Two records brought Keren Ann's continental whisper to our shores-- 2003's Not Going Anywhere and 2004's Nolita. Steeped in France's chanson tradition of forlorn radio poetry, they also revealed a quirky, world-traveler sensibility, shaped by German cabaret and British trip-hop. Worldliness aside, all of the songs felt like love songs. But their drowsy pessimism, thick in every verse and chord, threw back to psychedelia's dark side, the slow-dance of heroin chic, winding from Mazzy Star back to the Velvet Underground.
On her self-titled fifth album, Keren Ann crafts this spirit-- or spiritlessness-- into a ragged, shadowy baroque, where songs may tumble in over harmonicas or drift off with a choir. It's a dark brand of nostalgia that isn't suited to feel-good arrangements. This hints at why the sprightly organs of "Between the Flatland and the Caspian Sea" seem like empty gestures of homage, half-hearted flourishes on a watery epic: she doesn't do uplift.
Gloom, midnight ennui, heartache: That's her domain. Here, the best stretches of dusky, heartland noir stay within these emotional borders, finding an unmistakably American blend of the shabby and the genteel. Witness the thick hunk of ornery Delta sass, "It Ain't No Crime", go for tattered elegance, decorating filthy blues riffs with Keren Ann's smoldering, breathy accents. No less defiant, "Lay Your Head Down" takes cues from Lou Reed's troupe of Manhattan anti-hippies, reenacting Nico's fallen-angel delivery and the subway chug of "I'm Waiting for the Man".
Keren Ann, of course, doesn't traffic in drug stories. Her big theme, if she has one, is the agony after ecstasy, the post-love story. That's where the numbness, the languor, the trancelike lassitude comes from: wreckage. Steadfastly hostile to love stories, she deluges listeners instead with snapshots of hearts pronounced dead on arrival ("It's All a Lie") and, in "The Harder Ships of the World", the charms of a cold-shouldered ex. Healthy hearts might tire of Keren Ann's pitch-black take on romance-- her discography feels like one merciless siege of the concept-- but that's just one tile in the mosaic. She's not quite Catherine Breillat.
Outside the bittersweet standouts, Keren Ann's sweet nothings begin to rot the teeth, as they slide dangerously close to coffee-shop Americana, as sketched by Slate's Jody Rosen. Who wouldn't prefer their urbane joe, after all, with a shot of soft-strummed languor ("In Your Back") or shoegaze inspired by the Good Will Hunting soundtrack ("Liberty")? Very few, the Starbucks music curators realized weeks ago.
