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Dakota Jazz Club

Beguiling singer Stacey Kent is a New Jersey native but also a longtime Francophile. Thus her new album, released this week in the U.S.: Raconte-moi..., which means "tell me," a French-language collection of sly, sophisticated tunes that blur the line between Kent's trademark subtle jazz balladry and classic French chanson. Kent will never knock you out with the power of her pipes. Instead, she relies on an array of other charms, especially elegant phrasing and a jewel-like, insinuating voice that excels at etching tricky emotions like wistfulness. Also key are smart arrangements—often courtesy of her husband/producer/reed player Jim Tomlinson—that help her roam from Ellington and Cole Porter to Paul Simon and Bobby Troup. Raconte-moi... has a late-night Montmartre cabaret feel, drawing on a repertoire of both classic and contemporary French songwriters, including Paul Misraki, Henri Salvador, Benjamin Biolay, and Camille D'Avril, whose "Sait-On Jamais" was written with Tomlinson. Kent does a diaphanous version of Georges Moustaki's French reworking of Jobim's "Águas de Março." And there's an exquisite reading, en français, of the Rodgers & Hammerstein standard "It Might As Well Be Spring," laced with a nice Tomlinson alto sax solo. $35 at 7 p.m.; $25 at 9:30 p.m. 1010 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612.332.1010. —Rick Mason

TUESDAY 6.8

The Black Keys

Julie Ling

L.A. hippie-folk troubadours Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

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Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant

1010 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Minneapolis (Downtown)

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More About

• Dan Auerbach
• Dave Holland
• Stacey Kent
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Indie Rock and Indie Pop

First Avenue

Following their 2008 Attack & Release album with Danger Mouse, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney worked on a couple of side projects, went to Brooklyn to collaborate with a coterie of top hip-hop artists (including Mos Def, Raekwon, and RZA) on the hybrid rock-rap-R&B project Blakrok, and finally headed south to the storied Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama, culminating in their new album, Brothers. It's leaner than their work with Danger Mouse (who actually returns to produce one track, "Tighten Up"), settling into a raw, loosey-goosey vibe that's equal parts hardscrabble grit, Memphis soul, swampy blackwater, fuzzed out psychedelia, and seminal, hard blues akin to the crowd across the border in north Mississippi. Many of the tunes simmer rather than boil, but in sweeping spectral spaces echoey with haunts drifting in from myriad points across time and geography: from the Keys' native Akron to the Delta, R.L. Burnside, Ike Turner, Marc Bolan, Otis Redding, CCR, ZZ Top. None of which means the Keys don't work up new ideas on the latest one. There's a greater emphasis on wicked grooves, for one thing, and Auerbach expands his vocal range, weighing in with an out-of-left field falsetto on "Everlasting Light," which also sports an eddying T-Rex-like groove. Auerbach also airs out his soul on a fine cover of Jerry Butler's "Never Gonna Give You Up," which like most of the Keys' stuff finds its strength and purpose in vintage ideas transformed to a different era. With Brian Olive. 18+. $25. 7:30 p.m. 701 First Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612.332.1775. Also Wednesday. —Rick Mason