Hooked on the sweet, languid tones of despair
Keren Ann lives in the breath between sentences, the nervous twisting of a ring on a finger, the glance out a window that draws your attention away from your lover’s face to an infinite skyline. Her fifth, self-produced album expands the themes of her previous work, not by intensifying the focus as much as further deconstructing it. Snippets of lyrics ?oat here and there, none particularly profound except in the context of the music, a minimalist collage of the Velvet Underground, Dusty Springfield, Leonard Cohen and Björk. The effect is mesmerizingly conversational. In “It’s All A Lie,” she allows a lazy swell of strings and synthesizer to all but overwhelm her vocal right at the point she reveals her unfaithfulness to a lover, the aural equivalent of waiting for a train to pass before pulling a trigger. Softened by the tender, smoky tones of her voice, Ann’s punch is all the sweeter.