Customer Reviews

Nolita

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are people -- and you know who you are -- who can't get enough of a very specific kind of record: a whispery, sparely orchestrated, gorgeous-yet-melancholy soundscape with an achingly vulnerable singer at dead center. Think Nick Drake, Francoise Hardy, Beth Orton, BLUE-period Joni Mitchell, or the Velvet Underground's eponymous third album. Well, I am certainly one of those kind of people, and NOLITA is exactly the kind of record that floats my particular boat. I can't believe I've managed to overlook Keren Ann's existence until now. The only thing that makes me happier than the prospect of listening to NOLITA again is the prospect of checking out her previous work!

First of all, the music on this CD is tremendous. Based on this album, Keren Ann has just become one of my favorite female musicians, along with Neko Case, Mirah, Nina Nastasia, and others.

However, having heard the original French release of this album numerous times and consciously remarking that it was very well sequenced, with a wonderful ebb and flow, I was bitterly disappointed upon receiving the American version and finding that the idiots at Blue Note had decided to reorder the songs for no apparent reason. Were they afraid that having three of the first four tracks in French would put off English speakers?

Without changing a note, the altered tracklist gives the album a different feel - for one example, ending with the somber "Song of Alice," leaves you with a much different aftertaste than the original version, which had "Greatest You Can Find" after it as a hidden track, for a nice romantic coda that seemed to sum up all that had come before, and then gently fade away.

This may be a minor grievance, but it's awfully annoying that I will have to program my CD player every time I want to listen to this CD in the way the artist originally intended it to be heard, or else plunk down twice the money for an import copy.

In case you're curious, the original tracklist (which is the only one that appears on Keren Ann's website, incidentally) is:

1. Que n'ai-je

2. L'onde Amere

3. Chelsea Burns

4. Midi Dans le Salon de la Duchesse

5. Nolita

6. Roses and Hips

7. One Day Without

8. La Forme et le Fond

9. For You and I

10. Song For Alice (with uncredited hidden track "Greatest You Can Find" at the tail end)

As someone who is very unhappy with contemporary music these days (I'm not into the hype machine around the likes of Joss Stone or The Donnas, but Keane is ok with me), Keren Ann is truly a breath of fresh air for me. It's like finally avoiding that awful stench of what saturates today's hits, inhaling deeply, and listening to something pure, peaceful, and delicately timeless in a retro-folksy sort of way. Like an old kitchen table draped with a green and white checkered tablecloth sitting in a room with bright yellow walls. So quaint. No one told me to like this music. I simply heard it online and fell in love. I love writing to this music - it puts me in such a creative mood. Her voice is marvelous, her harmonies warm, and her approach devoid of crass commercialism. If you're as dissatisfied as I am with most of today's music, give this a try. I have a pretty strong feeling this will not let you down. Let's hope Keren can remain under the radar like she has so far. I have yet to see her all over magazine covers or MTV...and I hope it stays that way.

Andrew Knyte.

I'm not one for writing a lot of reviews, but this CD is simply amazing. Keren Ann's voice is hypnotic, haunting, gorgeous. The standouts are too numerous - the title track, Chelsea Burns, One Day Without You, etc. Its a perfect CD for after a hard day at work to just completely chill out to. Amazon has a point - she's very much a French Mazzy Star... but I think better use of instrumentation to achieve the wonderful "shoegazer effect" is done by KA.

My highest recommendation, if you're a fan of the Chill scene.

Beautiful, odd combinations of styles of music and a voice

that whispers to you like a Jane Siberry or a Julie Cruise

mystery and some great French singing attitude, to music with some American flavor thrown in (check out the harmonica). Like

the movie "Carnival of Souls" back in the 60's, errie keyboards in some songs but

beautiful music in others, whispers over multi-vocal parts. Keren Ann is a songwriter, musician and has more attitude

to steer these songs along and make them all work with one another.

This is all her work, she's not there to just sit in for some

famous producer, SHE does it all for the most part. The

musicans are very sensitive to her style and blend seamlessly. This is

her second US recording as she has been doing collections over

in Europe(France). As stated some songs on NOLITA have macabre keyboards

floating around that give them their uniquness others like one my many favs "LA forme et le fond" are striking the way they have layed all these various

instruments working against each other,and the French singing

is so beautiful, La forme et le fond in particular has some parts where their is louder instruments working against the

plugging strings, violins, opera singing against a folk guitar

cords. Its a 60's trip through chill and some chamber music and

its has a slow, lax presentation(check out the last spoken song with Sean Gullette, strange, but its great stuff, cut

after cut all different, often hard to describe, I keep listening to this as it has

a way of getting under your skin, its a rare beauty, surely one

of the most interesting collections of songs and vocals to come by in

quite a while. An Artist to watch!

The Songs on "Nolita" are sung in both French and English with the same beauty we've come to expect from Keren Ann. The title track, "Nolita" is particularly beautiful. Though unlike "Not Going Anywhere" with the occasional lively song, "Nolita" is quiet throughout. Keren's lush vocals are sometimes little more then a whisper over equally lush instrumentals. Listening to Keren I often feel entranced by her voice, as if drawn into the music. "Nolita" along with "Not Going Anywhere" are two of the most beautiful, most wonderful albums I've had the pleasure of hearing.

keren ann is a unique and lovely french chanteuse, and this album highlights her french-ness, versus the album "not going anywhere" where she speaks english for the most part. i really love this record, and it's perfect for days in the spring or summer when it's rainy and candles are lit for emphasis. i gotta hand it to this woman--i saw her live and she is even better than her recordings, but if she's not there in person to serenade you, buy this record.

It's "Come Away With Me" for Nico lovers and hung-over hipsters. This Israeli/Parisian woman shifts back and forth between French and English, holding it all together with her fragile eggshell vocals, woozy, Sunday-morning instrumentation and unvarnished, acoustic production. The title track ends with a three-minute fade-out of breathy white noise stitched together by violins and a solitary horn blowing a sparse, three-note mantra. Nolita is beautiful.

Keren Ann's third French release is mostly guitar pop; she sings softly, but well up in the mix, so it feels as if she's sitting there on a stool in your living room, with her eyes closed while her accompanist strums a guitar or taps out a rhythm on a tambourine. Songs like "midi dans le salon..." sound like Village Preservation-era Kinks, with a sexy alto singer instead of Ray Davies, while "One Day Without" takes a more earnest, acoustic-folk approach.

The songs all have pretty much the same dirge-like tempo and the same earnest vocal treatments, however, which wouldn't be a detriment if the lyrics were deep and complicated and sought an emotional connection. Verses like "land slides and grips onto a side rock/fool's got eyes/and I don't" (from Roses & Hips), however, just seem opaque, as if they had been translated from Dutch to Hebrew to French to German to English.

For a record named after a hoppin', thrivin' New York neighborhood smack in the middle of a bunch of other distinctive neighborhoods, "Nolita" sounds curiously pure and refined. Didn't Keren Ann ever get a little kick from hearing "In Da Club" blasting out of someone's hooptie stalled in traffic on the Bowery, or the sounds of Chinese fishmongers gossiping?

Definitely not the greatest album of all time, but quite enjoyable. The English songs are catchy though the lyrics are repetitive and simple. The music is innovative. This is a nice add for a collection but not a major breakthrough in musical arts.