Keren Ann 101 (Blue Note)
4/5
By: Christiana Spens
101 is Keren Ann’s sixth studio album, and is pretty mesmerising. Subtle, intoxicating and brilliantly produced, it shows the breadth of Ann’s talents as a singer, song-writer and producer of her own work.
Her voice itself is soft, sophisticated and unpretentious. She can go from lullaby-like songs about melancholic friends (‘All the Beautiful Girls’) to deeply addictive pop numbers like ‘Sugar Mama’ that merge sixties frivolity with a modern complacency – little love songs for boys with cars and May-October romances. Mrs Robinson, but less severe – Mrs. Robinson, on the Chablis again.
Although the lyrics are often rather bittersweet, as if they might soundtrack The Virgin Suicides or Girl, Interrupted’s sadder moments, there is something undeniably uplifting in 101 as a whole. I think it is perhaps just the softness, and easy-going maturity of Karen Ann’s voice, which no matter the words, is always compassionate and sedating. Her beguiling vocals speak of miseries while curing those feelings with a kind of musical Valium – or a drive away from it all. There is something joyfully free about it all - that melancholy she sings of is firmly in the past. She flees freely, in 101.
Keren Ann - 101 by CandyGalore
Artists in this article: Keren Ann
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