Rating: NNN
On her follow-up to last year’s poker-faced folk trifle Not Going Anywhere, Keren Ann Zeidel mercifully keeps the fairy-tale preciousness to a minimum. Instead of the cutesy-macabre anecdotes about sad ladies waiting for doomed sailors, we get a sexier set of string-laden torch tunes about spending the night in New York neighbourhoods (the title should tip you off) and her peculiar, distant sort of love. Perhaps at the behest of Blue Note, Zeidel takes the “shh, pay attention!” wispiness up a few notches, landing in the late-night jazz-folk turf occupied by Norah Jones, and when she sings en français, her voice has shades of the smoky womanliness of Jane Birkin. I just wish the English songs didn’t rely so heavily on her old whispery petulant girlie routine.