Artist: Norah Jones

Album: The Fall

Release Date: November 17, 2009

Label: Blue Note

Half Life: Norah is no longer just for Mom and Pops anymore. The Fall might very well be the best kept secret of late 2009-early 2010. The jury’s still out.

RIYL: Feist, Fiona Apple, Tom Waits, Pretending to like scotch while sitting at a jazz bar.

Five Stages of Grief

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

When using this model to categorize your record collection I’m sure you can find love songs to put in the first four categories without much thought. Whole genres have been founded on 2. and 4. alone.  However, how many times can you say you’ve heard poignant, thought-provoking, and genuine songwriting totally dedicated to Acceptance. Think about it. When do we as music consumers ever really describe something heart wrenching by saying “The artists perception of moving on in _____ without either hate or hope is really spot on.” For me, I can’t ever remember thinking that. I would most rather hear the artists that I love in their darkest hours, dishing out the dirt and letting me decipher their code of pain. It is the absence of those emotions that makes Norah Jones’ The Fall so special. It is an album that can be best enjoyed by thinking of it as a musical photo album, except that none of your old soul mates head’s have been cut out of the pictures.

On The Fall, the Grammy award-winning jazz artist has traded her piano for a guitar, and aligned herself with some pretty good company in the search to break new ground. (See: This is not a jazz record).  In fact, the album  feels like a completely different ballgame when compared  to her earlier work. It still features the sultry and smooth vocals that we’ve come to expect from Norah and her jazz days, but with contributions from Ryan Adams, Okkervil River’s Will Sheff,  Marc Ribot (Tom Waits),  and Smokey Hormel (Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash), the record has more in common with the work being produced by the artists of Arts and Crafts or Saddle Creek, rather than Blue Note. Some may say Norah is trying to capitalize on the neo-folk movement of acts like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, what with the minimalist instrumentation and sudden change in sound, but I for one welcome the change. The record may be a more bare bones instrumental approach than normal, but it’s far from sounding like it was recorded in a log cabin. If anything, Norah has just swapped the intimacy of the piano, and created that same sentiment on the guitar. It’s a good approach that works well within the context of the record. Plus, no matter how much she may want to, Norah couldn’t sound like she’s not a throwback lounge singer if she tried.

I usually hate to delve into the personal lives of people I have never met, but the fact that Jones had a seven-year relationship dissolve in December of 2007 seems to take centre stage to the stories told on The Fall. The songs run the gamut of the struggle to meet new people “Stuck”. The feeling of comparing everyone to the past (“Man of the Hour”) or even simple things like keeping in touch with a significant other’s family members (“Tell Your Mama”). The subject matter on The Fall makes great  songs out of the mundane and most overlooked parts of falling in and out of love with another person. It is a record built completely on the subject of moving on. Maybe not to better things, but moving on nonetheless. To put it into perspective, how odd an accomplishment would it seem if Stevie Nicks wrote a great album about Lindsey Buckingham (in case you aren’t following, we’re talking Fleetwood Mac)  that didn’t call him an asshole using every adjective listed  in a thesaurus. It seems shocking to think of a breakup record without the mud-slinging climax. However, what it may lack in explosiveness, the record makes up for in nuance.

The Fall may be Norah Jones’ attempt to blaze a trail into the indie community, but if it doesn’t work out, she still has a pretty good jazz career to fall back on.