Holly Cole is as much about mood and atmosphere as she is about music. Her smoky tone and laconic phrasing are cloaked in a dreamy, creamy noir of romance and danger. Thanks to Cole, the femme fatale is back. However, Cole's true talent lies in her ability to take lyrics and shrewdly twist them to her own agenda; a sensuous subtext.

My love affair with Cole started with her 1995 tribute to Tom Waits, "Temptation," and it continues with her latest, self-titled album. It's the first time she's performed her own material on record. We talked to Cole in anticipation of her performance at the 2009 Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival. An edited transcript of our discussion follows.

CITY: I once compared covering Tom Waits to wrestling alligators: win and you've got some cool shoes, lose and you're dead.

HOLLY COLE: It is a slippery slope, because if you're going to make a Tom Waits cover album it's not as if you're going for the commercial market. And the people that love him, love him - myself included. Even if one of my favorite artists of all time decided to do an album of Tom Waits, I'd be there with my arms folded too, going "OK, prove it." It took me a while to decide to make that record.

How did you decide which songs made the cut?

I sat in my living room with a pile of Waits CDs, listening to them and going, "There's no doubt this is great music, but what about this is a good idea for me to do?" Waits and I share a similar musical aesthetic - he's a minimalist, he's jazz and blues influenced, he's a champion of the underdog, he's very much motivated by lyrics as well as music, he's into a raw sound. But it was more the things we differ about rather than our similarities that I thought would make it interesting. The similarities were what got me into it, and the differences are what made me do it.

What makes a song ripe for your take on it?

Obviously, it has to be something that musically compels me, and it has to have a strong emotional connection for me lyrically. You can change the music, but the lyrics...you can't change those, because it's a different song. If the lyrics are great but I don't like the music, I can fix it.

You frequently fix with inflections, interjections of sensuality, and sarcasm. I mean, you can sing a murder ballad and make it sound romantic.

With lyrics, although I'm not necessarily changing them, I can imply what I like. I'm plagued with this, I guess, for the rest of my life. But when I listen to songs I hear them while looking for the subtext. People have written beautiful songs, or they're singing a love ballad and I'm thinking, "You know, there's something sinister about this." It's kind of my nature, I guess.

You've said your latest album has you going in a different direction. I don't hear it.

Different direction might be misleading. [Producer Greg Cohen] just wanted to challenge me. It wasn't like he wanted me suddenly to be an opera singer. Most of the record is without my band, I think that's part of it. And I'm usually the arranger with my band, and this time I arranged with someone I'd never met before, Phil Goldstein, who's a tremendous, world-renowned arranger.

"Holly Cole" is your eighth album, and yet it's self-titled. Does this imply it is quintessential Holly Cole? Has it all led up to this? Have you arrived?

No. That sounds good, but it isn't actually true. I love that idea, but nope.

So where are you going?

That I don't know. I'm not a goal-oriented person. In the 90's goals suddenly became important. We had to be goal oriented. This is a corny expression, but I believe it to be true: it's all about the journey. Once I turned, like, 33 I discovered, "You know what? Everything's passing me by while I'm motivated for something that isn't here yet, or will maybe never come."

A carrot on a stick.

Exactly. And the scenery on the way to the carrot is what you've got to absorb. The problem with being goal oriented is not just that you miss the boat, but you might not ever get there. And if you do get there, it might not be what you wanted.

Where's the next stop for you on the way to the carrot?

I've been writing a lot, and the last record is the only record that I have original music of my own on.

Why is that?

If I'm going up against Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin, I better be pretty proud of the song.

When you write, do you do it with the subtext in mind, or discover it later?

That's something I'm struggling with. I don't want to really write a song with an intentional subtext. It's not fun and sneaky and sexy and interesting if it's already there. It's more fun to fish around in the text.

How long until the subtext dawns?

It remains to be seen for certain songs. The songs, they grow. Once you finish them, they're done, but they're seeds, they stay in your mind and become different things as we arrange them and play them. Songs take on their own life once they're penned and as they evolve...certain things can dawn on me.

Though you're fairly open, what's something you'll never do?

Install a septic tank in my back yard.

Wow! People read that answer and they're really gonna want to see you now.

Well, it's all in the subtext.

Holly Cole

Tuesday, June 16

Harro East Ballroom, 155 N Chestnut St.

5:30 & 7:15 p.m. | $20 or Jazz Fest Club Pass | rochesterjazz.com