In truth, Keren Ann wouldn’t be out of place on more low-key, high intensity labels like Nova Mute or Warp or sitting alongside such swarthy, melancholy eccentrics as Juana Molina on Domino Records. So when you learn that she shares a label with Norah Jones the whole thing becomes a misleading proposition and one fraught with uncertainties. Whilst there’s no doubting the continuation of Jones’s cool and nonchalant lounge menagerie, the tinkling of cocktail glasses is buried beneath a canopy of tragedy and quiet introspection. Existentialism may not be the usual reserve of music – but it comes damn close to it here, especially on the macabre and prettily spectral title track, ‘Nolita’ and within the eerie urban gothic of the spine-tingling ‘Song Of Alice’. It’s a queer, unsettling and dusty environment granted, but with the occasional floral bouquet and a trace of perfume. Opening track ‘Que n’ai-je?’ couldn’t set the scene any better; the purring French intonation, the tender percussive brush strokes, the skittish strings, the gentle syncopation of the bass and Keren’s moist, hypnotic vocal. Hope Sandoval is perhaps our closest point of reference here, but the delivery is significantly more fluid, although the similarity of the two is none so more apparent than on the tardy and country-esque ‘Chelsea Burns’ – as big a departure from this smoky Parisian arrondissement as you’re likely to get.
Keren Ann Zeidel is by birth a European creature – half- Indonesian-Dutch and half-Russian-Israeli – but it’s New York that took her to its bosom. As a result you have something here that is as savvy as it is weary and as secretive as it is transparent. First album, Not Going Anywhere, Keren Ann’s celebrated 2003 release, may have been recorded on a whim but it was never an indulgence – and whilst that that same eccentric spontaneity and homespun simplicity is still very much a presence here, it’s a smarter, more deliberate reply and fascinating in every sense.
More chilling than chill – but excellent whatever the case.