Charlotte Gainsbourg 5:55

It wasn't that I was determined to hate his album, rather than on considering it, it seemed that any rational human being should, for ethical and aesthetic reasons, hate it.

Consider the elements: actress returns to singing after the very slenderest of musical careers (recorded with her father, to boot), hires celeb musicians (Air), superproducers (Godrich) and songwriter (Jarvis) and chums (Neil Hannon), sets up enormous MySpace network with the very trendiest of Paris and South London's music, arts and film crowd, and launches album. Sung in both English and French. That it had been recommended to me by friends I do not, necessarily, consider barometers of musical excellence, and the Observer Music Monthly, did not help. Come on: reviewers are, after all, only human.

But one must give these things time, let them play, have their shout. Casual listeners and passersby were seduced by Gainsbourg's quirky, often slightly flat, porcelain voice; the songwriting is consistently accomplished, the tunes an elegant reworking of Air's themes around the time of the Virgin Suicides soundtrack; the production has been cut to match the singer's couture. But the question of what Gainsbourg actually achieves here is never quite answered: singing is not, by any means, her forte.

Throughout it's impossible to avoid asking what this might have sounded like without her: The Songs that We Sing is the best thing the Divine Comedy have done for years; The Operation is almost note for note Pulp's I Spy - you can sing one to the other without a jot of difficulty; cut the lyrics and Little Monsters is straight out of the madness that was 10,000 Hz Legend. It's hard not to want to ask of Charlotte the same question that the poet Lemn Sissay once found himself unable to answer: what exactly do you do?

I don't hate it. It's fine. I've actually listened to it quite a lot lately, mainly because I haven't got round to loading up Talkie Walkie. There is even a rousing ballad (Everything I cannot see). But does it need exist? And will its existence make the slightest difference? I remain to be convinced. As to there being many more important and memorable female vocalists out there, well, there is no debate.