Mick Harvey - Delirium Tremens (LP) - Yellow Vinyl

Mick Harvey’s third volume of Serge Gainsbourg translations arrived in 2016 on Mute, and Delirium Tremens is the sort of record that creeps up on you, then refuses to leave. Harvey has spent decades distilling mood and menace, first with The Birthday Party and then as a pillar of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, so he knows his way around shadowy corners and sly humour. Gainsbourg lives in those corners too. Bringing the French icon’s wordplay into English without flattening it is a tricky job, but Harvey’s been at it since Intoxicated Man in 1995 and Pink Elephants in 1997, and his grip on the material here feels both easy and exacting.

What stands out first is the voice. Harvey’s baritone is dry and conversational, the delivery closer to an aside at the bar than a theatre turn, which suits Gainsbourg’s wink-and-sneer sensibility. On Deadly Tedium, his version of Ce Mortel Ennui, the groove ticks like a bedside clock while guitars curl around a bassline that leans forward, patient and a little cruel. He flips the original’s languor into English that scans and sings, not just translates, letting the punchlines land without forcing them. Then there’s The Man With The Cabbage Head, taken from L’Homme à tête de chou. The strings jab, the rhythm stalks, and Harvey speaks-sings with just enough distance to keep the absurdity intact while the noir atmosphere thickens. He never goes for parody. He plays it straight, which is why it works.

The arrangements respect the bones of Gainsbourg’s writing but wear Harvey’s tailoring. You hear close-miked drums, woody bass, tremolo guitars and small, well-placed splashes of keys and strings. Nothing is flash for the sake of it. The band breathes, giving the songs air and a sense of place, like a late-night room where everyone knows to keep their voices down. It is not a pastiche of 60s yé-yé or the lush orchestral sweep of Histoire de Melody Nelson, though you catch echoes of both. It feels like a contemporary studio take with a long memory, the sort of sound world Harvey has refined across his solo work and film scores.

Part of the pleasure is hearing how he handles the jokes and the smut, the verbal traps that make Gainsbourg so hard to carry across languages. Harvey’s translations tend to favour idiom over literalism. He’ll keep a crooked rhyme if it keeps the swagger, and he’s careful with rhythm so the syllables sit naturally on the line. There is craft here, but also play. A little raised eyebrow, a shrug, a muttered threat. If you’ve lived with the first two volumes, Delirium Tremens feels like a homecoming after a long detour, picking up a conversation that was never really finished. He would follow it with Intoxicated Women the next year, focusing on songs Gainsbourg wrote for or with female voices, but this set reconnects with the core project and reminds you why he started it.

As a listen, it’s cohesive in a way that makes it easy to spin from start to end. The pacing is unhurried, with enough variety to keep the lights low but the interest high. You can drop the needle almost anywhere and find a line that pricks your ear, a drum fill that knows when to stop, a bass note that lands like a laugh under the breath. It also sits neatly alongside Harvey’s work with the Bad Seeds. That same sense of restraint and economy shows up, the belief that suggestion can be more dangerous than declaration.

If you chase Mick Harvey vinyl, this one belongs next to the first two volumes. Delirium Tremens vinyl shows up in the wild now and then, and it’s exactly the kind of record you stumble upon in a Melbourne record store and carry to the counter before someone else clocks it. Those who trawl vinyl records Australia sites to buy Mick Harvey records online will know the feeling. Among Mick Harvey albums on vinyl, it’s a satisfying piece of the puzzle, a late chapter that deepens the story rather than retelling it.

It is easy to recommend, especially if you like your singer-songwriters with a taste for cinema and cigarettes, or if you have a soft spot for translations that behave like real songs rather than museum pieces. Harvey treats Gainsbourg as a living writer, not a monument, and the record benefits from that respect. The humour bites, the romance smokes, and the band keeps its cool. Put it on after dark and let it get under your skin.