On its self-titled album, Talinka brings together an unusual set of instruments (viola de gamba, bass clarinet, double bass) behind Tali Atzmon’s exotic art song vocals. The original songs are dreamy and often undefinable, infused with elements of jazz, echoes of klezmer and abstractions of tango. Talinka also borrows a few pages from the Great American Songbook in torchy, after-hours renditions of “Don’t Explain” and “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” The album’s closing selection, the mordantly romantic “Every Now and Then,” is a dead-ringer for latter-day Leonard Cohen.
