KEREN ANN - KEREN ANN
Consider Keren Ann’s second all-English album a slouched, sleepy cab ride through a wee-hours metropolis, with occasional bursts of noise to snap your half-closed eyelids back awake. “Keren Ann” finds the Paris-to-New York singer-songwriter (surname Zeidel) in even more command of the language, both as vocalist and lyricist, than she was on 2004’s well-received “Not Going Anywhere.” Her settings are more evocatively drawn, her characters more richly voiced, her dialogue more comfortably poetic. The ethereal echoes of “It’s All a Lie” give way to the Velvet Underground chug of “Lay Your Head Down,” while “Between the Flatland and the Caspian Sea,” a soul-folk sojourn with a long and cathartic instrumental outro, is perhaps the best recording she’s ever made. Airy atmospheres and delicate details add beauty to this stark but commanding soundscape.(Blue Note Records) Billboard
