Not Going Anywhere, Keren Ann's radiant 2003 release, was a fluke. The album was recorded on a whim and wasn't intended for widespread release. As indulgences go, it was an astonishing feat: gently balanced, melodically fecund, restrained yet confident. That Keren Ann would want to keep the album private almost makes sense: Her lyrics are peppered with the oblique aphorisms of someone who's concerned exclusively with herself.
Compared to its subdued predecessor, Nolita almost feels tense. But Keren Ann keeps a cool head. Patience is her biggest asset, and Nolita's 10 songs sound relaxed even when you'd expect them to break a sweat. Opener "Que N'ai-Je" (the first of four French-language tracks; there were none on Not Going Anywhere) is a dreamy wash. One by one, the instruments overtake each other until Keren Ann is half-drowned in a mash of upright bass, acoustic guitar, trilling strings, brush-stroked drums, and a laconic organ. The surplus is a break with the stark minimalism of Not Going Anywhere, but the change is welcome: This noirish, world-weary Keren Ann is no less captivating than her more precious former self.
Keren Ann has a frail, diaphanous voice that's predisposed to the soft, solvent French language. Singing in English at the impossibly low volumes she favors, syllables are often lost as her voice shows fine cracks, like a weathered painting. On "Chelsea Burns", the LP's first English-language track, the lingual contrast is revelatory. Luckily, this is one of Nolita's strongest songs, a wistful, electric ballad marked by the appearance of a fiddle and a harmonica-- outsiders to Keren Ann's standard instrumentation.
The album's title track is also its centerpiece. Seven minutes long and wontedly unhurried, the song opens with a facilitating acoustic guitar lullaby played at a tempo verging on lugubrious. Keren Ann enters with a purposefully punny vocal: "It's late, I think I'm gonna stay, think I'm gonna bury you," she sings, but the "bury" is drawn out and slurred-- she could just as well be singing "marry you." A hollow, reverberating trill stretches out in the darkened space like moonlight rippling over water. She eventually stops singing altogether and just breathes, at first lightly, then deeply and insistently as the background strings build to whooshing climax. The moment is at once gloriously baroque and understated.
Everything thereafter is a comedown, but is still satisfying. "Roses and Hips" and "One Day Without" recall the mindless drift of Keren Ann's erstwhile work, only perhaps a bit more grounded in realism. The latter layers a brisk, distorted-beyond-recognition guitar beneath Keren Ann's wispy vocal as she struggles to keep her footing; that the singer would test herself against her own songwriting shows maturity and humility beyond her 30 years.
