Norah Jones

During 2018, Norah Jones concentrated her creative endeavors on a series of digital singles that found the singer/songwriter stretching herself stylistically. Usually, she pushed herself by teaming with new, unexpected collaborators, including Wilco's Jeff Tweedy – a tactic that guaranteed a variety of sounds and songs, a practice put into sharp relief by the 2019 release of Begin Again. This brief LP collects the seven songs recorded for this project – all but one released beforehand – and while they're a disparate batch, they nevertheless cohere thanks to their elegant, elastic experimentation.

Norah Jones' debut on Blue Note is a mellow, acoustic pop affair with soul and country overtones, immaculately produced by the great Arif Mardin. (It's pretty much an open secret that the 22-year-old vocalist and pianist is the daughter of Ravi Shankar.) Jones is not quite a jazz singer, but she is joined by some highly regarded jazz talent: guitarists Adam Levy, Adam Rogers, Tony Scherr, Bill Frisell, and Kevin Breit; drummers Brian Blade, Dan Rieser, and Kenny Wollesen; organist Sam Yahel; accordionist Rob Burger; and violinist Jenny Scheinman. Her regular guitarist and bassist, Jesse Harris and Lee Alexander, respectively, play on every track and also serve as the chief songwriters.

Exorcizing the ghost of a failed relationship via the time-honored tradition of the breakup album, Norah Jones luxuriates in beautiful misery on Little Broken Hearts. Liberated by the separation but not quite ready to let it go, Jones achieves a curious subdued tension here, dressing unadorned confessionals in softly stylized studio noir created with the assistance of producer Danger Mouse, who collaborated with her the year before on the collective Rome. Seeming opposites – the classicist meets the futurist – Jones and Danger Mouse are well matched, as both artists are not as set in their ways as their individual reputations would suggest.