ight Now and Right Here,” the seventh track on Dutch-Japanese-Russian-Israeli (by way of Paris) chanteuse Keren Ann Zeidel’s latest album, opens with what sounds like ocean waves, and then, a moment later, there’s a piano and some delicate acoustic guitar strumming. Just before the 10-second mark, Keren Ann’s voice comes in. She sounds, to invoke a generally cringeworthy cliché (but one that’s nearly unavoidable here), down-right childlike—both precocious and brimming with naiveté. Perhaps because English isn’t her first language (I’m assuming here), there are some curious phrasings such as “your head / On my shoulder / Will be older / In a year” that sound endearingly observational. There’s an awed sense of realization in her voice that directly echoes the way young children sound when a fact of nature that adults simply take for granted dawns on them for the first time. In fact, this could be a children’s folk song, except that it’s kind of about sex, albeit in the most gracefully suggestive, poetic fashion: “Over and over, you wanted it so fast / Head on my shoulder I’ll pour myself a glass …over and over we’re turning off the light / Even the warriors are always great at night / Wait ‘til we’re somewhere closer to the moon / Then you can kiss me and tell me it’s too soon.”

Certainly, to an extent, the “childlike” tone is something Keren Ann’s consciously putting out there, if not outright affecting. She opens another track singing, “look at me / I’m only seventeen.” She sounds, at times, even younger than that, though she’s actually thirty. Not that it really matters, mind you.

Not Going Anywhere is, first and foremost, a mood record, and a superb one, at that. Its mercurial shifts in tone from song to song suggest the changing seasons—some light and breezy (the title track, “Sit in the Sun”), others exquisitely melancholic (“By the Cathedral,” “Ending Song”), virtually all of them enigmatic and ethereal (most especially, the slyly mysterious-sounding “End of May”).

So, who does she sound like? After raving to friends about how great this album is, this is inevitably the question I’m met with. There are a lot of names I could throw out—for starters, Cat Power, Mary Timony, Beth Orton, Nico, Mirah—but, ultimately, I don’t know that any of these are entirely satisfactory answers. Keren Ann shares certain qualities with each of the artists listed above, all of whom I love, but what fascinates me most about her music, what keeps me coming back to Not Going Anywhere and fervently seeking out her earlier records, is something altogether elusive that I’d actually go so far as to say might be entirely unique.

What is it? I don’t know. Timelessness? Take “By the Cathedral,” the album’s second-to-last track. Keren Ann sings a gorgeous melody over a simple, vaguely bluesy guitar loop and some stray piano notes. Later, a trumpet comes in, playing something that reminds me of “St. James Infirmary” (the Louis Armstrong version in particular) . On paper, this surely doesn’t sound like much. Hearing it, on the other hand, the song sounds impossibly sad and beautiful and even strangely sexy. It’s utterly enveloping. Which, come to think of it, might just be the most apt description I can offer of this album.