"Jet," (Elektra) the second
album by the Irish singer Katell
Keineg, came out over the
summer. It sounds like it
might have been a pop hit a
few years back, when
there weren't so many young female
singer-songwriters getting
the push from major record labels; amid the
current scene, the
album hasn't had such luck.
Instead of issue-oriented songs, Ms. Keineg
writes daydreams
that could easily be punctured but for the
force of her
imagination. In a ripe and forceful voice, she
sings of her life in
retrospective, from the standpoint of the
imagined future; of
details in the life of the Surrealist painter
Leonor Fini, who died
last year; of mothers as heroic wanderers. The
commitment to
her material is wonderful. But "Jet" is also an
album with
interesting problems.
Eric Drew Feldman's sharp production ideas vary
too wildly:
"One Hell of a Life" mimics the sound of Bob
Dylan's mid-60s
band; "Veni Vidi Vici" has a harpsichord,
making it sound like an
imitation of a tacky 60s French pop song. The
problem is that
Ms. Keineg's earnestness puts her at odds with
these
contrivances, and the record winds up as a
battle between its
identity as a singer-songwriter album and a
producer's album.
But the elaborate frameworks in the long songs
keep rolling
away to reveal Ms. Keineg's voice and guitar,
and these are
stunning moments of contrast.