After performing her set of dreamy, wistful pop songs to a sold-out crowd at New York's Bowery Ballroom, the singer-songwriter Keren Ann asks, "Is there any chance we can have some dark, no-light kind of thing here?" She has come onstage alone for her encore and, as the lights go down, she puts aside her vintage Gretsch hollow body and slides into a lilting Brazilian a cappella lullaby to send her audience into the night.
"It was a song done by Astrud Gilberto in 1964 — the theme of Orfeu Negro," the 34-year-old chanteuse (whose full name is Keren Ann Zeidel) tells me over coffee in Brooklyn the next day. While her melancholy interpretation might not fly in Ipanema, it's easy to understand her connection to Gilberto's seductive, worldly brand of sensuality. "I don't speak Portuguese, but the sounds of the words are very soothing." Keren Ann's own voice is soft, sophisticated, and exotically accented (she's fluent in English, French, Hebrew, and Dutch) — an alluring complement to the raven-black bohemian bob framing her deep-set eyes. "The first thing that fascinates me in music," she says, "is the sound of the lyrics and melody."
Keren Ann's self-titled, self-produced fifth album is filled with dreamy melodies awash in reverb. There's even an appearance by a choir that wouldn't be out of place in a Philip Glass opera. Yet, for an artist whose writing is far closer to Leonard Cohen than Led Zeppelin, some of the sounds are, dare I say, heavy. "At the time I was making this album," she explains, "I was listening to the Queens of the Stone Age — the record with 'Burn the Witch.' I love that."
She has been touring the world steadily since her debut album, La Biographie de Luka Philipsen, came out eight years ago. When asked where she considers home, the self-styled nomad is reluctant to offer just one town. "Paris is a place I kind of called home for 20 years. My piano, guitars, vintage keyboards, microphones are all mostly there right now." In fact, Keren Ann is about to head to JFK to catch a plane for Paris. Les Victoires de la Musique, the French Grammys, are in a few days, and she's nominated in two categories (Female Artist and Pop and Rock Album of the Year). After that it's back on tour with a stop this summer in Reykjavik for a special performance of her music with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
And then there's Israel, where Keren Ann was born, and where her parents, after having lived in France and Holland, have chosen to retire. "My husband and I have this place in the country up north where we go to escape," she says. "If we do decide to live in Israel someday, it would probably be somewhere closer to the airport," she laughs. "So I can travel more."
