Norah Jones – The Fall [Audio CD]

Description

Brooklyn-born jazz pop pianist betrays an 1980s MOR influence on this, her fourth studio album–her first since 2007’s Not Too Late. The Fall features songwriting collaborations between the Grammy Award winner and alt country luminaries such as and Will Sheff. Produced by Jacquire King, the album’s sessions also featured musicians who have worked with such high profile artists as , and . Review Norah Jones always seemed almost unfairly equipped to survive the inexorable attrition that mows down legions of her fellow female singer-songwriters: young (23 at the release of her 2002 debut, Come Away With Me), beautiful, possessed of a lovely husky drawl and an appealingly picturesque back-story (Ravi Shankar is by now resigned to being recalled principally as Jones father, rather than as the worlds best-known sitarist). Jones didnt merely survive, of course her three albums to date have shifted 36 million copies. In todays climate, that seems as miraculous and unfathomable as a seeing someone walking a brachiosaurus. In this context, it would be easy to be cynical about this fourth album. To the limited extent that it has hitherto been possible to object to Jones, it has been on the grounds that she errs towards the inoffensive or, more bluntly, that her sensationally profitable records are duller than the side-salads at the dinner parties for which they serve as soundtracks. The Fall seems a carefully plotted attempt to confront this reputation for cosiness. Ryan Adams and Okkervill River s Will Sheff are recruited as collaborators, and Marc Ribot best known for his fraught guitar-playing with Tom Waits is enlisted in the backing band. The result, at the risk of damning with faint praise, is Jones most interesting album but it is, like its predecessors, a martyr to her overweening tastefulness. The Adams collaboration, Light as a Feather, tries nervously to be a Mazzy Star-style torch ballad, pawing the line between intimacy and claustrophobia, but Jones sighs where she should seethe. Stuck, co-written with Sheff, should sound driven to distraction, but instead sounds merely distracted. Her own compositions suffer similarly: Its Gonna Be is a Glitter Band stomp done tiptoe, Youve Ruined Me a country-ish waltz oozing none of the blood and tears that soak the best of the genre. Its only on the ruthlessly realistic wishlist Man of the Hour that she seems to relax: its both affecting and gently hilarious, and her best vocal on the album. Jones inherent languor has wrought marvels the version of Hank Williams Cold, Cold Heart on Come Away With Me and the reading of Townes Van Zandts Be Here To Love Me on 2004s Feels Like Home both benefited from their counter-intuitive coolness. Not for the first time, though, an albums worth of Jones luxuriance is somewhat rough going. –