With Come Away With Me, it was a class thing. Not class as defined by birthright or capital gain or social station, but that quaint 1950s Americanism denoting an indefinable aristocracy of character.
Those of us who took to Norah Jones’s debut album did so largely because of the way she carried herself in a song: with the decorum and dignity and self-possession of someone whose heart was irreparably broken but still held their head up – rather like the old one about the famished Spanish earl who insisted on parading around the marketplace picking his teeth as though he’d just gotten up from such a gourmet feast as befitted his standing.
So, Jones’s persona was akin to the young widow making her first appearance at a public function, or the wife who spots the other woman across the room but will not be drawn. We loved her voice because it reminded us of the Countess Olenska in The Age Of Innocence, finding humility in humiliation, grace in disgrace. Jones did not fuss or fawn or petition the listener’s sympathies or resort to hysterics. Her singing acknowledged suffering and got on with it, managing the rare feat of gentrifying Hank’s crackerjack twang without compromising much on raw feeling.
But now, 17 million sales and a slew of Grammy awards later, she’s come up for air, started eating properly, is taking time to smell the flowers. She’s even thinking about ruffling the sheets again: witness the lovers’ lie-in calm of the opening ‘Sunrise’, or a couple of tunes down the line, ‘Carnival Town’, somewhere between Gillian Welsh’s starched folk and Bessie Smith’s letting it all hang out. The devil in Miss Jones is sounding contented. We, on the other hand, liked her better when she was lovelorn. Fickle business, infatuation.
The main problem with Feels Like Home is that it opts for languor over anguish, a hard tone to strike. Jones pulls it off roughly every other tune: the version of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Be Here To Love Me’ is a subdued Texarcana heartbreaker with whispering damped-down drums and Band man Garth Hudson’s bucolic accordion. It’s a tune that finds its twin in Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s barefoot drifter ballad ‘The Long Way Home’. This listener could have stood another half hour of such material, but elsewhere the key word is ‘tasteful’ (read west coast soft rock and California wool-gathering), the mood often soporific (apart from ‘Creepin’ In’, an ill-fitting hoedown not even Dolly Parton can redeem).
Feels Like Home could sometimes be a slightly below par Carole King or Mary Black album, all deft touches and cute flourishes and ultimately . . . boring. On this evidence Norah Jones has crossed the line from young lady of perpetual sorrow to being just another his ’n’ hers placemat adorning the coffee tables of Connecticut lawyers. And that’s a crying shame.