In the sixties, Britain had the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the United States had the Beach Boys, and France had Serge Gainsbourg. Gainsbourg was as prolific a pop songwriter as his more famous competitors across the Channel, but his music was so distinctively French and idiosyncratic that he was not well known outside France save for of course for his smash hit with Jane Birkin, Je T’aime, … Moi non Plus, the song that literally “spawned” a generation of baby boomers. Gainsbourg was an agent provocateur who wrote songs about Nazis one day, sex acts the next, and even turning the national anthem into reggae dividing the country. He was a bad boy. Hence, it’s no surprise that a former Bad Seed in Mick Harvey has embraced Gainsbourg’s music, and given it his own stamp by translating these highly poetic and punning lyrics into English. And very successful translations they are too.

Mick Harvey. Photo © L.J. Spruyt

The band was expansive consisting of the “gnarly old guys” – Harvey, J.P. Shilo, Dan Luscombe, Glenn Lewis, and Hugo Cran, singers Sophia Brous and Xanthe White, and a four-piece string section of Robyn,...