Keren Ann reviewed
Keren Ann
Keren Ann
(Blue Note)
By her fifth album, Parisian by-way-of Israel (and Javanese/Dutch/Russian descent) Keren Ann Zeidel should arrive fully formed. Instead we get an all-English self-titled album (the preferred avenue for self-declaration) that jumps her conventions.
Appearing: June 8th at Lakeshore Theater in Chicago.
This is a good thing. For all the press rumblings her last two albums earned, the Serge Gainsbourg/Nico/Astrid Gilberto thing was getting too distant and stale. Remarkably, on Keren Ann she proves not only aware of this shortcoming but also crafty enough to deal with it without completely starting over. “It’s All A Lie” might need to be drawn out of the gate, but it’s an extremely live track where you can hear the guitarist’s fingers pressing the strings into the neck. Zeidel’s voice towers over the mix with a deep reverb fending off a growing interstellar distortion. The following “Lay Your Head Down” is a spiritual jump from Nico to Lou Reed in the way it borrows “I’m Waiting For The Man,” and later guitars bring the temperature even higher for “It Ain’t No Crime.”
The effect of these songs drawing all the attention is they completely open space for less flashy teammates, in this case her standard, ethereal fare, to stand out. In the larger sense she has also created more space for herself to move around in the future.
— Steve Forstneger
