Album: Charlotte Gainsbourg, IRM (Because Music)

Gainsbourg suffered a brain haemorrhage three years ago and this album's title is taken from the French-language designation of the MRI machine which bounced soundwaves off her cerebral tissue – a noise once experienced never forgotten.

Her collaborator is Beck so, as you'd expect, there is artfulness to be heard in the way the songs are arranged; artfulness and chic modernity. Trouble is, Charlotte is not much of a singer. More of a whisperer really. Half French, beautiful, connected. You know: music as objet.