Blue Note
2007
Keren Ann
About This Album
Keren Ann Zeidel's international pedigree -- born in Tel Aviv, raised in Paris, now splits her time between there and New York -- served her well on her first four albums, but this fifth, sung entirely in English, is her most worldly yet. Chalk that up, one would suppose, to a busy touring life and a growing confidence to experiment both with identity and available musical tools. By self-titling the album, Keren Ann is by default making a statement that this is her statement. That means that the recording would have to be not only extra-special good but representative of who she thinks she is at the moment it is unleashed on an ever-growing audience. And it is that good: it's the singer/songwriter's most far-reaching, defining album yet. While her trademark wisp of a voice still dominates most of the album's real estate, it meets up here with a different, more aggressive and courageous Keren Ann as well: on "It Ain't No Crime," with its heavy blues thump and screaming distorted guitar, she sings in a compressed, insistent voice, "There are no victims/There is no truth/We take their money/They take our youth," something so surprisingly shivery the Keren Ann of albums one through four would never have dared go there.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5 and 6)

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