She's a wanderer

Keren Ann is in a Paris airport en route to Israel for an uncharacteristic weekend off. The French-Israeli singer has just played 20 shows in 20 days and the next couple of months are likewise packed with an intercontinental concert schedule in support of her new album, which was recorded in New York, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, Paris, Reykjavik, Iceland, and the south of France.

Keren Ann has a nomadic soul. She lives, mostly, in New York and Paris, but rarely stays in one town, or one sound, for long. The new disc spans delicate folk and heady electronica, heavy rock and jangly pop, cool jazz and dirty blues. One might assume that her tumultuous lifestyle, combined with an eclectic musical appetite, would breed a certain insanity. Yet this 34-year-old singer and songwriter is as placid, and as quietly intense, as her songs.

That makes Keren Ann something of a throwback. In contemporary pop, decibels are often confused with drama. While her music is unmistakably modern, the artist's reference points remind us of a time when feeling could unfold slowly, stealthily, in a whisper.

"My school was Chet Baker and Billie Holiday," says Keren Ann. "They provoke more emotion than any screamer I know."

That's not to say that Keren Ann, who plays tomorrow at the Somerville Theatre, is opposed to cutting loose. Some audiences demand it.

"Onstage, everything becomes an ingredient and you take them and put it into the music. Certain crowds and venues bring it out of you, and sometimes I do go loud because I feel it's right. My first instinct is saying tough things in a calm way. But we did a run of shows in Belgium where people were standing and jumping. If it's a rock club, I'll adapt."

Keren Ann's fifth album is self-titled, a common occurrence on an artist's debut or a mid - career offering meant to signify a new direction or a new record deal. She says the decision to release this collection eponymously is neither loaded with meaning nor especially mysterious.

"Usually a title comes up and it's obvious. But I had no title with this one, and I had never used this bonus [title]. I was just as autonomous on previous records. And I'm always a beginner."

Keren Ann produced and recorded the music, an endeavor she says was thoroughly gratifying. She delved enthusiastically into the nuts and bolts of sound engineering -- with an arsenal of vintage and cutting-edge gear in her New York City home studio, and in various rooms around the world, and likens the process of cobbling a song together to that of a painter filling a canvas.

"If you have a white canvas, you have several choices of how to paint it. You can use many or a few colors, mix oil with acrylic, create different textures. Then you work with light. In music it's the same, except instead of light and color it's sounds. I decided that if I wanted my record to sound Impressionist I would have to follow important rules, which means no rules, and putting together things that don't go together."

Keren Ann knew how she wanted the album to sound -- "luminous" and "eclectic" -- but had no concrete plan for how to get there. She found her way serendipitously, in far-flung locales where she happened to be working on other people's projects. While in Reykjavik writing for an Icelandic choir, she booked her own time in the studio and invited the choir to contribute vocals to several of her songs. A demo recording for a French indie horror film led to a spontaneous series of sessions in Paris.

Keren Ann had decided in advance that she would not set a schedule for the writing and recording of this song collection, but rather let it unfold when, and where, it would. The resulting sonic landscapes are layered and shifting and deceptively calm.

"If you're obsessed by beauty, you will put enough architecture into the song, and the rest is just fun. Fill in the space, 360 degrees, with what you want."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/ music/blog.