Good Weather For Airstrikes

My most anticipated movie of 2006 is far and away Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, the visionary’s silver screen follow-up to 2004’s amazing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Gondry is my favorite music video director of all time, having directed the majority of the White Stripes’ incredible music video library as well as multiple amazing clips for The Chemical Brothers, Bjork and more. Gondry became one of my favorite major motion picture directors with Spotless Mind, his only US feature film release, and The Science of Sleep, due out in the US September 15 and starring Gael Garcia Bernal and the wonderful Charlotte Gainsbourg sees him primed to become an even more well known and sought after commodity in the US film market.

You can view the trailer or download it in iPod-compatible .mp4 format here. Be sure to note the tasteful placement of Death Cab’s “Your Heart Is An Empty Room” as the soundtrack in the second half, and though it’s my least favorite song on Plans (which doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t still really enjoy it), it really works for the trailer.

MP3: “Your Heart Is An Empty Room” – Death Cab For Cutie

The film is also notable as it marks Charlotte Gainsbourg’s first starring role in a major US film (though she played a small supporting role in 21 Grams), and Gainsbourg will be releasing a major solo album this summer in France and this fall in the US, which is one of my most anticipated releases of the year. Why would the debut record from a female solo artist whose work I’d never heard prior to this point make it onto my most anticipated albums list? Well, listen to this and tell me this isn’t the most exciting collaboration of 2006: Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics + music by Air + vocals by Charlotte Gainsbourg = Charlotte Gainsbourg’s debut, 5:55. Seriously.

A good amount of you are only familiar with 2 out of 3 of the name’s above (the second two if you’re French and slept through Pulp’s mid-90’s ascent to Brit Pop dominance, the first two for everyone else outside of France), but for those of you not in the know Charlotte Gainsbourg is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, a French pop star in the 1970’s who went onto a brilliant career scoring films in the 80’s. The elder Gainsbourg is generally regarded (especially in France) as one of the most brilliant musical minds of his era, and 5:55 will be Charlotte’s debut in the international music scene, though she released Charlotte Forever, which featured 13 year-old Charlotte singing songs written by father, in 1986. Presumably out of respect for her father, former Pulp frontman Cocker, whose lyrics were regarded by many as the quintessence of late-90’s working-class Brit Pop, has contributed the words for this record, which Gainsbourg sings in hushed delicate tones, with piano-based, otherworldly production courtesy of the French soft-electronica kings Air. Few other musicians, especially in the electronic realm, have such a complete mastery of their medium as Air does, and they are at the top of their game once again on 5:55. The production is centered around twinkling piano chords and wonderfully complements Gainsbourg’s tender voice. Charlotte’s vocals aren’t initially overwhelming; she possesses a voice that is neither powerful nor awe-inspiring, but her vocals have a very unique purity and delicacy to them that steadily endears her to the listener (think a much more hushed [and less vocoded] Imogen Heap on “Hide and Seek” for a reference point).

Despite my initial neutrality towards the album, it’s now firmly entrenched in heavy rotation on my iPod, with lead single “The Songs That We Sing” and likely eventual single “Everything I Cannot See” grabbing the spotlight as two of the best songs I’ve heard in 2006. This album is already predestined to be a huge hit in France when it’s released this summer, but the album is a darkhorse to be not only a critical hit but a commercial success as well, as the Fall US release will coincide with the release The Science of Sleep. The indie kids will love it because of the Cocker/Air connection, Starbucks twenty-somethings will like it because Starbucks will (or at least they should) sell it, your Mom will love it because it’s just the kind of stuff she likes, and pretty much everyone else will love it because it’s just that good. Now I feel really badly about building up the album so much only to stiff you on the mp3 (leaving you with a case of “aural” as Everett might say), but the high profile of the album in France means the posting of album mp3s to the internet would reap dire consequences, and I’m not tryin’ to go down like that (seeing as that’s already happened once this year). However, you can listen to snippets of the aforementioned lead single and the album’s title track at Charlotte’s MySpace page, and trust me that this’ll be one of the year’s best debuts and be sure to check it out when it drops this fall.