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Review: Keren Ann

Keren Ann (pictured) is a French singer with a new self-titled English album recently out.

Keren Ann is nine moody songs, and might have been subtitled I'm Your Mazzy - since it's a faithful homage to a few styles that are best filed under, or between, those separated-at-birth troubadours of drowsy underground glamour Leonard Cohen and Hope Sandoval - in short, breathy slow narcotic chansons that swirl about the room, lazy opium for the masses, concealing a razor blade under their mirror smiles.

One can almost imagine handsome-lost Chet Baker in the Parisian background, nodding along (or off) to these tunes to drop out by.

"Lay Your Head Down" is the stand out track. A few others are good. None are ultimately exceptional, though some of these dream pop songs flirt harmlessly with greatness, but the whole is greater than the parts and permits a certain slack jouissance to play as aural wallpaper for that certain sort of night in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keren_Ann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazzy_Star

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_pop
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