Some years ago, Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Serge and Jane Birkin, told London’s Telegraph ‘What I notice is that I have no imagination. For the piano I can’t improvise, and for acting I need a director and a text. I have no ability to create from my own imagination, so all I do is follow other people’s ideas.’ Simple humility or actual truth, on 5:55 she surrounds and supports herself with good company: producers like Jarvis Cocker, Radiohead’s main man Nigel Godrich and the boys of Air. It’s a delicate album that’s simultaneously sophisticated and warm. Much of what Gainsbourg sings about is very intimate, which makes her vulnerability pretty enchanting. At times, the self-confession and the ‘I want to explore you’ innuendo vacillates between sexiness and silliness. But it’s a forgivable sin, coming from a woman so willing to open up and present a truly three-dimensional persona. When she belts out (for her) ‘I read a magazine/It said by 17 you’re life is at an end/I’m dead and I’m perfectly content’ on ‘The Songs That We Sing,’ you smile at her chill confidence and her defiance in being perfectly predictable. Luckily, 5:55 is full of these refreshingly calm moments of self-revelation.

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