No. 4

"1963's Serge Gainsbourg N°4 (his fourth album) sees Gainsbourg - after a series of 45s and a third album which continued his forays into the exotica explored on N°2 - returning and reassessing his roots in jazz and fusing it with his wilder experiments. It features his most swinging, most bile-soaked and arguably most satisfying jazz numbers, among them the cooly anthemic `Intoxicated Man', which drew inspiration from author, songwriter, and Gainsbourg mentor Boris Vian's `Je Bois' (`I Drink').Over a loping, laconic cymbal ride and a slurring electric organ (which features heavily throughout many of the record's best tunes to satisfying effect), Gainsbourg describes matter-of-factly the hallucinations of the narrator as he drinks himself into a stupor. Elsewhere on the album, he incorporates Brazilian samba rhythms, jazz fugues, New Orleans blues, and the poetry of Baudelaire into songs that add up to one of his most beautiful and underrated albums. It's bothatransitional work and one that signals the end of an era for Gainsbourg".

Read review