"An emotional tour de force from an artist who has never gotten her musical due outside of France ... Birkin's name will forever be linked to the songs Serge Gainsbourg composed for her (...), leaving her better known as an interpreter than a songwriter in her own right. But the lyrics on a song like "Cigarettes," which addresses her daughter's death to the tune of a haunting cabaret waltz, are both raw and poetic ... Birkin's voice, too, is in immaculate form (...); her performance here is understated and full of character, emotion pooling in every carefully enunciated syllable ... Like Bob Dylan's late-period masterpiece "Rough and Rowdy Ways" or Marianne Faithfull's devastating 2018 album "Negative Capability", "Oh! Pardon tu dormais..." is weary but never resigned, battle-scarred but never defeated, a work of personal reckoning marked by a frantic desire to connect, as our time slips away. None of us can cheat death; but to face it with Birkin's fortitude and poetic skill is to score a minor victory"