Records: Deanna Kirk's Where Are You Now?

By Julia Dahl

Somebody at Tower Records has taste. Floating aimlessly somewhere among the discs at the Pop and Rock and World Music listening station, I happened upon a CD by Deanna Kirk, a songbird extraordinaire. A regular on the New York City club scene, Kirk commands respect with a beautiful voice and a quiet intelligence.

Kirk's latest collection of songs, "Where Are You Now," is a deceptively simple symphony of serene, intelligent, even dreamy, pockets of truth. But unlike so many of her contemporaries, Kirk isn't giving anything away for free. A simple verse twists on the last word, a whole song turns on an image no one can see. Even Kirk's voice is tricky--at once both full and resonant and breathy, trembling, exhausted. She places herself among the ghosts of cities and towns. "Down on the low streets I had supernatural powers," she sings in "Ballad of The Small Cafe." She is the artist who drifts in and out, provoking, expecting, disappearing.

"All you ever wanted were the simple things / a woman so true she cries when she sings / but you don't really get me do you / you don't like my dreams," begins "Not The One." She'll cry, but not for you. And maybe that's best. Maybe a beautiful, wild soul like the one that that Deanna Kirk possesses is best left to float through New York's smoky club scene, with nobody to understand her dreams but the shadows on the pavement.

But we want to try. We want in. We want to know the woman who can make losing love sound so sweet. Fortunately, Kirk isn't just an acoustic Enya with a funky jazz heart. Brewing inside an otherwise ethereal playlist is a song like "I Want It." Sax popping, guitar angry for a plug, and Kirk clicking her tongue into the mic: "Why can't I just work and eat and sleep? / I want it I want it I want it I want it now. / I want it I want it I want it I want it now."

The title track, "Where are You Now," is a song of distance, about lovers wearing masks and losing touch. A simple hand-drum beat begins the song, fingers strum ever so lightly on a guitar then touch the keys of a piano: "He keeps wondering when she's gonna show her face / she's gonna turn the other way / he keeps wondering when he's gonna find his place / she's gonna come around someday and say / where are you now where you now."

Deanna Kirk does nothing by the book, and we love her for it. (Ivana Music)

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