If you don’t like Beck, stop reading. To call him a producer on this album would be like going to Five Guys and referring to the bacon on your cheeseburger as a “garnish.” This is a full-on Beck project and his fingerprints are everywhere, even if Gainsbourg is the principal collaborator. If you’ve never gone to Beck’s website and listened to some of the offerings from his “Record Club,” in which he and a group of guest musicians cover a classic album in a single day recording session, do yourself a favor and check it out. There are some gems. You can hear that type of experimentation in the percussion on IRM tracks like “Greenwich Mean Time” and “Voyage.” Most of the vocals are delivered in that wispy, girlish voice that has been a mainstay among indie songstresses for the past decade. Don’t let that deter you. A virtue of Beck’s compelling production is to feature Gainsbourg’s singing at exactly the right level throughout. The result is a voice that sounds in practice far more versatile than you would think it could be in theory. It is jaunty on the White Stripes-style duet “Heaven Can Wait,” seductive on “Time of the Assassins,” sweet on the Beatles-y ballad “In the End,” hopeful on “Master’s Hands,” and – amazingly – both fragile and defiant on the menacing “Le Chat Du Café des Artistes.” If you’re wondering about the title, it is the French abbreviation for what English-speakers call an “MRI” – a reference to the series of brain scans that Gainsbourg underwent after a water-skiing accident a few years back. Pardon my French, but this album is KO-A. Grade: B+
