Nice one, Norah! Jones is jazzing things up again
WHEN she signed to the prestigious jazz label Blue Note in 2001, Norah Jones expected to sell a few thousand copies of her first album, Come Away With Me.
Instead, her debut ended up in 20 million homes and propelled the then 23-year-old former waitress to global fame.
She became the best-selling female artist of the Noughties and her overwhelming success gave her plenty of creative freedom to branch out into country, blues and rock, while moving her further away from her jazz roots.
But that all changed two years ago after she drove to Washington DC to take part in Blue Note’s 75th anniversary concert.
Inspired by playing in a group featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Brian Blade, she decided to return to the music that made her name — and Day Breaks is the most jazzy record she has made since her debut.
Recorded with Shorter, Blade, organist Lonnie Smith and double bassist John Patitucci — ‘one of the best bands I’ve ever played with’ — Day Breaks has its playful moments, but is a record of serious musical intent, its acoustic backdrop providing an intricate platform for Norah’s dusky vocals and twinkling piano. Arriving on the back of 2009’s The Fall and 2012’s Little Broken Hearts, both gloomy break-up albums, it is also upbeat.
Now a mother of two, Jones wrote on a small, upright piano in her New York kitchen, and the original numbers here are coloured by an air of domestic contentment.
With her voice rekindling the warm glow of old, there are numbers that hark back to the lounge-jazz of Come Away With Me: the strippedback Burn gathers pace around Patitucci’s rolling bass; and It’s A Wonderful Time For Love has the hallmarks of a standard.
Elsewhere, she ventures into less familiar terrain. Once I Had A Laugh has the fervour of a New Orleans marching band. Flipside is driven by her urgent piano, and sparks the normally apolitical Norah into a comment on America’s firearms problem: ‘Put the guns away, or we’re all gonna lose.’
There are three covers: Horace Silver’s Peace is idyllic and Duke Ellington’s Fleurette Africaine a virtuoso instrumental, while Jones changes the gender and location of Neil Young’s Don’t Be Denied to turn it into a number about a young woman coming of age in Alaska.
As recently as four years ago, Jones was lamenting the fact that she ‘didn’t have the chops’ to play real jazz. A lot has changed since then, and Day Breaks is a real American beauty.
THE enduring affection for Bee Gee Barry Gibb was palpable when he joined Coldplay on stage at Glastonbury in June. With Noel Gallagher offering encouragement and Chris Martin hailing Stayin’ Alive as ‘the greatest song of all time’, the last surviving Gibb brother received a hearty welcome.
His first solo album in 32 years cements his return to a music scene he considered leaving after brother Robin’s death four years ago.
Its soulful pop finds the falsetto that once graced hits like Night Fever in good shape. All the songs here were written by Gibb, 70, and his sons, Stephen and Ashley.
They re-inforce his fondness for working as part of a family trio while exploring the themes of old age, even though the confessional Home Truth Song is let down by some clunky lyrics.
Star Crossed Lovers, written for his wife, Linda, is better. Adorned with chiming bells and strings, it is closer to a Stylistics soul ballad than the Carole King pop that Gibb intended, but that is no bad thing.
Most touching, however, are the tributes to his brothers: Robin, Maurice (who died in 2003) and Andy (who died in 1988). The Long Goodbye documents his helplessness as he looks through old letters. End Of The Rainbow gives a tender yet upbeat finale to a welcome return.
Both albums are out today. Norah Jones plays the London Palladium on November 14 (gigsandtours.com).