“We’re an oyster cracker on the stew’: Norah Jones, Lives,
Drum and bass; piano and voice; Ellington, Young and Jones: intimate jazz in the key of blue. By Mat Snow.
“FINDING THE COMMON GROUND BETWEEN JAZZ AND AMERICANA.”
Nora Jones Ronnie Scott’s, London
To Ronnie’s, the intimate Soho venue hallowed by legends who over the decades have trod its boards, jammed after hours and reduced their usual fee for the honour of having the date on their CV. To be so close to the stage you can almost smell the superstar’s cologne is a bit special. Slipping from the dressing room to the matte black stage with no fanfare and house lights barely dipping, Norah, bassist Chris Thomas and jazz drummer du jour Brian Blade present a minimalist spectacle of sequined chiffon and hands mirrored in the polished ebony of the Yamaha grand as they descend on the keys in the first song of a 90-plus minutes set. There are more characterfully textured voices than that possessed by Ravi Shankar’s singer-songwriter daughter, but she yields to no one in musical intelligence and taste. And not the safety-first variety, but in detailed attention to every aspect of her everchanging setlist keeping the trio on its toes, zoned in the moment and not just phoning it in. With five of the set’s 14 songs drawn from her latest, jazziest (and best) album, Day Breaks, even these present the challenge of working as chamber pieces stripped of organ, horns, strings and other studio colour. Here, her musical intelligence is on brightest display, splashing the room with rich piano chordings in those jazzy keys rooted in emotion rather than genre orthodoxy or outre technique, harmonic analogies for modern, urban moods and feelings beyond the reach of the classical legacy. She selects her covers with flair. From his classic Money Jungle trio album with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach, Duke Ellington’s Fleurette Africaine matches the stellar original with little retranslated. But, plucked from the fringe of his ’70s songbook, Neil Young’s autobiographical Don’t Be Denied rewards its bold choice in the earworm intensity of Norah’s retooling for a different gender, genre and instrumentation. As if further finding the bluesy common ground between jazz and Americana, she sings JJ Cale’s Don’t Go To Strangers, itself more than an echo to the Redd Evans, Arthur Kent and Dave Mann song of the same title made famous by jazz singer Etta Jones in 1960. Her own songs are intensely groovy, each having its own distinct rhythmic signature, from the driving Flipside to the probing Day Breaks, where Blade’s virtuosity lies in the accenting tap on the snare rim or subtle cymbal tish. Though few Norah songs are as quotable as Sinkin’ Soon (“We’re an oyster cracker on the stew/And the honey in the tea…”), melodically and harmonically she engagingly blends the Brill Building and Broadway, nightclub and church – here Aretha Franklin, there Laura Nyro. And at heart is the torch song credo: making heartache bearable, even seductive, by making it stylish and chic, ordering emotional mess into aesthetic elegance. Right now, she has few equals.