Keren Ann To Share Love Letter To Paris With New Album
(MMM) Singer-Songwriter Keren Ann will release her new album "Paris Amour," on September 12th. Paris Amour is not an album about Paris, but it is very much an album of Paris. For singer, songwriter, composer and producer Keren Ann, every song that she writes represents a chapter of her life and takes on an identity deeply entwined with the place in which it was created.
Very often one album can contain snapshots from several continents, reflecting her homes in France and New York City and her travels across the globe. Paris Amour, performed in French, is unique in having been crafted entirely in her home in Paris' Montmartre neighborhood.
"After years of writing songs," Keren Ann says, "I find that the environment in which you write tends to become a big part of the project. Many of the songs on this album have nothing to do with Paris - many of them travel to the seaside - but all of them feel like horizons viewed from my living room."
Out September 12, 2025 via her own Bring Back Music label, Paris Amour is Keren Ann's tenth solo album, a stunningly diverse and deeply personal collection of songs that captures a range of emotions with the vibrancy and nuance of a film score, produced by the composer herself.
This homecoming arrives 25 years after Keren Ann Zeidel released her debut album, La Biographie de Luka Philipsen, in 2000. She made her English-language debut in 2003 with the critically acclaimed Not Going Anywhere. That album, as well as her next three were released in the US by the iconic Blue Note Records. The New York Times wrote, "Her clear, calm voice is one of serene mystery and subtle melancholy: cool but never detached." The Guardian hailed her "meticulously crafted songs, at once languorous and eerie." She has also been featured in profiles and reviews by NPR, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and many others.
Keren Ann's songs have been performed by an impressive array of artists including, Iggy Pop, Anna Calvi, Jane Birkin and Henri Salvador, and she counts among her collaborators David Byrne, Questlove of The Roots, and the Icelandic musician Barði Jóhannsson, with whom she formed the duo Lady & Bird.
Situated on a hilltop in the 18th arrondissement, Montmartre offers expansive views of the City of Lights. Keren Ann sees herself as an observer on that hill, viewing Paris and telling its myriad stories in song. She is in many ways a citizen of the world - but Paris, and Montmartre in particular, has always been home. The album's title track is a direct love letter to that home, while the album, for all its varied subjects and impressions, is inevitably shaped by the experience of living there.
The album opens with "La Sublime Solitude" (The Sublime Solitude), a celebration of seclusion, the importance of spending time with oneself. The singer reveals, "I've been blessed with love in my life and I love couplehood, but I, as a writer, need my own space. That's why the album begins with this song about the beauty of solitude."
The pulsating urgency of "La Musique À Fond" (Loud Music), with its repeated entreaties in English ("Wake me up / Hit me up"), is a delectable homage to the power of music. It offers an escape of sorts from the album's more melancholy themes, exulting in the transcendent power of a song to overcome pain and heartbreak.
The album ends with the striking "LEcho des Tirs" (The Echo of Gunfire), a collaboration with Israeli-born jazz trumpeter Avishai Cohen, a longtime musical partner. Cohen's trumpet screams and whispers over Keren Ann's agitated electronic groove, lamenting the aftermath of violence with a steadfast refusal to abandon hope.
"Some of the subjects that I speak about can be very dark," Keren Ann admits. "But for me, there is something very luminous about this record." Indeed, Paris Amour contains joy and mourning, sensuality and yearning, passion and loneliness, amour and musique - all the emotions and sensations that thrive in a city with the richness and pulse of Paris.
Pre-order/pre-save here and stream a lyric video for the title track below:
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