Hannah Cohen: Pleasure Boy (Bella Union)

The phrase "model-turned-singer" isn't one that screams credibility. There's a perfectly acceptable archetype of course - Nico - and on the strength of her first album Carla Bruni deserves the benefit of the doubt. But doubt is very much the operative word where the rest are concerned. Californian singer Hannah Cohen has the provenance to shake some of that doubt - her father is a jazz drummer, she shares a label with Midlake and the Dirty Three and this is actually her second album - but it does persist. Still, Cohen has a hip and accomplished group of New York musicians behind her and if down-tempo Lana Del Ray's your thing, Cohen's languid, smoky voice serves it up competently on tracks like Claremont, Watching You Fall and lead single Just Take The Rest. But the most interesting song is the darkest: the brooding, jazz-flavoured Queen Of Ice. You keep half-expecting Tricky to come in which those threatening, half-whispered vocals which are his trademark, and the song hints at a musical brain which isn't afraid to experiment or confound.