It's not clear to me whether or not Serge Gainsbourg was putting forth much effort on this, his early 80's synthfunk album. He'd spent a good chunk of his career mumbling along to a backbeat, acting out his beloved dirty old man role on standout albums like "Histoire de Melody Nelson". Despite the mumbling, his voice sounded pungent and alive. On rare occasions, when he felt like it, he could upgrade his mumble and carry an actual tune with a dash of sparkle in his voice, as is the case with the delightful "Les Sucettes". But mostly, he was content to groan along with the music, doing the dirty old man shtick.
Then along came "Love on the Beat", in which the dirty old man became a cranky old man. He sounds like a middle aged guy who needed a load of convincing to make this record, and he's along for the ride, albeit perfunctorily so. Three years later, for "You're Under Arrest", there was no longer any doubt -- the cranky old man was now merely an old man. He wasn't trying, and he didn't care.
A fragile parallel can be drawn to another legendary Jewish mumbler -- Lou Reed, and the album "Rock and Roll Animal" in particular. With both "RNRA" and "Love on the Beat", once you get past the appallingly dated production, there's some half-decent stuff to be found on there. A even better comparison can be made between "Love On the Beat" and an album like Bowery Electric's "Lushlife" . Both were fairly ambitious shifts in style for the artists. Both albums are constructed out of long, looped passages with little variation within them, and even today, both album sounds sleek and funky. Despite these intruiging concepts, the end results are thoroughly mediocre yet infectiously listenable albums (somehow, they're far more interesting when you take advantage of the random play capabilities of your CD or mp3 player).
As the listens pile up, you go through stages with this album according to how you feel about the hokey, English-speaking chorus that coos on every track. First, it's distracting, even grating. Then, as you get used to hearing it, it becomes charming and endearing. Finally, it becomes karaoke material and you find yourself humming the melodies at random points during the day.
One of the few times where Serge sounds deeply immersed in the record is on "Lemon Incest". He trying, he means it. He's singing with his daughter. For instance, the "exquise, esquisse" line is delivered perfectly*, his voice quivering, his demeanour is humbled, he's awed by the thoughts in his head. On "Harley David Son of a Bitch" he sounds good and pissed off, spewing vinegar and ranting caustically. But elsewhere, such as the title track, he's just sort of there, upstaged by the moaning in the background and doing a weak job of conveying the twisted eroticism of the song.
But elsewhere, "I'm the Boy" is as funky as Gainsbourg can possibly be, while "Lemon Incest" is one of the best ten or twelve songs he ever recorded, and it's these sorts of tracks that make the album worth owning.
* This line is fascinating. The use of "esquisse" (spirit, as in a ghostly spirit) highlights the notion that this type of love must exist only in his mind. This is a recurring theme in the remaining lyrics of the song. However, when he sings those words, they come out sounding like "excuses, excuses" -- as in "don't talk to me about logic and morality, I know all about that stuff and I've heard nothing but poor excuses as to why I shouldn't boff my daughter". This sort of English/French double meaning is exactly the sort of thing that Gainsbourg would do (in fact, he does it in the title of the song: Lemon/Zest/Incest) although I can't confirm that it was the intention with this particular line. Anybody?
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