Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.

(‘Hamlet’, William Shakespeare)

The songs of Keren Ann Zeidel trace the wounds of life and love, and if they can seem a bit ‘out of joint’ at times it’s because love seldom proceeds in an orderly way. Hard not to feel the twinge of pain on a song like ‘It’s All A Lie’, or sympathy for the lover forced to leave a cruel love on ‘In The Back’, and the unswerving devotion of the dreamer on ‘Lay Your Head Down’ can melt the hardest of hearts. We’re only 3 tracks into 2007′s eponymous album and already getting a bittersweet taste for the chanteuse that is Keren Ann, although the real charm lies in the warmth of her vocal, truly something for nursing the broken heart: yes, this artist sings a ballad like she’s actually there whispering the words in your ear … nice trick if you can pull it off!

With ideas rarely in short supply, Keren Ann is spoilt for choice: multi-lingual, multi-instrumentalist, multi-talented … her earliest recordings were sung in French, her adopted homeland for the last 20 years, but since 2003′s critically well-received Not Going Anywhere, most of her work has been sung in English. Numerous other projects on the go, nevertheless her last official full-length album Keren Ann offered only a tantalising glimpse of her brilliance as an artist, perhaps a casualty of its own ambition. Ideas were spread a too thinly with all the experimentation: sequencers, handclaps, orchestras and choirs and the rest of it. In contrast, her latest release 101 takes a neat step sideways to reveal an intriguing concept album, a collection of stories unfolding from the view of a 101st floor window.

So first we get a peep at lovers seemingly locked in a passionate embrace, but the woman turns away with an expression of pain and emptiness, apparently the possessor and obsessive trapped in a tragic past (‘My Name Is Trouble’). We then eavesdrop on the actress next door leafing through old photographs, and music on her gramophone brings back fond memories of an old love affair (‘Run With You’). The mood lightens as we visit the Andy Warhol-like party on the floor below, art and fashion, dancing girls, bingeing on wine and a Jackson Pollock festooned on the wall (‘All The Beautiful Girls’), and the upbeat mood continues on ‘Sugar Mama’ as a young man leaves the room next to this with his older lover, a set of car keys at the ready to take them on a long journey together. Keren Ann weaves a dreamlike musical tapestry around these stories … but then the peace and tranquility is shattered forever as we pan down to the harrowing nightclub scene where a singer is wiping blood away from her hands, surrounded by bleeding bodies … a shooting! So a crime has taken place under our very own eyes, perhaps we were unwitting accessories?!! (‘Blood On My Hands’). Yes, you got it … Hitchcock’s voyeuristic 1954 film ‘Rear Window’!

None of this would matter a jot if the songs weren’t any good, but on 101, Keren Ann duly delivers and seems unafraid to take the music wherever it wants to go; there’s a richer palette of musical influences than on Keren Ann, but it still keeps the ‘glue’, her warm spectral and intimate voice, hard not to be touched as the artist reaches out to us. Fans hoping she’ll just ditch the orchestra and get back to her guitar will have to wait a little longer for a Not going anywhere II. It will surely come though, one of the great sultry neofolk-dreampop albums of the noughties, and a ‘safe’ door for vanquished lovers and the world-weary everywhere. But for the time being we’ll content ourselves with her latest, which strikes out in lots of brave new directions: ‘She Won’t Trade It For Nothing’ sounds almost Springsteen-esque. ‘Song From A Tour Bus’ watches the world go by, and possibly lays a claim to the crown of one Leonard Cohen. Finally, ‘Strange Weather’ builds slowly with haunting strings and choirs and reaches a chilling and mighty crescendo to bookend the album. Except, that is, for the mysterious title track which countdowns the 101 floors and ends with ‘One God’! Oh and if I missed ‘You Were On Fire’ somewhere along the line, that’s because it’s simply a perfect pop song (and what the hell if it does sound like the Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’!).

There are great ‘moments’ on 101 for any who have recently suffered anguish in the love stakes! Yes, love is why we’re all here, but as Ryan Adams noted a few years ago … Love Is Hell! Keren Ann maps out tragedy (and tragicomedy?) in her stories of love, but reading between the lines of ‘Strange Weather’ there is some hope for us as well as heartbreak, and we all need a bit of that don’t we?

“She’ll take you back don’t make believe/You wanna think it through/I’ve loved before I’ll love again/I know that yours was true”