*** Mick Harvey

PINK ELEPHANTS

(Mute)

Mick Harvey is one of Nick Cave's more versatile partners in crime, having handled guitar/keyboard duties in the Birthday Party, and drums in the Bad Seeds. Harvey can do it all . . . except, perhaps, write songs. So rather than penning his own, he's found his calling in interpreting (and translating into English) the work of the late French pop-star playboy Serge Gainsbourg, a project that began with 1995's satisfying Intoxicated Man and continues with Pink Elephants.

Without being a slave to the originals, Harvey hews closely to Gainsbourg's elegantly gritty arrangements. A string section and femme-fatale vocalist Anita Lane help recreate the dark debauched atmosphere of "The Ballad of Melody Nelson." But Harvey deftly substitutes techno sound effects for the playful cries of "BLAM!," "POP!," and "SHABAM!" that pepper Gainsbourg's version of "Comic Book." Harvey generously lets Cave and Lane perform some erotic karaoke on Gainsbourg's biggest international hit, the orgasmic "I Love You. . . Nor Do I" ("Je t'aime. . . Moi non plus"). Elsewhere, he tackles everything from faux '60s garage rock ("Who Is 'In' Who is 'Out'?") to the stripped-down pop-verité of "The Ticket Puncher." His deadpan delivery is true to the spirit of Gainsbourg's deep-throated severity, which helps mark Pink Elephants as an earnest labor of love, rather than the kind of cynical novelty spoof that characterizes too many contemporary "lounge" revivalists. Of course, you don't have to camp-up a line like "There's no jet on my tarmac/No boat upon my Atlantic" ("Non Affair") to elicit a chuckle or two.

-- Matt Ashare