Portrait of Herself: a letter
Posted by ScotterKeren Ann-”It Ain’t No Crime”
(from Keren Ann)
Monday, August 20, 2007
Washington, DC
Dear Reader,
Have you by any chance gotten around to hearing Keren Ann’s new self-titled album?
It’s… Jesus, I’ve been wanting to ask you for weeks, or what by now has felt like weeks. More. Just to ask if you’ve heard. I’ve delayed asking because I keep failing to find the right word, the right word, to find it, the right word to describe it, to find what it is.
It’s… (prematurely speaking now) that album that’s always been in your collection that you never got around to listening to because other albums kept getting in the way: gladfully, gleefully, and as pests – some of which you went as far as to keep as pets, then you (sometimes) regretted it. And then, when you do, finally get around to it, and you want to kick yourself for not having gotten to it earlier. The responsibility of listening: Weighing. (This seems to happen to me with Dylan. Album after blessed album. It may be a shame, but it’s exhausting, more than anything.)
As a whole, from first tremors to last sighs, I’m tempted to say it has the aura of a classic in some genre of the hip – for which I am no doubt not qualified to judge, but will. This sort of quality usually takes longer to notice. But I can’t stop listening to it. So experience has been fastforwarded, so to speak. Every time it plays a new and indispensable detail emerges. Loops, minor riffs, chanting, whateverda’fucks, whathaveyous, and All: they all leave me…
Song by song, each track the sensation of an experiment where everything accidentally fell down, right to place, to sudden perfection. I smile. I sometimes do it trying to hide it, cause I’m all alone and by myself and not used to feeling happy without help. Smiles have always been someone else’s mercy. Keren Ann will not be made my first exception – although I wanted to.
You know my love,
this was no dream of mine
But the way you ride those waves
makes me wanna follow you blind
—from “Lay Your Head Down” (track 2)
And dare I say, for someone not born, or even raised in the great American gloom of The Great North American Gloom, she’s made this set of nine little tunes an American work: through and through. She never even bothered to come home to us, completely. Still splits part of her time in Paris; so I hear. As does the music, to some degree, and not out of some awareness of roots or something silly like that. But out of its own gift of listening for past echoes. And listening, we just bump into her in every little stain of song she left behind for us to find in the miniature aftermath of every song. Present-tense made immediately tense-past cause, yeah, it’s got that hint of nostalgia to it – in the key of daydreams. That’s how we find it; recognize it: the familiarity; and her; and the After.
I think this is what makes it stand out from the rest of her other albums. It’s made of places where even the gloominess is happy, which is true of her previous work, but this time it surprises us on, out of, from the habit-teeth of gloom. Tickled cold. We are. Place where every nook and cranny of sound and murmur turned epic un-emphatically refuses to apologize for what’s accomplished. Initially. Musically. And all, and all.
But beyond that, you get this sense its composition: voice, idea, word, hideaways, story, orchestration, the hands clapping, volume: all have come at last to fullness. Bloated with what is right.
Like falling in love, you know. Makes you miss that feeling and that fear like you’ll never feel it again. Cause no matter how gentle its sense of time moves, you know its passing. Like night, like age, like Song most of all. And it’s so exciting because you just might – might just – never hear again, if you’re lucky.
Thanks for letting me out of myself. I feel happier now.
Yours sincerely,
Ronmel
Todd wrote:
Welcome, Ronmel!
This is a great track. Maybe it’s just my tinny laptop speakers, but I love the contrast of the crunchy guitars and Keren Ann’s voice. Would you be embarrassed if I told you this reminded me of a grittier Portishead?
Posted on 24-Aug-07 at 12:48 pm | Permalink
Ronmel wrote:
Not at all. One of the lines I took out from an earlier draft of the so-called letter was that I probably hadn’t left an album on repeat for this long since I heard (so many years ago now) Portishead’s self-titled work. Maybe it’s a generational thing (i.e. I’m getting older), but something about this little album of hers that makes me feel I should be 17 while listening to it. Because it comes from somewhere older. It feels older than her previous works; almost, like she found her true beginning. A little late and out of time, but right when she should have. And now we’ve heard.
Posted on 25-Aug-07 at 9:03 am | Permalink