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Nov 13, 2017Unsurprisingly, there’s an overarching sense of melancholy, but the more you listen, the more you realise that she’s deftly poetic with her words in a way that’s clearly inspired by some of the great writers of the 20th Century.
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Nov 17, 2017On Rest, Gainsbourg doesn’t just reveal her pain, but monumentalizes it, lays out a red carpet, and invites people to watch. Her refusal to be sequestered by grief is, quite literally, a death-defying feat.
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Nov 27, 2017Like Charlotte Gainsbourg’s entire musical career, Rest is imperfect, but it’s intriguing enough that you can’t help but pay attention. And now that she’s pouring more of herself into her songs, her work feels weightier, more complex, and more compelling.
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Dec 1, 2017Rest is her gateway out from the darkness, a way of coping with her fragilities, a processor of emotions, her loss, and also her most personal work to date, simply, where Charlotte is finally able to be Charlotte.
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Nov 17, 2017The influence of Gainsbourg’s famous musical parents, both Serge and mother Jane Birkin, has been a constant in her music, but on Rest, she seems less daunted by her lineage, and she begins to bend it to her own ambitions.
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Feb 6, 2018Outstanding work with the sound, abundance of catchy tunes and thoughtful, memorable lines make Rest an engaging experience for any listener, guaranteed to evoke or further develop the interest for the story of the illustrious Gainsbourg family.
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Dec 6, 2017With Rest, she grows more fearless as an artist while facing her losses, and the future, with courage and love.
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Q MagazineNov 22, 2017The balancing of Gainsbourg's natural good taste with this deeper emotional resonance remains key throughout. [Jan 2018, p.109]
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Nov 17, 2017Rest is still the most French record you’re likely to hear all century.
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Nov 16, 2017A few of the melodies that she and producer SebastiAn alight on resolve too neatly, running their course as predictably as a romcom. Equally, it is this firm resolution that makes Les Oxalis and the title track so satisfying--and the latter is the best thing she’s ever done.
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Nov 15, 2017Rest took seven years to come out, its long gestation fuelled by grief, and the finished product is nothing short of cathartic.
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UncutNov 13, 2017The voice is all Gainsbourg. [Dec 2017, p.27]
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MojoNov 13, 2017If you like Serge's music, or Jane Birkin's, their daughter's latest is a laudable addition to the canon. [Dec 2017, p.89]
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Nov 22, 2017Rest’s intimacy contrasts Gainsbourg’s personal reticence, and softens a storytelling void that might doom a lesser stylist.
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Nov 20, 2017Fans of spacey Nineties lounge-pop like Air or Broadcast will drift along happily to pillowy confections such as "Ring-a-Ring O'Roses" and "Rest," a collaboration with Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel.
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Nov 17, 2017So yes, these are intimate lyrics and stories told first person for the first time--and not just intimate, but vulnerable, self knowing, open and loving. And definitely not embarrassing.
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Nov 14, 2017The pacing of Rest and the length of its songs make it a grower of an album that, over time, ensconces listeners in the sonic layers and personal lyricism of Gainsbourg.
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Nov 14, 2017With tighter editing, Rest could have soared, but perhaps the personal nature of the songs made those ruthless cuts impossible. Even so, there are many individual moments to treasure. Charlotte Gainsbourg has evolved as an artist, and Rest is a flawed but worthy statement.
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Dec 7, 2017With its cinematic strings and glacial synth arrangements, Rise is certainly rife with theatricality--but rather than play-acting at the role of singer, Gainsbourg’s patchwork embeds the answers to those questions, and many more, deep within.
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Nov 27, 2017There are some songs, such as Deadly Valentine, that just seem to fall a bit flat, and considering that’s there’s only 10 tracks, it seems to be an oddly lengthy record. Yet, like most of Gainsbourg’s work, it oozes class and, at times, it becomes startlingly beautiful.
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Nov 20, 2017Too often, though, style triumphs over substance, and too many songs flail in their own restrained elegance. Worse, the hidden track featuring a child mangling the alphabet is painfully self-indulgent rather than cute.
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Nov 13, 2017The constant changes in tone that come with such disparate collaborators mean that the album never settles into a comfortable groove the way 5:55 or IRM did.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 54 out of 60
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Mixed: 3 out of 60
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Negative: 3 out of 60
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Nov 17, 2017
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Nov 18, 2017
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Dec 12, 2017