Thursday, January 18

KEREN ANN (IS NOT SWEDISH)


I thought I was going to be continuing my cyber-vacation in Sweden today, seeing as I thought that KEREN ANN was a native of that country. But Yahoo burst my bubble, as such: "Singer/songwriter Keren Ann Zeidel, who records under the name Keren Ann, was born in Israel in 1974 to a Dutch-Javanese mother and a Russian-Israeli father."

Okay, fine. But maybe they had a Swedish milkman.

Then it occurred to me why I had made that incredibly uncharacteristic mistake. Ms. Zeidel, you see, also performs with BARDI JOHANNSSON as part of LADY & BIRD. Ha! There you have it. I mean, have you ever heard a name more Swedish than "Bardi Johannsson"?

Except that it turns out he's from Iceland.

Shit.

This entire post was intended to be built around the incontrovertible fact of KEREN ANN's unimpeachable Swedishness. Now what the hell am I going to do?

Well... I guess I'm going to tell you that the woman has a new, self-titled LP coming out this year. It'll be released in Europe on April 23 and in the U.S. on May 8. Till then, I've taken the liberty of offering up a few of her older tracks below.

[But wait! I KNEW there had to be SOME kind of KEREN ANN/Sweden link. Just for the record: On February 26, 2005, she played the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. So there you have it.]

KEREN ANN on MySPACE.

From the LP NOT GOING ANYWHERE, 2004 >>>
[MP3] "End of May"
[MP3] "Sailor & Widow"

From the LP NOLITA, 2004 >>>
[MP3] "Que N'ai-je?"

No comments: