Jazz Cafe, London
Keren Ann Zeidel is a well-kept pop secret who may be set to go public. This 37-year-old half-Israeli, half-Dutch singer-songwriter has enjoyed cult status for nigh on a decade, but her sixth album, 101, appears poised to deliver more significant commercial returns.
Musically, Zeidel's forte is swaddling barbed, acidic lyrical motifs in sumptuously mellow chords, an iron fist in a velvet glove. She has been called a Norah Jones for Velvet Underground fans, but her insouciant cool and arch, breathy meditations on sex and mortality are equally evocative of the VU's own femme-fatale siren, Nico.
She cuts a striking figure, a doe-eyed, sharp-witted waif in a blunt bob and austere Peter Pan collar. Her records are mellow, meticulously stylised affairs. Live she becomes an invigoratingly raw performer, investing songs such as the honeyed Sugar Mama, a paean to a sexually predatory female, with a brooding air of disingenuous menace.
Her three-piece band's arrangements of her wordy material can be so conservative that they verge on lounge music, but Ziegel is a quietly edgy presence. The literate, Suzanne Vega-like Blood on My Hands finds her sweetly fantasising about gunning down her audience, while Song from a Tour Bus surpasses its profoundly unpromising title to become a piquant reflection on on-the-road dislocation.
Yet this pale wraith's signature mood is exquisite melancholy and the evening's apogee is set-closer Strange Weather, a carnal, jazz-inflected lament delivered from the death throes of a love that was always doomed to fail. It's one more unmistakable indication that Keren Ann's devoted followers may soon have to share her with a wider audience.