bertrand Burgalat (the same string arranger of the first two volumes) the third instament of the project, ‘Delirium Tremens’ out via Mute Records last June. It was properly on that occasion effectively that he conceived and also worked at the same time at the fourth and last volume of the project, ‘Intoxicated Women’ out last 20th of January via Mute Records and which the contents were in practice objects of the same recording process. He was in fact recording ‘Delirium Tremens’ when he along with J.P. Shilo (one of the member of his Antipodean-based core live band), investigating the duets and female songs, discovered a lot of materials which he actually hadn’t ever heard before. Something which in practice opened to him new perspectives about his work and ended into an extension of the starting project. Recorded with relevant musical collaborators (Shilo, Glenn Lewis, Hugo Cran, also Harvey’s son, Solomon, was involved into the recording process, singing with his father into the groovy and catchy pop ballad ‘Baby Teeth, Wolfy Teeth’) the album contains many duets and songs written by Gainsbourg mostly during the 60s in a period where he was focusing his songwriting on singers such France Galle, Juliette Greco and of course Brigitte Bardot. Among this also a stunning version of the super-classic ‘Je T’aime… (Moi non plus)’ sung by an incredible and divine Andrea Schroeder, the German chanteuse who also had a duet with Mick on the cinematic ‘God Smokes Havanas’ and the thrilling mitteleuropean ‘Striptease’. Jess Rebeiro sings on the folky country fascined ‘Prévert’s Song’, the classy ‘The Drowned One’; the typically beat ‘Contact’ saw performing together Channthy Kak and Xanthe Waite, who also sang on the ballads ‘Puppet Of Was, Puppet Of Song’ and ‘The Homely Ones’. Sophie Brous sang on the tragic and solemn ‘While Recording Your Letter’, Lindelle-Jayne Spruyt on ‘Sensuelle et Sans Suite’… Definitely a good ending (for the moment? I mean, Harvey defined himself like he was actually a voyer traveler into the world of the music of Serge Gainsbourg) for a story that started as an homage it became to be a ‘classic’ of the pop music of the last twenty years itself. Very appreciated indeed.
Rating: 7,5/10
