Mermaid of Honour

Katell Keineg's fourth album At The Mermaid Parade exists right in the middle of a contradiction. Casual-sounding but intense, private but open, it's a record that takes all the time in the world to tell a few simple but profound truths about what goes on in the rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

"There's a certain amount of idleness required for songwriting, which is tough unless you're independently wealthy," Keineg laughs. "I'm extremely slow, I'm not prolific at all, which is why I don't make that many records. I could be chipping away at a song for a year, so I'm more the Leonard Cohen school than the Bob Dylan school."
Which accounts for four albums in 16 years. But there is such a thing as the myth of industry. Joyce only wrote five major works in his life. Katell, as it happens, hasn't heard the apocryphal tale of when Cohen met Dylan and asked him how long it took to write 'I And I'. Twenty minutes, said Bob, then asked how long it took to write 'Hallelujah'. A year, said Leonard, but he lied. It took two.
"That's a brilliant story. I know what he's saying. Sometimes you can get a song in one go, but rarely. Any other kind of mental activity is just not conducive to songwriting. You do need a whole day or a whole week... or a whole life, ideally."
And that's precisely what she's spent her whole life doing. Born in Brittany and raised in Wales, Keineg spent the guts of two decades gypsying between Dublin and New York before returning to Cardiff in January 2008.
"It took some getting used to," she admits, "I do still really miss Dublin, I miss my friends there. I've pretty much lived my whole life in ports, I lived in Brest until I was nine, which is a big port city in Brittany, Cardiff is a big port, Dublin, New York. Recently I've gone to Malaga quite a lot. I love Andulasia, it's everything that's great about Ireland, plus sunshine!"
And the new record reflects every musical and geographical territory she's inhabited: Celtic melodies, rustic American textures, Nico and Piaf and the late Alex Chilton. Perhaps its finest moment, 'Summer Loving Song', perfectly captures that freewheeling feeling of a beer-buzzed summer's night.
"That was actually based on a trip to Coney Island, a really old fashioned seaside resort," Keineg explains. "Unfortunately it's set for redevelopment. They're going to preserve a small part of it, but a lot of it's going to go quite soon. Up until last year or the year before it was kind of like stepping into the '40s, all the handpainted signs and the old fair attractions and the boardwalk, an absolutely magical place. I always go there when I'm in New York, you can get the subway out there, it takes about an hour. 'At the Mermaid Parade' is also set there. Every June people dress up as sea creatures and have a parade with old American cars, T-Birds, so that's kind of a Coney Island song too."
Then there's the too-true-to-be-funny (but still funny), 'Arsehole Song', in which Keineg litanies a string of past romantic disasters.
"It actually started off on a beach in Spain, I went inter-railing with a friend of mine and was on the beach with my guitar, and I think the first line was 'the arsehole from Barcelona' because it kinda rhymed, and it went on from there. We were just having a laugh and it ended up being a song. I haven't really met arseholes from all those particular places. I haven't met anyone from Belize, put it that way!"