Charlotte Gainsbourg

Charlotte Gainsbourg

Sometimes it takes a personal tragedy to catalyse an artist’s practise, a crack in everything, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, that let’s the creative light in. Just such a traumatic fissure occurred in Charlotte Gainsbourg’s life in late 2013 with the sudden death in Paris of her half-sister, the fashion photographer Kate Barry. Reeling from the news and inevitably plunged into an extended period of grieving, the distressing event had transpired just as Charlotte was initiating activity on a new album, the successor to 2010’s IRM. Rather than put a total brake on creative proceedings, however, the anguish would slowly but inexorably find expression in the pages of Charlotte’s journal and thus, eventually, in the lyrics of the songs that she would write for Rest, her long-gestating but ultimately cathartic third studio album.