Keren Ann: Nolita

Herald rating: * * * *

This New York-based chanteuse has already drawn favourable comparisons with her label-mate Norah Jones, although I don't hear that. Sure, she has some similar, breathy understatement and occasionally a slight country tinge to her late-night lounge sound. But there is also something much darker at work on this, her second album for an international label, which recalls Nico with the Velvet Underground and Julee Cruise's theme to Twin Peaks.

With arrangements which can include unsettling strings (the long, atmospheric title track) and lyrics which are refined to evocations rather than over-statement (It's over now for you and I pretty much sums up a relationship), this has a kind of distant yet enticing quality made more exotic by four of the 11 whispery tracks being in French. (Perdu, le fil du temps, another spare but telling lyric). Keren Ann lives between Paris and New York which perhaps explains some of the emotional dislocation, but her quiet, slightly ambivalent Chelsea Burns is the standout - although the chilly, spoken word track by actor Sean Gullette is equally evocative.

With bass, drums, occasional saxophone, small string section colourings and her own guitar and piano work, Keren Ann has conjured up a shadowy Europeanism, but in a voice as alluring as that of Astrud Gilberto, and with an emotional languor that would have done Chet Baker proud.

Label: Blue Note/Emi