It is testament to the joy of Jane Birkin’s voice that when the singer runs through a stream of thank-yous towards the end of her 90-minute show at London’s Barbican on Saturday evening, it sounds every bit as pleasing as any of the songs that have preceded it. She thanks the band, the lighting director, the venue, the audience. “You can’t imagine how happy it makes you feel to see your faces,” she tells them. “It’s just so terribly touching. Enough to go on for the rest of my life.”
Coupling an English crispness with the soft pitter-patter of her adopted French homeland, Birkin’s voice has been the stuff of wonder since the release of Je t’aime … moi non plus, her sybaritic 1969 duet with Serge Gainsbourg. The song is not played this evening, but is somehow implicit in everything she does – there as she takes to the stage to play its B-side, Jane B, and in her frequent references to Gainsbourg himself.
