I am a Norah Jones loyalist. So, after her last album – 2007’s Not Too Late – failed to win the acclaim that her two previous smash releases had achieved, I was worried that her new effort, The Fall, might suffer a similar fate. And, with a title like that, who could blame me? Quite extraordinarily though, Jones has managed to shrug off the 2007 slump, re-emerging with a masterful set of folk-pop, jazz, and blues tracks that is sure to astound both critics and fans.
With The Fall, Jones enacts a sort of musical magic. It’s a beautiful, echoing collection, and a demonstration of her near-faultless and unflinching form. Jones also seizes the opportunity to venture into new territory, bringing music that delivers traces of rock and other genres that give her an edgier sound. It works, as her genius is all over this latest project, her fourth studio release. Yet, Jones doesn’t wander too far away from the formula that imbued the multi-Grammy-winning Come Away With Me and Feels Like Home with eminence and that repeat-worthy factor.
These are songs about heartache, people, places, and circumstances, made vividly palpable by the empathy and nuance and Jones’ enchanting singing. Beneath the surface of these tracks, lies pain and desolation (“I Wouldn’t Need You,” “You’ve Ruined Me”) but also the power of love (“Light As A Feather”), which makes The Fall eerily more compelling than anything I’ve ever heard before from the folksy singer-songwriter.
On each of her four albums, Norah Jones sings a lot about reveries and fantasies (the excellent “Chasing Pirates”), journeys (“Back To Manhattan”), embracing change (“December”) and the peaks and vales of love and human relationships (the candid “Tell Your Mama” and “Man of the Hour”). It’s almost impossible to describe their effortless exactness and their unhurried economy. Simply captivating stuff.
Like on Come Away With Me, Jones reveals her aptitude for evoking a peculiar atmosphere of life and human connections, expressing their unspoken pressures (“It’s Gonna Be,” “Even Though”) and expectations (“Waiting”). And they are made all the more glorious by the sparse and sometimes sweeping production, coupled with poetically sensitive and skilled songwriting, including contributions from Jesse Harris, who penned Jones’ 2003 Record of the Year-winning hit “Don’t Know Why.”
The Fall proves that Norah Jones is one of most consistently true singer-songwriters of her generation, nothing more and nothing less than an artist who speaks to the human condition and the ways of the world.
BEST TRACKS: “Light As A Feather,” “Tell Your Mama,” “Chasing Pirates” and “I Wouldn’t Need You”
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