MANILA, Philippines - Norah Jones is back with her fourth album The Fall under PolyEast Records/EMI featuring the new single Chasing Pirates.
With The Fall, Norah accomplishes the evolution away from her smooth cabaret beginnings towards being an artful modern singer/songwriter. She began this shift on 2007’s Not Too Late, an album that tenderly discarded her propensity for soothing, refined crooning, but The Fall is a solid, more consistent work, sustaining a sophisticatedly wistful state that’s authentic to the crooner of Come Away with Me while coming off as categorically less traditionalist. Some of this could be attributed to Jones’ choice of producer, Jacquire King, known for his work with Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon, but King hardly pushes Norah in a rock direction.
The focus is always on Norah’s voice and songs, which are once again all originals, sometimes composed in conjunction with collaborators including her longtime colleagues Jesse Harris, Ryan Adams, and Will Sheff of Okkervil River. In addition to King’s pedigree, the latter two co-writers suggest a slight indie bent to Norah’s direction, which isn’t an inaccurate impression but it’s easy to overstate the artiness of The Fall. Here, Jones ties up loose ends, unafraid to sound smooth or sultry, letting in just enough dissonance and discord to give this dimension, creating a subtle but rather extraordinary low-key record that functions as a piece of mood music but lingers longer, thanks to its finely crafted songs.
The Fall is available in all record bars nationwide at P350 under PolyEast Records, license of EMI Music International.